A Divorce Lawyer on the Small Things That End Marriages | James Sexton

0:00You ever grab the healthier snack, take one bite, and immediately wish you'd pick something else? If a habit feels like punishment, you're probably not going to stick with it. Look, committing to yourself starts with building habits that you can stick to. That's where stars and honey comes in. Their protein bars have 15 grams of protein and only 4 grams of sugar. Toss one in your gym bag, keep one in the car, or bring one to the office. And you don't have to choose between nutrition and taste. Try iced lemon cookie, mint chocolate chip, red velvet, or peanut butter mousse. Order stars and honey protein bars at starsandhoney.com or find them at target stores nationwide. That's stars and honey.com or pick up a box on your next target shopping trip. When it comes to sleep, consistency matters. And so does having a bedtime routine you'll actually stick with. Hatch sleep clock makes it easier.

1:05It tracks your sleep right from your nightstand. No wearable required. Instead of just getting a sleep score, you'll get personalized insights to understand your sleep plus recommendations to build a routine that works for you. Try hatch sleep clock. The sleep tracker design to get you to sleep. Available now on hatch.co and Amazon. If you're a small business, you know one great hire can change everything. Maybe it's someone to keep the day running smoothly, find the right producer, or take work off your plates. You can focus on what you do best. Finding that person matters. Indeed, sponsored jobs get you quality candidates when you need them most. Join the 3.3 million employers worldwide that use indeed to connect with quality talent that fits their needs. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsor job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at indeed.com slash podcast. That's indeed.com slash podcast terms and conditions

2:10apply hiring now. Then this is a job for indeed sponsor jobs. The school of greatness is presented by chat GPT chat GPT work and new way to work in chat GPT can help you organize multi-step projects chat GPT work can use your apps connected tools and files to create things like landing pages, trackers, even web apps. You can also make chat GPT work more specialized by installing specific plugins put chat GPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects get started at chat GPT.com by selecting work mode available on plus and pro plans. Everywhere I go airports events walking down the street people stop me and say Lewis this show got me through one of the hardest seasons of my life and it's one of the coolest things when people come up to me. So if you see me please come up and

3:11say hi and let me know how this show the school of greatness has impacted you. It lights me up because our mission at greatness media is to impact 100 million lives every single week. So if today's conversation hits home for you do me a favor and push the follow button right now. It means that the next conversation will be delivered to you and will find you exactly when you need it. Again thank you so much for being here and listening to the school of greatness. Make sure to follow right now to stay up to date on the latest and greatest. Welcome back everyone to the school of greatness podcast. We have Jim Sexton in the house good to see him and say a list. Excited about this. You've got a book called If You're in my office it's already too late a divorce lawyers guide to staying together. You've been doing divorce law work for two decades right. Yeah about that little less than that almost two decades working with couples who have gone through every challenge under the sun right who have been through it all

4:11from sleeping with the nanny to financial issues to what you said carpooling who's doing what carpooling and what days to it. Little stuff the big stuff and everything in between you've seen it's and you're not a trained therapist but you've probably had years of work in your experience being a therapist for a lot of people. Yeah assuming right. Yeah you know I see people at their worst and I think I see them in a way that people still a lot of their therapist you know but they don't necessarily lie to their divorce lawyer because there's a tremendous incentive not to lie to me. You know lying to your doctor and lying to your lawyer or like the two people you shouldn't lie to our only job is to protect you our only job is to make sure that whether your goals are legitimate or illegitimate our our jobs to protect you. Yeah so I think I get to see a very very candid I know more about their finances than their accountant I know more about their personal life than their therapist I know where all the skeletons are. Why? Why do they tell more to you than their therapist?

5:13Because they have to I mean for me to protect them properly. I mean the first time I mean what the law is under their jurisdiction they're like okay I have to tell you it's like a lie a little small lies here on there. Yeah I mean I think other professionals you just don't feel the automatic sense of you're here to protect me I mean I am there to protect them in the Rossed realist way. I really am like a shield to them you know and I I said that's my job I'm a shield in a weapon and I'm a shield in the sense that my job is to protect my client's interests and I'm a weapon in the sense that I'm there to advocate what it is that they need me to fight for what it is that they need me to advance. I represent people who've been cheated on and I represent people who cheat and I represent people who their spouse has a drug or alcohol problem and I represent people who have drug and alcohol problems. So I've spent so much time with every variety of the person in a couple that that's how the book happened it really turned into you know look I'm not a therapist

6:14I'm not a philosopher who's just a pining on what I think people do I'm just telling you what people do I'm just telling you what I see actually happened in actual marriages this isn't theoretical marriages this is actual marriages yeah the real mess yeah yeah the real train wreck now you've worked with over a as it over a thousand clients easily and have there been any clients that you've worked with that were going to get a divorce and then they decided not to after working with you and then they came back together for whatever reason and if so what was that reason it happens pretty rarely and that's why I actually called the book if you're in my office it's already too late maybe 1% of people I would say I would say in a 20 year career it's happened maybe three times where someone by the time they were in my office it's so far along and the wound has so festered that it's hard to turn it around I mean look that's the truth when you look at people it's a whole lot easier it is to maintain your weight than to get real fat and try to lose it all

7:16right so it's the same thing with marriages there's this no single raindrops responsible for the flood you know there's these little arguments these little issues that people have and they just build and build and build and build to the point where once that damn breaks by the time you're in my office it's done it's and it's rare that people can come back from yeah you were talking about before we started that marriage as a technology yeah now what does that mean what does the technology emerge I think anything that's designed to solve a problem as a technology right so I mean this mug is is it is a technology and what is the problem to which this technology is a solution well it's the problem if I can't hold hot tea in my hand yeah it's a problem of I don't want to use and kudos to you for using non disposable ones that zero waste yeah yeah and the truth is is that it's designed to solve a problem so the next question is who has that problem anyone who wants to drink a beverage has that problem and the next question and I think the most important question is

8:18what problems does it unintentionally create okay so every technology is a Faustian bargain in the sense that it solves a problem and it creates a problem you gotta create it you gotta use the water you have to find stylish ones I mean you went you know classic plane but you got to find ones with witty sayings on them and it can break and now my favorite mug was broken and how am I gonna replace it I mean again some of these problems are silly little problems in exchange for really great benefits but most people never ask themselves the question the technology of marriage which is a man-made technology a human-made technology we got together and said hey let's create this legal contract governed by a state right governed by the state let's come up with something that let's turn a lover into a relative you know let's find a way to turn this into a legally binding contract and people just go and sign up for this technology and they spend more time thinking about what cake they should serve at the ceremony then thinking about what did I

9:19just sign on for and why did I sign on for it and what are some problems it might create for me in exchange for the things that it solves for me and by the way will it even solve the problem that I'm trying to have it solve and one of the things I talk about in the book is you got married to solve the problem of being alone not again you might be alone still in your marriage like if you got married because you want to have sex you want to have more sex being married is no more a guarantee of getting sex than living near a restaurant as a guarantee of getting fed you know it doesn't mean just because you're in it you're going to receive the benefit that you think you're going to receive of it and how many couples before they get married really sit down and say hey we're going to sign up for this technology what do you want to get from it what should I be wanting to get from it how will it change over the years that just doesn't happen so so if that doesn't happen how are we then surprised that it doesn't work 53% of the time 53% is now this is a divorce rate the divorce rate then more probably still don't work with our in it exactly that's the part

10:21and it's funny that you go there because that's where I go with it so 53% is already terrifying right if I said to you there's a 53% chance when you walk out of this room you get hit in the head with a bowling ball yeah you probably not gonna go out or you're gonna wear a helmet at a minimum right at a minimum you're gonna wear a helmet but you probably wouldn't go out now let's look at that number though 53% and then divorce that's US or global US US US okay now think about how what percent stay together for the kids that should get divorced but you can't stand each other but they stay together they stay together because they don't want to upset the kids or they don't want to give away their stuff I would say another 75% stay together even though they want to get divorced okay so let's say 20 so another 25% of married people let's say I mean there so so now we've got a technology with a failure rate over 75% right so now what percentage stay together for religious reasons probably a declining percentage over the years but let's say more you know 5% that might be the same as kids and you know might be so if I say there's a technology with a

11:23failure rate of 80% Toyota had a .001% break failure on one of their vehicles and they've recalled all vehicles yeah so if I said you 80 80% of technology you we still use it yeah not only we use it we celebrate it's used yeah it's part of our culture and we're shamed if we're not married absolutely well because it's considered a sign that you're not maturing forward thinking and we're shamed or divorced right but now we're being celebrated to get out of marriages if it's not what we want or if we're not getting what we want that's that's a trend that's definitely starting to change so so I think we have divorced him or whatever you know right right right I think a self-actualization you know became more of a thing and and after the 1970s you know people started thinking about like you know themselves and their happiness it wasn't just about the unit anymore it was about finding yourself then yeah became more acceptable to be self-interested I'm not gonna say selfish because not all self-interested behavior is selfish but it became

12:25more acceptable to say I'm not happy I married this person when I was 20 yeah and now I'm 40 and shockingly I'm not the same person at 40 that I was when I was 20 and now I'm a different person and it's no longer a good fit you know I mean I the analogy I tell people is if I said to you right now you can have any car you want what car would you have well I just got a Tesla I have a Tesla I actually don't care about cars I don't have a car either but I got one for tax reasons okay cool I had a 1991 I still have a 1991 Cadillac El Dorado okay they had like 60,000 miles on it okay I just I Uber everywhere I don't want to use car yeah if you have any car you want to yes but I like the Tesla I like the Tesla okay because it's fuel-fishing it's you know right I just wish out a bigger bag you're a pragmatic guy you ask nice to know you ask most people that question they're gonna get Ferrari Lamborghini I want a Mazurati okay now if I then said to them okay

13:25you get one car though whatever car you pick that's the car you're gonna have for the rest of your life suddenly a Lamborghini is a terrible idea because you can't put a car seat in it for a kid and you can't you know when you're 80 years old get into that car right so if you are only allowed to have one car you got to find a car that not only makes sense when you're 20 and 30 and 40 but when you're 70 and when you have kids and when the kids have gone away so again like a minivan that might make sense when you got three kids when the kids go off to college that minivan no longer makes sense well marriage is a technology where you're signing on with one person and saying for the rest of my life I'm gonna be with this person and that's a very challenging thing but here's the thing I actually think people give more thought to the car they're buying then they do really to the technology of marriage and what about it specifically they like or don't like. What training or information do you think do you wish every couple would go through before signing up for the technology of marriage that's a great question I think you know if you buy a

14:32house you get a lead paint disclosure you get a HUD disclosure that talks about the loan you get all kinds of disclosures right you sign a will there's all these pages it explained to you in great detail you know what's happening when you sign that well you get married you didn't get a pamphlet you didn't even get like a one-page brochure this is by the way this is the most legally significant thing other than dying that you will ever do legally and you don't get any information about what just happened so the first thing I would say is I think everybody who's gonna get married should have an hour consultation with a divorce lawyer absolutely so they should go into your office yes but for a different reason for a different reason for a lot to click yes they should come in proactively and learn about what's about to happen legally what's about to happen in my rights you know what's about to change in terms of how I own property the financial obligations I'll have to this person I would also say one of the best thing is they could do is talk to someone candidly who's been married for an extended period of time we're not encouraged to be honest

15:35about our relationships we're not I mean one of the things you talk about the mask of masculinity that I loved is about particularly for men but I think it's true for women too we don't share candidly what's really going on in our lives we're in a very curated society where you put up on social media the best picture and the best vacation photos and the best of everything we're doing and we don't share with each other the challenges we don't share with each other even even really relevant information like when I meet a couple who's been together for 20 years I mean I love the story oh how did you meet you know how many times a week to have sex who initiates it do you ask to shift you always do the same stuff because you've been together for 20 years and you know what each other like or like do you try like do you like call an audible everyone so I'll just do some wacky thing like what is it really like the day-to-day of your relationship and so many people I mean you've been in relationships I've been in relationships so many people just don't talk honestly even when I'm with my guy friends you know do we really talk honestly about the day-to-day

16:35of our relationships the way we talk to the women in our lives like the nickname they have for us or the nickname we have for them again it's private to some degree information but if we could share that stuff a little more we'd have a lot more accurate of a perception of where our relationship stands in this game of things and how we're doing I really think there's this perception that people have of you know I will only have insects this many times a week it's like well okay is that a lot is that too little like you have nothing to compare it right right you know so in marriage there's no way to know if you're doing well at it because you can't say well you know we have fights every now and then well okay people have fights every now and then but if you have a fight every week that might be a lot but how would you know what would you compare it to right so I would say one of the best things you could do to people who are considering getting married is put them in a room with people who've been good at that technology who've managed to not only endure marriage but endure it and still like it thrive right thrive right and still say you know what I'd sign on for this again

17:36yeah like in a room full of people I'd still pick this person yeah that's cool you know and and how many of those opportunities we really get to talk to people that way about the relationship not many yeah and maybe also talk to someone who's been through divorce and ask them what didn't work and why didn't it work and exactly see one of the the principles that inspired me to write the book was the idea that you know again I hate using car metaphors because I'm not a car but it's the best analogy I can think of in the sense that if when you bought a car you did every bit of preventative maintenance that a mechanic told you to do you change the oil every two miles or whatever yeah my sister's a dentist you know and and she always says to me by the time your tooth hurts your screw prevent it yeah yeah you lost every day not after you to have all the stuff she tells you to do when you go see her your teeth are gonna do well so it's for me who knows more about how a car breaks down than a mechanic right so I know people are in my office and I get a very candid view of them and I get to talk to them and I have been very blessed that people trust me

18:41with tremendously personal information and so what I wanted to do with that information is just find a way to leverage that into some kind of wisdom yeah that people could use and say you know what just don't do what they did when we were talking about titles for the book was a hilarious escapade because one of the first ideas was what we'll call it everyone screwing everyone because it was about how people just abuse each other in the process of divorce and how they're really taking advantage of each other and then we said well no that's too pessimistic and we said well you know maybe we can you know just call it vows and talk about like the promises that people make but it's not really the promises that are interesting it's the way that people go in with good intentions with those promises and they just can't keep it together yeah so I really think that for me the best thing we can do with anybody is is to yeah show them sick a model of success right and show them a model of failure and look you've said it a million times on this show that you learn just as much from your successes as your failures you might learn more from your failures

19:42right some degree yeah so we don't have those role models we don't have relationship role models you know and you know one of the things you talked about maske masculinity when you're talking about Neil Strauss and his marriage and how he says look it was my stuff it wasn't like I said oh I don't like marriage because I don't like this about it and I don't like that it would force me to do this and force me to do that and really what it was is he just didn't want to look at his own stuff yeah and he felt like to have a good marriage you'd have to look at his own stuff which is absolutely true yeah and terrifying most of what my book is about is about yeah you got to look at your stuff if you want to if you want to be successful in this technology you got to look at it own it and share it with this person be aware and be honest with the person about who you are and what you what you want what you don't want the school of greatness is proudly sponsored by amika insurance you know what they say if you want to go fast go alone if you want to go far go together so go with amika and get coverage from

20:46a mutual insurer that's built for their customers one that looks after what's important to you together auto home life and more coverage that fits your unique needs amika helps you protect what matters most visit amika.com and get a quote today in business there's the easy way with staples or the hard way hard means waiting too long for custom prints when your business needs them now easy means banners business cards and more ready as fast as same day hard means unfortunate printer errors easy means quality professional grade print solutions don't choose hard choose staples in store online or through the app you know how people sometimes invest in something that seems incredible at first but then it doesn't live up to the hype like when everyone was convinced NFTs were the future and people were buying them for thousands of dollars and now they barely have any value marketers know that feeling they optimize for numbers that look great like impressions but then they don't see revenue linkedin has a word for that bull spend instead you can get the

21:46highest row as of major ad networks with linkedin ads cut the bull spend advertise on linkedin spend $250 and get a $250 credit go to linkedin.com slash Lewis turns apply now you were you were married for how long is married for 12 years 12 years got divorced yeah got divorced while you were a divorce yes while I was a divorce that's so you're hearing these stories every day and going through and through your marriage but you know my yeah I mean I marriage I think benefited from my experience as a divorce is you knew the cues of what not to do or what's gonna work but it was hurt by the fact that I love what I do for a living and was so consumed with it that I worked constantly my ex-wife who is one of my dearest friends to this day she's remarried to an amazing guy who's a great stepdad to my sons who are now older they're both in college but I'm very blessed I mean I've I've had an experience of divorce where I'm still close friends with her I'm close I'm friends with her husbands I'm very lucky for that

22:50because I look at it like there's a lot of people I love that I wouldn't want to be married to sure and she's one of them she's someone I love she's someone I appreciate who I think is just an amazing person but we don't have the exact ingredients that you need to be successful in marriage because we met when we were 17 and what we wanted when we were 17 18 19 22 when we got married 24 when we had kids when we turned around and we're in our 30s we went you know we don't actually have that much in common and so either I'm gonna have to stop being who I actually am like I love to travel you don't love to travel from silly things you love shabby chic furniture and I like very zenesthetic you know like you love this kind of movie and I love this kind of movie and you reach a point where you kind of go well do we white knuckle it now because we don't want to quit something that isn't working or do we say you know what let's call this let's call this and let's find someone who feeds us in the right way and and see if or we're just be alone for the right reasons

23:56and I'm very blessed that the person who I was married to was mature enough to see it the same way and to have that painful but really wonderful conversation that so few people can have and that is to say look this thing was successful we both are leaving this better people than we were when we came into it and we're leaving it with two kids that are the exact chemistry of the two of us and they're made up of the two of us but we're gonna kind of take our different paths now and let's still love each other let's still respect each other let's just on coupling yeah absolutely I mean that's the term that's been handed to it but you know the truth is is I think people've been doing it for years he's don't hear about it it's not that it's my divorce is the least interesting thing about me right really yes yeah like if I said to you like tell me 10 things about yourself the fact of divorce wouldn't make a list because the fact that I tried to marry someone and stay with them forever and it didn't work out isn't that interesting it's not

24:56that you need you know what you hear about in the people who talk about their divorces incessently are people who were wounded by yeah and and now they've been victimized by their divorce and so it becomes a tremendous part of their identity they hold onto it for a while and talk about it and hear what happened yeah they're the silent you know there's a huge number of people that had divorces like mine where the marriage just ended it ended in a friendly fashion they continue to co-parent successfully together and they both live their lives there's not this pain and resentment for years and no and I have to tell you as a divorce lawyer as a practicing divorce lawyer a huge I would say more than 50% of the people that I represent it's that kind of transaction it really is that it's just two people that their time is done and now we just have to figure out how to divide up the things they have and work out the schedules with the kids that's a good job percent yeah I would say at least 50 percent but the thing is the other 50% are louder are so much more interesting yeah so much it's like because really who wants to hear about like oh I talk to

25:57my ex-wife yesterday she's she's lovely you know she's she's moving to Rochester soon like we were just you know that's her life it's the drama and the brain wreck you grew up a bad at me she's set my car on fire like it's way more interesting you know oh man do you feel like marriage I hear this all the time it's something that it's not going to be easy right there's going to be challenges there's going to be fights or arguments and there's going to be some things that you're not going to agree on sure if you ground everything awesome but it doesn't sound like there's many marriages that are always perfect and always smooth after 10 20 30 years it's going to be some conflict so does that mean in your opinion that we should just be like you know what let's throw in the towel when it gets too challenging or you know what it's getting challenging that's when we got to dive in deeper and like come together as a marriage because we signed up for this that's it's a great question I would say the following I think one of the most common things people will say to you about marriage is your marriage is hard marriage is hard I don't know that that's true I think

27:02if you consider paying attention hard then marriage is hard right if you don't consider paying attention hard then I don't think marriage has to be hard I think that it's again not to use the metaphor again but losing weight is harder than maintaining your weight and I really think look you're going to have challenges you're not necessarily going to have fights you know challenges life is going to throw challenges in your way illness adversity career issues you know day-to-day miscommunications with each other if you're not paying attention those things get huge and then the big big things happen so people come in and they go I'm getting divorced because you're sleeping with a secretary you are that's a great reason to get divorced and that's a legit thing he's not he's sleeping with a secretary because there's something wrong in the marriage yeah that you know and you know if you don't want to look at that because you have some culpability in

28:03that and it's easier to just go oh this harlow came and took him away and it's a lot easier to say that but the truth is you know you stopped paying attention you know and this is the question I find myself when I have a minute with a client who I've been some miles with and we're sitting outside of the you know the courtroom waiting for the case to be called and I have enough of a rapport with them we've been enough of a distance together that I feel like I can be candid with them I'll say to them was there a moment where you realized your marriage was over what was that moment and you would be amazed at the insight if people think about that question that they give to you I had a woman who said to me and it was a to me a very powerful example I discuss a little bit in the book she said there was a kind of granola that she liked and you could only get it at like a certain store like a whole food or something like that and her husband used to always buy it he's always buy whenever she was running low she would just open the cabinet and there'd be another bag of it there and she loved that because he didn't say like oh look honey I bought your granola

29:08like I get credit for that you know like he just what do it he just saw that this was something that he was paying attention he just saw that there was this little thing and it was this little kindness that he showed her that let her know she was important to him he was still kind of trying to woo her without being obvious about and he was still paying attention she said then one day she just ran out of the granola and it wasn't there so she thought oh well maybe he's like busy and he just didn't notice so she kind of left the bag out and sure enough he still didn't replace the granola and she said she had a tangible memory it was about a year before the actual divorce but she said she had a tangible memory she thought okay this is over you know this thing is over now and I think that that's the thing that's kind of if you boiled my book down one of the things I say to people is there's this thing in every relationship some little thing that you had that you did for your partner or some little thing that you just had to tell them that at some point you just stop telling them yeah you know I don't know if it's it's just in the morning saying like I do so pretty when she

30:10walks by or if it's her saying to you like you know I love your strong arms or whatever it might be like there's just those little things like we we just want someone cheering for us we just want why do we why do we get together we want connection we just want connection like there's no other reason to get married other than wanting connection so those little disconnections that's the ad you know and that's it's death by a thousand paper cuts you know and that's the challenge for me is is is that's what people need to sort of find their way to connect yeah yeah what do you think are the most important things to find out about your spouse before getting married see I'm super pragmatic about that I think you're going to be living with somebody so I think you should you should know some bare bones things like I want to know can you go to bed with addition to sink still or you somebody that like needs to have the dish to clean what time do you go to bed what time do you like to wake up in the morning or you allowed morning person or quiet morning person do you you know how do you feel like what how do you feel about credit card debt how do you feel by very pragmatic question how many times a week do you think you should have sex when you're married

31:14for you to be satisfied you know these are the kinds of questions like if I'm signing up to live with another human being to share my finances with them and to only have sex with them for the rest of my life these are important questions for real like what why would you buy a car and oh I don't know how many miles it is or I don't know how many doors it has like these are basic or because turn on when I turn to try to try to get right like just ask some fundamental honest questions and look there's nothing wrong with asking those questions there's nothing we've convinced people that this idea of like a soulmate that you should just meet someone instant chemistry and if you don't have instant chemistry and perfection you're doing it wrong and so you're you're discouraged from asking pragmatic practical questions like listen how many times a week do you think you should have sex or how many times a week because if you had those conversations not only are you going to go into the relationship with your eyes open but it's going to allow you to actually serve the

32:14needs of your spouse a little bit better like if I know what you want right like now I know you know it's as advertised you know this is what you said you wanted and I know am I meeting that standard or am I not meeting that standard and if I'm not we can have a conversation about hey listen just so you know this is why I'm not that way anymore because very often if you talk to women about you know why did they stop sleeping with their husband or husbands about why did you stop being interested in your wife they'll tell you the reason you know they'll say like oh yeah he just always stops being complimentary to me and now he just wants like he just only hugs me when you want to have sex like if he hugged me more often I would probably feel more romantic towards it if you'd had that conversation you wouldn't get to this war that no one wins well you're not hugging me anymore so now I'm not going to sleep with you well now I don't feel affectionate towards you because you're not sleeping with me right but well now I feel even more upset because you're not sleeping with me well now I'm going to start sleeping with somebody else and now we're just off to the races and meanwhile we had two people that signed on for the same task that now have completely lost the plot I mean one of the things I love about divorce law is in this culture where we're so

33:19full of it you know we're so we don't want to admit when we screwed up we don't want to admit when we're lost we're terrified to admit when we're lost to have you no one meant to get divorced you can't pretend you're in this beautifully raw situation anyone who is in my office they did not mean to be there and there's something to me really beautiful about that because it's this opportunity to just say you know what like yeah we tried to do this thing and it fell apart and so to me that's that can be beautiful that's an opportunity for growth you know the barns burn down now I can see the moon I really feel like that's the thing that if people could have that level of honesty and candor and realness in marriage they wouldn't end up in. Yeah when a couple is starting to lose connection what do you think they can do to get reconnected? I think the I mean the core is communication just start talking just start I talk about ways to have that conversation very pragmatic practical like I didn't want to write a book that

34:21was filled with conclusions of lofty so you need to reconnect with your partner what the hell does that mean you know like when your partner says I want to feel more fulfilled what does that mean do you mean you want to have a date night once a week or do you mean you want to surf more often because I don't know if I should take you out to dinner drive you to the beach like what what is that mean specifically and so I think people need to know how to talk to each other and in fact why not have a conversation about how you have conversations like why not talk about listen when there's a problem in the marriage how are we going to talk to each other about it and one of the things there's a chapter in there called hit send now and it's about just this very simple idea and that is send an email to your partner the reason I call it hit send now is that I always thought it's kind of funny when you sit you hit send on an email you can't hit like unsent like it's just you hit it and you're like oh wow okay it's out there now you know and I've had emails where I'm like you know I write by email and I'm like okay there it is like I can't take it back now you know and it's kind of exciting but it's also kind of terrifying and I think the idea of hit send now

35:25is to is to say like listen when some little things going on in the marriage you know that this could be an issue someday but you don't want to you know write an email write an email to the person and say like hey listen when we were sitting around last night we were having dinner and you kind of made that little comment about my sister like I don't know if you mentored or not but like it kind of hurt you know and maybe feel really good because I was thought you liked my sister and so I don't know I just wanted to let you know you know and see unlike a conversation if we have that in a conversation you immediately are going to be defensive well wait a minute no no I bet and by the way you may not be ready to have that conversation you might have other things going on in your brain you so an email is great because it gives a person a chance to digest it it gives them a chance to sort of think it through not be really yeah right not be immediately defensive and what I even say to people is make the subject heading hits and now because that way the person goes oh it's going to be one of these emails okay like brace myself for it like be ready that this is what this is and you can time when you send it send it when you know you're not going to see them you're going to be out of the blast radius and you're going to give them a chance to digest it send it to

36:26them in the morning when you know they're sharp or at night when you know they're calm whatever you know hopefully you know your partner well enough to know like what's the time to talk to them before they go to the gym or after they get back from the gym you know if you want to ask me something ask after I get back from Brazilian Jiu Jitsu class because I'm like calm as a Hindu cow yeah you know but if you see me on a Friday morning when I've got court like this is not the time to talk to me about relationship issues so I would say the best thing people can do is communicate in a very clear way with each other that's going to be that's going to solve 90% of the problems that you have and most of this book is just about ways to communicate with each other and ways to to you know own your stuff and help your partner own their stuff because I still believe that relationships maybe not marriage but marriage at its best is about having someone who sees your blind spots yeah you know we're we're better together as human beings we're better in connection we're better when we have the benefit of each other's perspective and when we help

37:29each other see the things that we just can't see about ourselves yeah it's true we'll just say the top three reasons people get divorced is it infidelity or is it financial is it something else yeah I mean the top three big reasons um again you know with the other things add up and cause these things but yeah absolutely infidelity be number one finances it be number two and number three would be I would just call it a trition it would just be you know that relationships just they just burn up like people just don't care anymore you know the opposite of love is in hate it's contempt right it's indifference indifference I mean hate is a passionate emotion like if you hate me you have you feel strongly about if you just don't care anymore right like you know there's a lining Costa Blanca the movie where you know the one of the characters says the Humphrey Boe Gerts characters is boy you really hate me and he says to him you know I suppose if I gave you any thought I probably would and I found in my when I saw that film I thought oh that's the most cutting insult because when you really just don't care like that's the opposite of love because

38:32love is about I'm paying attention I want to please you your pleasure gives me pleasure your joy gives me joy your sadness becomes my burden you know and it becomes something I want to alleviate so indifference that sense of I don't care what you're doing I don't care if you're happy I don't care if you're sad I don't care that's the thing and that's where people land sometimes as they just land in that place where where they used to care and then in this escalating war of well I shouldn't have to do that well I shouldn't have to do this well I shouldn't have to do that well then I shouldn't have to do that and now you got two people that are just great you guys won good job neither do you have to do anything for each other anymore great job great job you're living with a person who owes you nothing and you owe them nothing except what the state tells you that you owe each other wow and what you never meant to be there you never meant to be there yeah wow what's the best way to handle financial stress in your opinion financial stress yeah don't get into it yeah yeah the best way to handle financial stress again I think candor you know just candor I'm communicating it before you get married about these things you don't

39:35get into it absolutely again what's the best way to lose weight don't get that yeah you know I mean the truth is is try to find a way to prevent getting in that place but look once you've got financial stress so there are financial stresses you can't prevent you know you lose your job your company lays off 500 people and you're one of them you got a medical challenge that happens yes something okay so how do you deal with it well you with candor with courage you know with honesty with fearlessness you know with bluntness I mean one of the things like like I said I love about your book and that's why I said I think the two books together would actually be a great combination if you know a guy who's getting married you buy him your book and buy him my book and I think you just drop the statistics down on these guys because the truth is is knowing your stuff and being fearless enough to say this is what it is that's that's where the magic is yeah my friend I hope you're enjoying this episode and the School of Greatness drops new conversations every Monday Wednesday and Friday around money mindset healing manifestation and relationships and if you're not yet

40:36following the show then you're missing all of them please tap the follow button right now and you'll get notified the moment every new episode drops because the next one might be exactly what you need now let's get back to the conversation support for this episode comes from ring whatever shows up around home this holiday season with ring your protected the holidays get busy fast you're running errands gifts are showing up at the house maybe you're traveling and that's a lot happening at once one thing I really like is being able to check in when packages are arriving at the front door with battery doorbell 2k when you've gotten gifts being delivered and you're not always home when they show up indoor cam is small and easy to set up just plug it in and place it pretty much anywhere inside an outdoor cam plus gives you retinal 2k clarity for your yard and outdoor spaces ring helps you stay connected to what's happening at home so you can spend more time enjoying the holiday moments

41:37that matter with ring your protected shop cameras doorbells and more at ring dot com this fall l l bean is celebrating the moments people look forward to all year the first school drop off the first sweater weather day and the first chilly evening around the fire pit for over 100 years l l bean has been part of these traditions crunching leaves and main made bean boots cheering from the sidelines in scotch plaid flannel and walking the dog in a rugged field coat so grab the layers and people you love and get outside visit ll bean dot com to shop the fall collection l l bean be an outsider i saw one of the chapter says yours mine and ours the financial system that works best yeah i think a lot of people have their own way of how they want to run their money right right they like managing it their way spending it on things they want to spend it on

42:38some like getting in debt others don't like getting in debt so how do you find our way well i mean you got to keep in mind marriage was created as a technology when women were property essentially it was created medieval context i mean it was created essentially to preserve wealth was could create a to preserve lands right royal families would marry each other and rich families would marry each other to preserve land and to bring clans together you know the game of thrones mentality all right i'm marrying this person not because i love them but because this makes sense this family makes sense this this union of the clans are visions right okay so that's the origin of marriage that's some point 1920s 1930s it started turning into some romantic notion right some notion of well i should have some movies the movies the movies brought down yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah it's entirely possible i mean entertainment media is very much how people perceive advertising is the dream life of a culture we started to convince people that you know marriage should be more about love it's more about romance and then people became consumed by that model why it's a compelling

43:42model it's a wonderful model i mean there's nothing more exciting than the initial days of a relationship somebody once said that there's nothing more exciting than getting married and nothing harder than being married and so getting married super fun courtship those early days of a relationship they're fantastic they're fantastic there's so many people you could have a really wonderful early relationship with right but how many people could you have 10 20 30 40 years with so you know when you think about the fact that marriage was put together when women couldn't own property when women were essentially sold i mean you'd buy you'd you'd trade a cow for the guy's daughter i mean that was what it was there's there's still cultures where trade five life stock for my daughter and that's the trade you know so now we're in a society where we've kept the same technology that was rooted in that but we're in a place where men and women are both in the work force men and women both have obviously independent autonomous value and they're and they're equals at least in a theoretical sense right even though there's still some inequality in patriarchy and

44:42things people have to figure out and deal with the truth is is that men and women have equality of opportunity ideally so now what makes sense you're no longer bringing together this overreaching man who's in charge and goes to work and this woman who's going to stay home and tend to the hearth you know and the children we have two intelligent autonomous man and woman and i didn't get into it in the book but men and men and women and women i mean we have marriage equality now we fought really hard for it so that you know a gay couples and lesbian couples could have the privilege of this failing technology you know and so we said why should why should we have all the miswari everybody sign up and i've secretly believed that there were probably gay and lesbian individuals who'd been with their partners for long periods of time and secretly voted against marriage equality so they wouldn't have to have the conversation you know because we think about it when they were when they weren't able to they could be like oh i love to marry you but oh the government won't let me i wish god that all of a sudden it's like great the government's letting us look oh okay well i guess we have to have that conversation now so i really do think that

45:48from a financial place yours mine an hour is the basic idea of it is just to say look have some joint finances have some sense of we'll have this account that joint money goes into we'll pay for joint expenses from it but then have some autonomy have your own individual accounts have have something that you can use to when you want to buy the other person a birthday present i mean if you have a joint account and i buy you a birthday present from that account i bought myself a birthday so you know let a person have a little autonomy financially but but have a joint account so there's still some sense of shared purpose financially yeah yeah i like that what do you think is the real reason people cheat on each other is it these little things that have added up over time that people aren't paying attention to i mean i think at its core it's the human need for connection i mean i think ester prao and you know there's a lot of people she's incredible incredible i i love her work and i love the way she knows her personally i don't and i i've secretly said to everyone you should do a panel with her would be the coolest thing in the world the future of marriage you know we really because she has such incredible perspective and she comes at it from

46:52this mental health perspective and she comes at it from a really like a hacker mentality i don't think she realizes it but she is like she wants to uber marriage like she's thinking about like well why don't we do a different like what instead of you know she's got that silicone valley approach which is don't look at how we did it look at it and go well wait what if we just rip the technology apart and started from nothing what could we do with it you know and and i love that about her and i love mating captivity i think was like it was just a genius piece of work yeah and again i think if people understood those concepts before they got married or even thought about them you'd already be a step ahead of the game because identifying the problem is a huge piece of of the problem is that people never identify yeah but i would say that that you know um i think cheating is a function of losing that connection yeah and i also think it's about a human need for physical intimacy physical attention physical attraction i think john gray for example the great work is super intelligent with his ideas of you know men are from war as women are from venus and that

47:53you know men are like a microwave and women are like a slow cooker you know and then it takes us different sexually times to heat up and stuff i think some of that was tied to some sexual more together some biochemistry there but i think the truth is is that women are now really becoming permitted to own their sexuality we become a more sex positive culture a lot of that misogyny that that was motivating women to not be sexual beings started the fall apart i don't know if it was Kim kittrell and sex in the city and Samantha right it was it was just this long term thing but i think men and women are very sexual i see men who cheat i see women who cheat i see men have been cheated i see women have been cheated on and i can tell you men don't cheat more than women women don't cheat more than men it's fair so that too i mean women cheat just women cheat just as much they in my experience do it more intelligently usually than men um but yeah they they're not as impulsive or impetuous about it right infidelity happens because people have a need a sexual need you know and they have a need and sex is they attributed to us for a while but i don't think it's fair i don't think it actually came from him i don't think they know who said it but they said

48:54that everything in life is about sex except for sex which is about power and i think the truth of sex is that sex is a way we share our affection for each other it's a way that we share our attraction to another person and when that starts to fall away in a relationship then people cheat the question is is how do you maintain that connection because that's why people cheat yeah people people who have happy functional active sex lives with their partner and they're really truly fulfilled by it and they maintain intimacy you know intimacy is defined as the ability to be yourself with another person so it's not about sex sex is ideally tied to intimacy but you can have great intimacy is and not have sexual relationship with someone you and i as friends can have tremendous intimacy i can be myself with you you can be yourself with me but sex is a tremendous way for people to build intimacy and sustain intimacy you know there people say you know sex is the glue you know it's the glue that holds it together because what is it it's the thing that separates

49:55a lover from a roommate yeah yeah it prevents it from just being because if you just want to have a roommate have a roommate you know it's the sex it's the pillar of marriage you know and so how do we maintain sexual connection with someone satisfying sexual connection again it's not about how do i stay married easy don't get divorced you know how do i stay happily married that's a much harder question how do i keep having sex with the same person not a hard question to answer just keep having sex with them how do i have satisfying sex with that person that's going to fill my needs and it's going to prevent me from wanting to go have sex with other people that's a more interesting question hmm well how do you do that after 10 or a half years i can tell you how you don't do it how you don't do it is by not sharing with the person what you really want there's a chapter in the book called go without or go elsewhere where i basically say that if you don't share every sexual desire you have with the one person you're allowed to have sex with you're an idiot because you're either going to go without it then or you're going to go elsewhere again and

50:58resent it yeah yeah and resent it or you're going to have to go elsewhere and then potentially ruin the relationship you know i talk about a client i had who was in defeat you know in a sexual way and again it's not my thing i'm not a foot guy i mean like to me feet and sex it's like i use my feet to get to bed to have sex other than that the feet don't get into it but this was this guy's thing you loved feet and in a really like intense way like this was sexually it was a fetish for him and you know you and i laugh at it but the truth is it's actually a pretty generic thing apparently like google it it's a pretty generic people like it and you know what attraction is so hard to understand desire is so hard to understand why do any of us like what we like it's the reason why i've just never been homophobic because until i can articulate to you why i like what i like how could i possibly judge you for the things that you like you know so the truth is that you know sexual desire is so complex and so hard to understand you know that we don't realize

51:59there's a tremendous value in just identifying what you want and sharing it with your partner and i say in the book don't just in the middle of sex like if you you know if you want your partner to talk dirty you know there's a very common thing is people like to talk dirty or to have someone talk dirty to them all right maybe we watch too much porn and that's why we feel that way or maybe in the romantic films that people you know speak sexually to each other and that's why whatever is there maybe there's just something in us that likes the sound of our partner's voice but we're like afraid to say something you know we're afraid right you're embarrassed you don't want the person to be like wait what what the hell you know you don't want that to happen so you hold it in you don't say anything about it why were you serving there no maybe this is their fantasy too you know you have to be again what i say in the book is that people have great intentions and cause tremendous problems in their their sexual relationships so the following example is the best one i can think of so you're with this sexual partner for you know initially and initially you're having puns of sex and it's great sex it's all new and it's exciting and

53:00what starts to happen you start to learn what the other one likes right you start to figure out okay she likes this and he likes this and i do this first and then that warms up for this and this is great and that's part of the fun of early days is figuring out you know what the other person likes well then what starts to happen then you go hey listen let's play the greatest hits right i know that this they love and this they kind of could care less so i'm just gonna do the greatest hits i'm just gonna and you have good intentions you i mean you're really you're trying to do the right thing you're they're gonna do your greatest hits you're gonna do their greatest hits and everybody's gonna be so excited and much shorter period of time and we'll be done before John Oliver comes on you know whatever it is you know so then what happens six months a year two years of just doing the greatest hits it starts to get right i mean i i get an album i like and i love this song i love that song i play it a hundred times i mean when when you know zero to a hundred by drape came out of probably let's do it a thousand times right okay so many times that then when i play it again i'm like oh my god i can't hear the song yeah so the truth is people with really good intentions create a sex life that creates discontent in their sex life so then what happens though that's

54:03the key moment what do you do well if you're smart you say hey you know what like we're kind of always doing the same things let's let's change it up let's do something different you hit send now you send that email you say hey you know maybe i'd like to again don't just call an audible in the middle of sex because the person's gonna start to go like well where did that come from like we've been doing the greatest hits and all of a sudden you did this random thing you know but think about it let him yeah yeah well i mean the example of talking to her which i think is a pretty ubiquitous simple kind of an example don't just start like straight up porn dialogue in your partners here if you've been silent all these years right maybe say one or two little things and see what the reaction is gauge the reaction you know touch them in some body part you have them before see what the reaction is and and then have a conversation after about how did you like that when we did that or how did you you know i kind of threw that in there what did think of that you know that's the kind of communication that i think prevents people from losing the plot being stagnant even with good intentions and losing their sexual desire and attraction of the person that they're with because that is at the core i have to tell you so many people come in my

55:07office they talk about we stop sleeping together six more we stop sleeping together three years ago we haven't had sex in five years i had somebody come in my office no joke last month so they haven't had sex with their partner in eight years what eight your roommate you're yeah you're a roommate you're you're a miserable roommate but you know because even a roommate there's no expectation of sex right like you don't want to see your roommate and go like wow we have an sex and while you're not supposed to have sex with your roommate just post have sex with with your sexual partner you're supposed to have sex with your spouse and by the way if we haven't had sex in eight years can you get mad when i have sex with someone else that seems wildly unfair you know so that's the trick but you know the answer that is yes you do have a right to be upset at that if we've never had a conversation about why we're not having sex you know and not figured that out because a lot of times it's the again those little that look anyone who's been in a relationship knows that you sit with your partner and you're having a conversation about the best way to get

56:08onto this highway from this particular place and it turns into a slight disagreement and ten minutes later it's you know i never liked your mother oh man it's like wait what how did we just get there but anyone is in a relationship knows you the fight was about one thing and then it turned into some other much bigger deeper thing so it's the same thing when it comes down fidelity yeah it you know there was one conversation happening in the relationship about sex and then all of a sudden you turn around and you're completely in a different place and you lost the plot yeah i was at a Cirque du Soleil show over the weekend in Vegas and it was Zumanity which was like the sexual like lovey you know sensual one sure and the host of the show the drag queen was asking questions to people who were cut looked like couples right like how long you've been married how long you've been married are you married are you together and the drag queen asked one of the the couples was like how long have you guys been married and he said we're we're not married but we're life partners

57:10and she goes well what does that mean right and then the guy take the mic and he said we're not allowing the government or the state to dictate our relationship i thought that was interesting perspective you know what are all the things that the government or the state actually dictates when you sign a contract of marriage yeah and you know the funny thing is isn't it amazing that you live in a culture where marriage is everywhere and you don't know the answer to that and i'm not saying you specifically nobody knows the answer to that like i know probably 20 engaged people who don't know the answer to that you know whoever discovered water it wasn't a fish and what happens in these situations is people are so surrounded by marriage as a technology that they don't ever stop and ask the question like wait a minute what what legally happens when i get married so i mean what legally happens when you get married is that you opt out of the title system so i have a car it's in my name it's titled in my name i have a bank account it's titled in my name so title is the legal term for when someone's name is on something so if you and i are friends and you own a

58:16car and it's in your name and i own a car and it's in my name i'm taking your car now lose because your car is in your name so you have proof of ownership of it okay if i say you know Lewis i've bought a car i have a Tesla you have a Tesla it's silly that we both have Teslas let's share a Tesla so i'll put your name on my Tesla and now we both are titled owners of that Tesla well now if you and i have a parting of ways we have to divide that Tesla somehow and the law says okay we'll divide that based on how much you put into it and how much who repaired it or who fixed it up so there's all kinds of ways to determine how the ownership interest just like a business if we start a business together so in your name it's in my name how we get to divide it up when you marry you immediately opt out of the title system so if it's in my name it's ours if it's in your name it's ours whatever one person owns people are if i buy my wife a Rolex watch i bought myself one half of a Rolex watch if i get ten thousand dollars in credit card debt my spouse just got five thousand dollars in credit card so you're opting out of this so no one knows that you're now opting in to certain systems

59:22regarding a lifestyle so you're opting into systems about you know maintaining spousal supporter alimony okay what used to be called alimony is now called spousal maintenance okay or spousal support and that is a system whereby if one person is an earner and the other person's less of an earner that if there is a split between those people that one person has to now make payments to the other person to maintain them in a certain level of lifestyle or rehabilitate their earning capacity for life no not necessarily for life every state has different formulas as to how they do things and every state has different you know numbers and percentages and how many years you have to be married before the right to alimony kicks in but again people don't know those things when they sign up like you know people when they get married in New York state don't know oh 17 percent of my gross income less fight guys my child support exposure if I have a child one child 25 percent if I have two you know people don't learn that you don't get a piece of paper when you get married that explains that to you you're signing up for a contract you don't know the terms and again I think you're just sort of assuming that it's a fair contract you haven't read it

1:00:23but you just assume it's a fair contract getting married is like when you just agree to the terms of service on the app that you just bought you have no clue what it's right no clue but if that app could take half your 401k in your house and leave with your kids you might read the terms of service before you just kept hitting accept you know and that's that's the reality you know that's why I think if you put engaged people in the office of a divorce lawyer and just say hey listen what I mean one of the pamphlet yeah here's a look I do more prenups now than I ever did before and and more and more people are getting do you think it's smart to have one absolutely absolutely absolutely no matter what it's not only smart to have one it's incredibly foolish not to have one no matter who you are no matter where you're at you're at a ship no matter how romantic you are and how you're like we're going to be together forever and look I don't plan on dying but I have a will I know I'm going to die every marriage is going to end it's either going to end in death or divorce but it's definitely going to end there's no such thing as a marriage less forever it's either going to end in death or divorce do you have a will okay your marriage is going to end in death

1:01:26so you have a will right your marriage might end in divorce so why not have a prenup by the way why not have a prenup for the reason I'm talking about which is just to have some discussions about what do you expect from this marriage why are we afraid of that discussion why can't you sit down with a with a person who you've been dating for that period of time and who you apparently like that much that you've decided you want to have this person be the one you hold hands with as you walk into all of the challenges of the world you can't have a conversation with them and say to them if this ends yeah maybe it's your fault maybe it's my fault maybe it's our fault maybe it's some third parties fault whatever if this ends and I'm not saying it well I love you not would you know but if this ends what would what do you think it would look like what would it look like would you set my sheet on fire would we like sit and say okay wait a minute here's what I need here's what you need would you want half my things what I want half your things what would be important to you what will we do with the dog you know what would we do with and and having that conversation by the way

1:02:30I believe very much so and I've heard it said many times in your podcast by a variety of of professionals we're the most alive in the presence of death you know we're the most alive in the presence of loss and sadness and so I think we're the most acutely aware of the value of love when we think about losing it you know when we think about what if this person was taken from me what if this person who I love wasn't with me anymore like what would I lose what would I not have anymore because really it's a conversation about value it's a conversation about what is this person bringing to my life and to my heart and so why not have that conversation that's a that's a great conversation we're storytellers human things and my job is to tell stories my job is to go into a courtroom and tell the story of a marriage to a judge in a way that flatters my client right puts a halo on my client horns on the other side and I want to persuade them to see things my client's way that my parent my clients the great parent the other side's not the great parent you know if it's

1:03:31a custody case whatever it might be so I'm a storyteller by nature and I have to learn how to how to spin some of the same facts into into different outcomes and what I'll say is I understand the power of stories you know and the and the stories we tell ourselves about our marriage and the stories we tell each other about our marriage we've all been out to dinner with someone who were dating or married to and somebody says oh so how'd you guys meet and so you tell the sweet little story of how you met and everybody like kind of lights up a little bit like nobody pays attention to that story that's a fun story like I like to hear that story I like to hear how did you meet your girlfriend oh tell me about that and by the way your demeanor changes when you tell that slide up you like a little bit right and so I think people kind of in that moment there's a lot of like reconnection to the love again right there's a lot of reconnection to each other in that moment because why because you're talking about when this person wasn't with you and then they came to you and they added something to your life well why not have that conversation when you're getting married why not have a conversation about what did I have before you

1:04:34and if there was to be an after you what would it look like for me because I think it's a very romantic conversation I think it's a very romantic thing to speak so honestly as someone about here's what you bring to my life here's what I hope I bring to yours if this ends in a way other than us dying what would it look like how would I express my love for you you know I'm very proud as a divorced man that my love for my ex-wife is still evident in my behavior it's still evident in the fact that I treated her with love and respect and I'm still someone who supports her as a person and who's still emotionally there for her I've embraced the man she married because he's now part of my family because he's part of my son's family so that's an act of love to talk about how marriage is end in a very fearless way and I think it'd be it'd be a great thing if people did it more often pre-nubs are on the rise people don't talk about the fact that they're getting pre-nubs because it's just not something you don't on Facebook go we just did our pre-nub you know

1:05:36you post oh we just tasted cakes right we just tasted cakes or oh we just found the venue you don't say like just finish negotiating the pre-nub or just finish you know talking about the pre-nub but it's something people are doing because they're they're pragmatic and they're realistic and you know well then know the stats too 53% so it's like let's be realistic like if something happens hopefully it doesn't this fall l l bean is celebrating the moments people look forward to all year the first school drop off the first sweater weather day and the first chilly evening around the fire pit for over 100 years l l bean has been part of these traditions crunching leaves and main made bean boots cheering from the sidelines in scotch plaid flannel and walking the dog in a rugged field coat so grab the layers and people you love and get outside visit llbean.com to shop the fall collection l l bean be an outsider with the u s bank smartly visa signature card you earn

1:06:42an unlimited 2% cashback on every purchase no quarterly activations no categories to track just unlimited 2% cashback on every purchase think about those bigger everyday purchases travel groceries things for the house where afterward you realize i could have earned cash back on that that's the kind of opportunity that adds up over time visit us bank dot com slash smartly card to learn more the creditor and issuer of this card is us bank national association pursuant to a license from visa us a ink some restrictions may apply now you've been married you've been divorced would you ever get married again and do you believe in the technology in the way that it is right now still yeah i believe very much in marriage i think marriage is like the lottery you're probably not going to win but but if you win what you win is so good that it's worth buying a ticket it's worth giving it to my parents were married for over 50 years my mom passed away two years ago

1:07:43after a long battle with cancer but they had to tremendous partnership and their lives were better for having loved each other and they had ups and they had downs and they had challenges but their lives were really enriched by the fact that they married each other i think the upside of marriage is so good and the downside doesn't have to be as bad as we make it so i think that's where ester praels got it right is we have to reinvent how we view marriage and we have to as a culture start talking about what's really going on in marriages and what what what's really happening with them and what's really important to us in marriage and why we're getting married we have to start looking at marriage as a technology not as some romantic sentiment and i think if we do that we're going to find ourselves in a better place as a culture and that's the technology that might be worth signing on for you know but definitely a prenup i mean a prenup would be in order now so you would get married again let's say you got married and it worked and

1:08:45was amazing and all the things happened that you wanted to happen and enrich both your lives but for whatever reason you realized ten twenty-eight years later like it's not working for us anymore you decide this part ways again right would you get married again great question so here's what you continue to do we say you know i've done it so i give i think i work here i had a client i had a client who i did his fourth divorce and a prenup for its fifth marriage no way okay and i had the same reaction as you yeah but let me tell you what he said to me and it was it was really stuck with me this is fifteen years ago i said to him because he's an older fellow at that point and i said to him like you know look you realize you don't like half the marry them right like you can you can sleep with them you can date them you can either live together now like people don't have because i thought maybe he's old school like maybe no one told him you know that it's okay like you can you know not some like the Vatican perspective but like it's okay like you can tell he's gonna look at you culturally anymore and say you know shame on you you're living in sin

1:09:50so he said to me look he said um let's say you buy a car and you drive it for 20 years and it's super reliable and it gets you where you need to be but eventually it just breaks down so you go out and you buy a sports car you buy a flashy amazing sports car and within six months you realize this was a terrible idea this was impractical this is not the right car for you so you get rid of that and then you get another car that's closer to the first car and you really think okay this is gonna be the car but for whatever reason it just doesn't kind of mesh the right way and you know maybe it's that you're driving habits after all these years or whatever it is but it breaks down and you get rid of it are you just walk everywhere for the rest of your life and i remember thinking okay that's not bad like the truth is is that we want to maintain connection marriage is not a decision that one person makes is a decision two people make i mean arguably more than two people because people get married not just for each other they get married because their parents expect them to get

1:10:50married their culture expects them to get marriage their friends expect them to get married so it's not even just about a personal decision between two people but no one ever gets married just because they felt like getting married there has to be another person in the equation so i think realistically people just keep trying i think it's foolish to say well if i had a failed marriage i wouldn't get married isn't there are very few things in life that i was good at the first time i did it very few things a lot of times i got to screw something up several times before i get it right right now i i i was bad at jujitsu for a good five years before i got even vaguely good at it yeah you know the first time somebody handed you a baseball bat or threw a spiral you know you didn't catch a football and oh yeah i know how to do this now it's something that you really have to fail you have to suck at before you get good at it so marriage might be that kind of thing you might have to suck at marriage a little bit now maybe you can suck at it and improve at it during the marriage right or maybe you suck at it you have to end the marriage and you go okay let's try this again you know it's a very personal thing i think and it has to really do with i'm always afraid

1:11:52that anything i say about marriage is going to come off as an endorsement of or a condemnation of marriage and it's it's not that again it's a technology i'm not forer against mugs i just know what purpose they're supposed to serve and i know what problems they potentially create and then the question is is do you have that problem not do i have that problem you know if you say his marriage good for who for me or for you or for your cousin or for your mom who you know those answers are going to be different is that shirt good yeah that shirt's good for you it wouldn't fit me yeah so the question really is about does this technology make sense for you and if you live in the tundra your tesla doesn't make sense so could i then say well tesla's are stupid no tesla's just don't make sense for you so i think marriage why can't we look at marriage the same way why does marriage have to be one size fits all and again that's the kind of stuff that estuprella i think says so eloquently she said on the show is that you know it doesn't have to be it's about the two people that are in that marriage and the larger context of the of the group they're in

1:12:52and figuring out what if then that makes sense you know not just is marriage good or bad what do you you have two kids you said are one kids what what advice do you give them on marriage i've always told them to take it seriously just take marriage seriously i mean my one son is 19 the other ones soon to be 21 my older son is at the age where i i married his mother and we remind him of that constantly and he's completely freaked out by it and my younger son is at the age where i moved in with his mother he's also equally freaked out by that thought but i'm very blessed in the sense that my sons grew up with a sense of marriage as a technology because of what their father does for a living and also because we had to explain to them at the ages of you know divorced 10 or 8 and 10 we had to explain to them in a way that kid could understand and the way we chose to do it was to say to them a very specific thing we said to them you know mom and dad don't love each other in the very specific way married people are supposed to but we both love you

1:13:58and you're only gonna have one mom and one dad and we're always gonna be a family and we repeated that over and over and over and over again you know because think about like break that down a little bit it's not mom and dad don't love each other mom and dad love each other there's a lot of people i love i wouldn't want to be married to yeah we don't love each other in the very specific way married people are supposed to love each other and kids can understand that because kids know the way i love grandma the way i love mom the way i love my teddy bear are three different ways so it's okay to say you know i love this person but i don't love them in the very specific way a married person is supposed to love their spouse you know and that to me is what i've always tried to say to them is just when you marry if you're thinking about getting married take it seriously ask yourself what problem am i trying to solve by marrying this person look at honestly what they want what you want and what will likely happen in your life just like that car example yeah you don't know what's gonna happen in life but there's certain predictable things that you can think about you know i'm gonna get older i'm gonna my health will fail eventually at

1:15:00some point i may want to have kids i mean i'm going backwards but you know they're we will have misfortune sometimes we'll have challenges so knowing what you're likely to come up against does this person make sense and if the answer is yes then you know give it a shot have a prenup give it a shot yeah is there a marriage that you admire a lot that you've seen in your life yeah i mean i have i don't have a famous person marriage i could point to although i think Ted danston and Mary i figured what her last name is they have a pretty uh they seem to be each other's fans in a huge way i mean i i love when you see couples that have been together for an extended period of time and they're just still cheering for each other they're just still like so like in this person's corner and they just look at them like like i'm so proud of them i'm so excited about them you know and that to me is those are relationships worth having i have a real relationship role model i have two very dear friends who have been married for a little over 20 years i knew them when they were in college we all went to college together they have two sons who are roughly

1:16:03the same age as my sons and they still she still refers to him as her boyfriend and he still refers to her as his girlfriend wow and she'll write on her facebook like all my boyfriend's coming home today because he travels a lot for work which is so my boyfriend's coming home today you know jimmy iveen the the record you know executive and genius said because he's been he's had an incredibly successful marriage and an incredibly happy marriage long term marriage and he's second one or the because he was married for a while and then he got this is his current marriage yes current marriage but he's been married for extended period of time got it and his secret to it that he's pretty open about is never stop closing your wife he just never he's like i'm always just trying to close i'm always just trying to like impress her woo her and so never finished never finished right it's always this and that's why i said that you know marriage is hard if you think paying attention is hard if you don't think paying attention's hard marriage isn't that hard so it really is about like i see in this my relationship role models i see in them this constant like they wouldn't forget to get the

1:17:07granola hmm they wouldn't stop doing that little thing that little thing that lets the other person know man i like you i'm cheering for you like i want it to be good yeah yeah that's cool make sure you guys get this book i think it's really cool if you're in my office it's already too late the divorce lawyers guide to staying together make sure you check this out the things gonna be really powerful you can uh get it right now a couple final questions for you uh this is called the three truths and if this was your last day many years from now and all the stuff you've written and talked about and everything you've experienced and all your dreams you've had come true but you want to be able to leave them behind you'd have to take them with you so no one would have access to all your information your message your content the things you've done you'd have to bring it with you when you when you pass on but you got to leave behind a piece of paper that said your three truths three things you need to be true about all your experiences in life whether it be from your career work love relationships parenting whatever may be these will only be three lessons

1:18:10you could leave behind what would you say are your three truths so i would say the first one would be that the hard thing to do and the right thing to do are almost always the same thing because i think that that's something i've learned in every aspect of my life that the hard thing and the right thing are almost always the same thing the second thing would be it's all about connection i would probably just write it's all about connection and i would hope that the person would understand what i meant that there really was nothing else at the end of the day that's that everything we do in our lives whether it's our desire for sex or desire for money or desire for art to create art to create beauty it's all about connection we're just trying to connect to each other and and and that's the beauty of it and that's the tragedy of it because in my office i see the beauty of it and then i see the tragedy of it when we lose that connection or when we miss that connection when we let that connection fall apart so i would say it's all about connection

1:19:11and the third thing i you know and it's probably a shallow thing to say but i would say don't take it so seriously i think when i look back on my life as a 45 year old man you know solidly mid-life i look back on it and i think to myself that there really are only five or six moments that when i think about my life i go wow that was such a great moment and none of them when it was happening did i realize how great it was you know i think back now i just had this thought the other day because both my sons are in college now and my youngest i became an empty nester in september when my youngest went off to college and i was thinking the other day about if i had to think of a moment in my life that was like the just the greatest moment and it wouldn't be like when i graduated law school or when i you know uh uh you know one-some trial or when my book was published you know it would be like some night when i was divorced for a year or two and i you know went to the store and got just what the kids like to eat because they were coming for the weekend and i like made them dinner

1:20:12and they sat at the table doing their homework and we were just together and i felt like a really engaged wonderful loving father you know i it wasn't the kind of father i had my father was like a of his generation kind of a father you know we drank and he kind of you know didn't talk talk too much about feelings or anything like that it wasn't the kind of man that would read the mask of mask at linen um but to me those little moments those unexpected little moments it's everything and so just don't take all of the other stuff so seriously because when you look back even in a marriage like the there were moments in that marriage that you well it's happening you had no idea that that was the best it was going to get you know so just cultivate space and leave opportunity for those ridiculous little moments that then don't take the rest of it so seriously. I like those yeah it's cool man i'll acknowledge you for a moment Jim for there's a lot of pain that couples go through there's a lot of heartache a lot of misery there's a lot of stress anxiety through and the divorce process so for you to give some great information from your almost two decades of

1:21:14of insights to be able to hopefully prevent a lot of the pain that people don't need to go through uh i would acknowledge you for using your gifts for using your information and presenting in a way that is fun and interesting and inspiring but also informational so we can hopefully not make a lot of mistakes that 53% of people do make um i mean not even mistakes but just being aware going into what we're doing and having all the information laid out okay yeah i'd love to put myself out of business yeah i say it all the time i'd love to put myself out of business i don't think it'll happen i don't think that any i think the truth's out there and a lot of things and but can people apply the truth and are people interested in hearing it i don't know i hope so yeah the same thing with nutrition you know there's a lot of nutritionists that would love to put themselves out of a business when all the information's available for us some reason we keep making the same mistakes or getting obese or hurting ourselves in that way too but you've got a powerful gift and i'm glad that you're able to present this information in a fun and interesting storytelling type of way so

1:22:15i acknowledge you for all that you're doing man and i'm glad you came on i think this will be fascinating for a lot of people final question before i ask it make sure you guys get the book we'll have a linked up with everything else talked about uh on this page on the resources of the show now is the final questions what's your definition of greatness i would say greatness is diving deeply into what you do everything that you do just diving deeply into it and and the tragedy of our time is people spending five days a week looking forward to two you know fifty weeks a year looking forward to the two weeks vacation they get you know to me greatness is about identifying and diving deeply into the things that make you feel alive and then make you feel connected you know again it's all about connection i mean it's ridiculous that a divorce lawyer who disconnects people for a living is preaching the gospel of connection but but that's the truth it's about connection it's about connecting to yourself connecting to other people so i would say the definition of greatness for me is about just diving deeply into connection

1:23:17too great to say hello thanks so much for having you appreciate it my friend i hope you're enjoying this episode right now because we are on a mission to impact a hundred million lives every single week and every follow here on this podcast helps us reach more people make sure to hit the follow at the top of this shows page right now it's the single biggest thing that you can do to support the show and the impact of us reaching you every single time we have new episodes i appreciate you and i can't wait to see you in the next episode i hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links and if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally as well as ad free listening then make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel exclusively on apple podcast share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on apple podcast as well let me know what you enjoyed about this

1:24:19episode in that review i really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward and i want to remind you of no one has told you lately that you are loved you are worthy and you matter and now it's time to go out there and do something great it's time to level up your education and Columbia Southern University makes it easy earn an accredited degree 100% online with 24 seven course access zero dollar textbooks and monthly start dates so you can truly earn your degree on your schedule plus you can compare their cost to more than 1,500 online degree programs it's free and only takes a few seconds visit columbia Southern dot edu slash school of greatness to learn more does it feel like it's getting really hard to figure out the

1:25:21best way to save for retirement fidelity can help you find clarity so you can save the best way for you with a free personalized plan goal tracking and timely insights you'll be set to take on retirement your way get started at fidelity dot com slash future expenses charged by your investments and other cost and fees associated with trading or transacting in your account apply fidelity brokerage services member NYSE SIPC