Latest / QUESTION EVERYTHING / Why 73% of Divorces Are Filed by Women +: Why Social Media is Causing Divorce with James Sexton (Divorce Attorney)

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Why 73% of Divorces Are Filed by Women +: Why Social Media is Causing Divorce with James Sexton (Divorce Attorney) · QUESTION EVERYTHING

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: No one has all the answers, but when we ask
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: the right questions, we get a little closer, closer to truths,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: closer to each other, even closer to ourselves. I'm journalist
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Danielle Robe and each week, my guests and I come
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: together to challenge the status quo and our own ways
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: of thinking by daring to ask what if, why not?
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: And who says?
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: So?
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Come curious, dig deep, and join the conversation. It's time
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: to question everything. Hello. Hello, I hope you're having an
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: amazing week. I'm going to be quick at the top
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: because this week's episode is I think one of the
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: best of the year, best of all time. Our guest
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: James Sexton, is unbelievable. But I just wanted to say
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: hi because a lot has happened. I've been back back
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: and forth to New York, Chicago, LA, back to New York,
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: back to Chicago, and We've been doing live podcast episodes
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: for Reese's Book Club, and I got to interview Reese
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: live for the first time, which was amazing. I got
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: to talk to Alison Williams. And I also had a
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: little family thing happened. My grandmother passed away. My dad's mom,
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: her name was Barbara, and a lot of you know
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: that Robe is actually my middle name, and Barbara is
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: the BA in Robe. I was named after my two grandmothers.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: And I went home to Chicago and I was on
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: the plane trying to see her, trying to get to her,
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: and she passed away while I was on the plane,
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: which was brutal. But I'm sharing this to tell you
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: that I got to Lincolnwood, which is where she lives
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: or lived, and I saw her body and I'd never
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: seen a dead body before. Sorry, I know this is
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: a lot, but I promised it. It has a point.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: So I grabbed her hand and I was a little frightened,
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: and my mom grabbed it with me, and she was like,
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: you know, it's still, It's still you're Nana. And I
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: was looking at her and she would have been ninety
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  Speaker 1: three in December, and I'd always say, Nana, how old
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  Speaker 1: do you feel? And she would say she called me Dolly,
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: and she would say, Dolly, I think I think I'm
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  Speaker 1: twenty eight. Forever I feel twenty eight. And the reason
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  Speaker 1: I'm sharing this is I was looking at her body,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: thinking it goes by so quickly, and so if there
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: is something that you really want to do, if you
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: want to accomplish it, if you want to make a
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: new friend, like however big or small it is, take
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: this as your sign to go and do it, because I,
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: honestly I was staring at her body, thinking, we have
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: to take a big bite out of life. We only
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: get one of these and it really does go by
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  Speaker 1: so quickly. And a lot of you have heard this
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: story because I posted it on Instagram. But when I
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: was growing up, my mom would sit on a park
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  Speaker 1: bench with me, and honestly, since I was four years old,
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: she would say, Danielle, do you see all these people
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: walking around living their lives. You can either go and
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: be part of the world and go live yours, or
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: you can sit on this park bench and watch people
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: live theirs. And I think about those things, and I'm like,
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: if you want something, go get it. It is so possible.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: It is truly perseverance and hard work. And you know,
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: I zoom with one, if not two of you a week,
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: and each week I am blown away by how amazing
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: you are. You're such doers and dreamers and truly beautiful minds,
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: and so you know all of this. I'm not telling
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: you anything new. But I think sometimes life events and
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: platitudes just remind us of what's important. So that's really
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: my message to you today. And that was longer than
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: I expected, But it is time for today's episode. And
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: James Sexton is I don't curse a lot, but he
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: is fucking fabulous. He's amazing. I think you're gonna love him,
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: So let's get into this episode. We live in a
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: world obsessed with finding the one, from Romeo and Juliet
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: to The Notebook Bridgerton to The Bachelor. It's one of
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: the few stories every generation keeps rewriting. Nowadays, we swipe
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: instead of court people, and we text instead of write letters.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: But here's what I was thinking about. We question gender monogamy,
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: what partnership even means, and yet marriage, this century old ritual,
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: still stands for all of our reinvention. Marriage remains one
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  Speaker 1: of the last traditional institutions people still believe in and
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: chase and fight to keep. Maybe it's because beneath the
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: politics and paperwork, marriage represents the same thing. It always
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: has the hope that someone will choose us and keep
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: choosing us even as we change and vice versa. But
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: if marriage falls apart, who do we call a lawyer,
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: and James Sexton is that lawyer. As one of the
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: country's top divorce attorneys, he's seen the private lives of
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: people who once promised each other forever, and he's seen
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: the full spectrum of human longing, devotion, betrayal, rage and forgiveness.
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  Speaker 2: People out of their therapists, but they don't lie in
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  Speaker 2: their lawyer.
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  Speaker 1: He's been called the sociopath you want on your side,
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: but the truth is James might be one of the
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: most emotionally intelligent men you'll ever meet. And you know
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: what's interesting His book. If you're in my office, it's
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: already too late, isn't really about divorce. It's about how
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: to stay out of one. We talked for nearly three hours.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: Don't worry, I edited this episode down. I know you
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: don't have three hours to give the pod this week,
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: but I left James that evening with a reminder that
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: sometimes the clearest truths about something come from studying its opposite.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: It's like how in art, the negative space makes you
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: finally see the shape that is. Have you ever seen
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: Matisa's blue nudes? If you haven't, or you can't picture
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: what I'm talking about, look it up when you have time.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: Matisse made a series of collages from blue paper cutouts
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: depicting nude figures in various positions and the cutouts they're beautiful,
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: but it's the white space that makes them gorgeous. Sometimes
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: absence reveals more than presents. Divorce does that too, It
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: shows us what love really is when everything else is
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: stripped away. My point is James deals in divorce, but
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: what he's really an expert in is love. What sustains it,
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: what erodes it, and what it reveals about who we
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: are when the illusion fades. By helping people separate, he's
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: learned what it actually takes to stay together. So the
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: question we're circling today is what does marriage actually mean?
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  Speaker 1: And why do we keep doing it when so many
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: of us fail at it? The question we're circling today
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: is what does marriage actually mean? And why do we
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: keep doing it when so many of us fail at it?
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: It's time to question everything with James Sexton. When people
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: sit down with you, James, they have such a clear
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: idea of what they want in mind, which is how
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: to prevent divorce. That's what every interviewer wants to know.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: I'm sure which.
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: Is the opposite of my day job. My day job
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: is people sitting down and saying, like, how do I
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: facilitate the demise of this unhappy marriage? So it's really
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: interesting that this aspect of my career. Yeah, it's the
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: total opposite period, like how do I stay married? And
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: all day long people like, how do I no longer
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  Speaker 2: be married?
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  Speaker 1: But I think it's so much So you wrote a
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: book about how people can stay out of your office.
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  Speaker 2: It was really based on the premise. When I was
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: a kid, my mom used to say to me that
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: it's really hard to define intelligence, but you can spot
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: stupid a mile away. So for me, a definition of
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: intelligence was always an absence of stupid. So I sort
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  Speaker 2: of realized after like twenty something years of doing the
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: job of sitting across from people whose marriages were ending
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  Speaker 2: and having a very unfiltered view of it and really
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: getting to see it in like this authentic way, because
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: people lie to their therapists, but they don't lie to
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  Speaker 2: their lawyer. Like the two people you should never lie to,
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: as your doctor or your lawyer. Our whole job is
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: to protect you, and privilege is attached, so we can't
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  Speaker 2: tell anybody anything. You said, so I felt like, you know,
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  Speaker 2: I've kind of learned what screws up relationships in this
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  Speaker 2: really honest, authentic way, and maybe what a good relationship
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  Speaker 2: is one that doesn't have all of this awful stuff
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  Speaker 2: attached to it. And that's you know where it came from.
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  Speaker 1: Well, I read that you are described as the sociopath
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  Speaker 1: you want on your side when people walk in your office.
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  Speaker 2: That is quite a tagline my line of work, being
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  Speaker 2: a trial lawyer in divorce, people say things to you
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  Speaker 2: than any other profession.
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  Speaker 3: It would be a terrible insult. Like I've had people sit.
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  Speaker 2: Across from me on the first time they meet me
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  Speaker 2: and say, I've heard you're a ruthless son of a
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  Speaker 2: bitch and that's why I'm here, you know, and you
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  Speaker 2: kind of go in any other world that would be
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  Speaker 2: an insult. But I guess I understand what you're saying,
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  Speaker 2: which is like, you've heard that I'm very tenacious. I
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: think as a divorce lawyer, it's pretty common that you
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  Speaker 2: have to argue different sides of issues, so people start
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  Speaker 2: to think, oh, you mustn't have any moral compass, you know,
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: because you're willing to represent the victim of domestic violence,
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  Speaker 2: and then in another case you're representing the p a
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: trainer of domestic violence, and in one case you're representing
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: the cheater and in the other case the person who's
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: been cheated on.
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  Speaker 3: And they sort of say, well, how could you possibly
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  Speaker 3: do both of those things?
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  Speaker 2: But you know, you really do learn a lot about
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: human emotional complexity doing the job, and I actually don't
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  Speaker 2: think it makes you associopath. I think it's the opposite.
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  Speaker 2: You have to be very sensitive and empathetic and try
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  Speaker 2: to put yourself in the head of the person that
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: you're representing and understand the most sort of intimate and
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  Speaker 2: forgiving kind of way.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: You kind of just mentioned that therapy and law in
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: what you do are a little bit connected. You wrote
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: in your book that you're privy to more of a
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: person's true life than any therapist. What has that kind
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: of access to other people taught you. It's such a
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: rare thing that you get to experience.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's taught me a lot. It's taught
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: me everything. I mean. I dedicated my book to my
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: clients because of the things they trust me with. Twenty
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: five years of doing this job, I'm still absolutely humbled
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: by the fact that people are trusting me with the
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: most important things in their life, like their children, their time,
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: that they're going to get to see their children, the
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: intimate details of their finances, their home. It's like shocking
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: to me. I've learned a ton from my clients. I mean,
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: I've learned a lot about myself from my clients. I've
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: learned what I'm capable of in terms of how understanding
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: and patient I can be with them in that context,
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: which is I hope made me better as a parent,
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: as a partner, as a person. You know, I think
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: more than anything I've learned, if only people had like
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: horns or halos, you know, if they were just like
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: good people and bad people and you just had to
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: figure out which one the person is and put them
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: in the category. But like, the line of good and
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: evil runs right through the human heart. And I've learned
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: that if you judge any of us by our worst moment,
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: that you're going to have a very awful pessimistic view
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: of us. That's unfair. And if you judge any of
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: us by our greatest, most noble moment, you're going to
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: have a really unfair optimistic view of how wonderful we are,
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: so I'd like to think that all of us are
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: like the average of all of those things.
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: But it's probably taught me to be less judgmental. It's
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: taught me to.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: Be more open to the things that people have been
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: through and what it's done to them.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: Do you ever get shocked anymore? Like, does anybody ever
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: come into your office and they're seemingly have a halo
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: over their head?
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: It is so hard to shock me, Yeah, because I've
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: just seen so many unexpected things over the course of
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: my career. But every once in a while, it still happens.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: It happened to me recently, actually, and it probably was
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: the first time in a few years that I've been shocked.
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: The case is resolved now, but I was representing a
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: woman who is married to a very successful guy, and
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: he had what appears to me to have been some
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: kind of nervous breakdown, and he ended up giving away
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: seven hundred thousand dollars on TikTok, like just to random people,
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: like over the course of thirty days, Like he had
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: just gone online and just been giving away massive amounts
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: of money for no reason, like other than just to
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: sort of see the other people's joy and I was
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: shocked that that was even possible, Like, I was shocked
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: that you could on TikTok give away that much money
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: to people you've never met and it wasn't even like
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: people in need. That was one that shocked me, like
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: because in court we didn't really know how much she'd
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: given away. And I said, you know, you're I'm very
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: concerned because it appears these giving away you know, significant
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: amounts of money on TikTok and we don't really haven't
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: accounting yet of how much it is. And Judge said, well, sir,
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: you know, is it true that you've been giving away money?
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: And he said, yeah, you know, I've given away some
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: money and over the last month, and he said, you know,
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: about how much is it? And I thought, you know,
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: fifty grand, one hundred grand and he was like, it's
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: at least three or four hundred thousand, but it could
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: be more.
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: I really tried to not have this shock register on
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: my face.
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, that was an example of me being shocked
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: and it doesn't happen as often, but I'm glad, you know,
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: I'm still capable of it me too.
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: Actually, yeah, I'm.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: Never shocked anymore by the ways that people cheat on
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: each other, bibles, sexual perversions and proclivities, and I don't
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: have a good game anymore. Of what's shocking because I'll
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: sometimes I have dinner with friends and they'll say like, oh,
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: you know, what did you do today? And I'll start
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: describing like a case that I'm working on, and they'll go, oh,
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: my god, you know what, You're sleeping with her sister.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: You know. I'm like, oh, yeah, I guess that is weird. Yeah,
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: that's like for me, that's a Tuesday, but yeah, I
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: guess for normal people that would be a weird thing.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: It's sort of confirmation that there's a lot going on the.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: Variety of human experiences really, and also the private lives
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: of public people, like because sometimes I'll get to know
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: someone on paper before i've met them. I'm representing the wife,
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: so I haven't met the husband, and all I know
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: of him is what she's told me. I'll look at
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: their bank statements or I'll look at their credit card statements,
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: and I'll have this like, Wow, this person's like into
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: some kinky stuff and they're really you know, and then
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: you meet them and you're like, you look.
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: Like my accountant and you're really in defeat.
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: That's so weird, Like I had no idea, but it
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: teaches you that the private lives of people are sometimes
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: extremely different than their presentation. You know who they are.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: With two decades of experience navigating high conflict divorce, it
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: seems like every divorce is high conflict. What is high
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: conflict actually mean?
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: Well, so I got to push back on that and
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: say the following. It feels like every divorce is high
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: conflict because the divorces that you hear about are the
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: high conflict one. And the people that tend.
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: To talk about their divorce are people who've had really
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: ugly ones because it scarred them and it becomes a
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: part of their identity to some degree. And so you
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: hear a lot about ugly divorces. Like doing what I
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: do for a living. When people say, you know, oh,
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: what do you.
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: Do and I said a divorce or are, they go,
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: oh my god, you must have stories, And if I said, yeah,
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: like there was this couple and they met and they
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: were together, and then for a period of time they
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: grew apart, and so they divided their assets in a
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: fair way and now they're raising their kids separately while
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: living lot. You'd be like, that's the most boring story ever,
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: Whereas if I said, like, yeah, let me tip the
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: chainsaw on, he cut the car in half, Like you
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: want to hear that story. That's a true story about
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: the way I think that Because of that, there's this
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: perception that's what divorces look like. The overwhelming majority of
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: divorces are nothing like that, thankfully. They're really just identifying assets,
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: valuing assets, and coming up with creative ways to divide
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: those assets. And when you get into as I thankfully
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: have in recent years, the high net worth or ultra
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: high net worth space high networth being like anything over
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: ten million, ultra being over one hundred million of a
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: marital estate, then it's actually much more of like a
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: tricky accounting issue because a person's net worth at that level,
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: depending on what happens in the stock market, for example,
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: on a day to day basis, could fluctuate wildly. So
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: when you have to divide something, it's a very technical
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: thing to figure out how to divide certain assets and
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: when to value them for the purposes of divisions. So
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: you definitely find that doing what I do is always
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: something different, which is kind of what makes it exciting.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: I interviewed a conflict negotiator one time, and he said,
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: the presenting problem is never the real problem. He was like,
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: it's true for therapy for divorce, and in my experience.
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: Very much true in divorce. I think people what they
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: think they are worried about, what they think they want,
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: and what they actually want are very often different. Thankfully,
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: I have been doing it long enough that I have
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: a little bit of a Rosetta stone. So like when
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: someone comes in, usually a father or husband comes in
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: and says, I want fifty to fifty custody. I know
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: what they need. Well, first of all, like no sane
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: person would ever say, like I've only had forty seven
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: percent of my time with the kids, like I need
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: another three percent, Billy, grab your baseball glove, you know.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: Like it's not normal. That's not a normal people would
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: analyze their time with their child. What that person really
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: means is I don't want to be a second class parent.
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: And sometimes it's fed by their own experience, Like maybe
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: they came from a divorced household and they saw their
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: dad every other weekend and once a week for dinner,
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: and he was like a playmate, not a real parent,
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: and they don't want that. Like they're saying, I want
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: to do the heavy lifting of parenting. I want to
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: do the hard part and I want to do the
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: fun part. And I don't want to just be like
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: a play to my kids. I want to be a parent.
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: I want to help make decisions. I don't want to
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: be cut out of important decisions. That is a very
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: worthy sentiment, But when you say I want fifty to fifty,
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: that's what you're expressing. Another example that happens a lot
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: in divorce is people will come in and say I
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: want to keep the house, I want to keep the
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: kids in the house, And a lot of times what
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: they're saying is I'm really worried about my kids, and
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: I would like them to not notice that we're getting divorced.
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: It's hard to have to say it, but it's part
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: of my job to say to them, your kids are
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: going to notice that you're getting divorced. And actually, there's
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: a school of thought that would say that the more
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: you try to minimize their experience of it, the more
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: you're going to probably make it more difficult and protracted
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: for them.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: How about when people come in and they're fighting over
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: find china or things that.
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: Toaster of them by had a case where it was
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: about a ten million dollars marital estate and the settlement
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: negotiations broke down over a forty eight dollars toaster oven.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: Clearly, they're not fighting over a toaster of it, Like,
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: how do you determine what is worth fighting for your
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: client and what you have to level with them and say.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: Listen, great question. This is why my job is to
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: be very dispassionate and emotionally detached from what's going on.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: Which is not to say that I'm not emotionally invested
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: in being successful for my clients and helping them achieve
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: their goals. But I'm not emotionally invested in the case
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: in the sense that I can see it clearly. You know,
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: thank god, neither of my kids when they were little.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: They're adults now, but when they were little, neither of
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: them was ever like very ill. But if one of
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: them had been very ill and the doctor came in
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: and went, oh my god, your kid is so sick,
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: I don't want that doctor like I want the doctor
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: to come in and go, Okay, here's what this is.
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: I've seen it before. Here's the best case scenario. Here's
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: the worst case scenario. Here's how we're going to address it.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: This is plan A, this is Plan B, this is
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: planned safe. Like, because I'm emotional, so I need you
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: to not be emotional. I need you to understand my emotionalism.
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: But I need you to be like clear with me
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: and confident with me and not afraid to tell me truth,
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: tell me what I need to hear, not what I
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: want to hear. And that's what I really try to
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: be with clients, and that's what they really need for me.
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: Sometimes they're so mad because I'm telling them stuff they
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: don't want to hear, because sometimes they're so mad at
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: their spouse and they're so mad at the situation that
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: I'll even say to them, like, you're gonna spend ten
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: thousand dollars in legal fees fighting over a five thousand
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: dollars motorcycle, Like that's stupid. And they'll say, I don't care,
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: it's the principle of it. And I'll say, right, but
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: you're gonna pay me ten thousand dollars arguing over a
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: five thousand dollar And they'll say, I don't care. I
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: like you more than her. I'd rather pay you ten
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: thousand dollars could screw her. And what I learned early
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: in my career because when I was a young lawyer,
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: I didn't have the confidence to push back, and I'd say, okay, like,
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: if you want me to do this, I'll do it,
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: you know.
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: And then six months later they call me and go,
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: why did you let me do that?
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: And I'll go, what did I let you do? I
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: told you not to do it and you said you
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: didn't care, and they're like, right, but I wasn't thinking
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: clearly you were. So I learned that sometimes what they
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: need from me again, keeping some of my clients or celebrities,
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: they're athletes, they're Wall Street geniuses who understand money in
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: a way that I never will and that most human
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: beings never will. And they're not used to someone telling them, yeah, no,
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: like that's ridiculous and right now what you're being is
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: impulsive and you're not thinking this through, and they're not
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: used to being spoken to that way. But most of
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: the time they appreciate it. If not in the moment
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: when it's done, they appreciate it because they're like, all right,
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: you kept your eye on the ball.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: I have an unsavory question.
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: I love that which most questions are entirely too savories.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: It's true, especially, it really is.
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: I pulled a bunch of people before our interview, some
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: I know well, some I don't know well, some who
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: have been divorced, some who are married, and I said,
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: what would you be most interested in knowing from a
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: divorce attorney? And most of them had questions that I've
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: heard you answer before, But there was one that stuck
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: out to me, which is this person is married and
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: is a year in I would say, and having some
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: issues in their marriage. And they said, should I ever
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: want to get divorced in five years, in ten years?
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: What should I be thinking about now? Is there any
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: information I should be collecting?
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: So, you know, I think that's a question that's probably
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: crossed everyone's mind at some point. Who's married, Right, It's like,
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: is there why if things fell apart? You know? And
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: with the divorcory of being fifty six percent, it's probably
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: not a dumb question, right. Fifty six is the current
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: statistic that's a little misleading because it includes people who've
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: been married more than once, and the statistics show that
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: you get worse at it as you.
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: Go on, even for first marriages. It's just over fifty percent.
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: So I mean, just think about that failure, right, and
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: then add to it the fact that like, let's be
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: like generous ten percent stay together unhappy for the kids
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: or because they don't want to give up path their stuff.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: I think you can make the argument it's probably like
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: twenty thirty percent. But then you've basically got a technology
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: fails like sixty seventy percent of the time. It's fully crazy.
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: Like if I said to you there's a fifty percent
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: chance when you walk out the front door getting a
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: hit in the head with a bowling ball, you'd be like, all,
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: I'll stay inside, or I'll wear a helmet when I
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: go outside, like you wouldn't just like do do do
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: you walk outside? And people yet just get married like
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: you know, it's nothing. So the answer I would give
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: to that person is the following. Most people when they
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: get married have absolutely no idea what they just did legally,
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: none whatsoever. I can tell you with a high degree
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: of certainty that most people the first time they learn
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: legally what happened to their rights and obligations when they
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: got married is when they walk into a divorce lawyer's office.
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: And that is the worst possible time to look. That's
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: like saying I'm going to learn how to fight the
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: next time I'm in a fight. That's actually the worst
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: possible time to try to learn how to fight, even
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: like a few minutes before would have been better. Yeah, right,
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: but ideally as far an advance as possible. Like I
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: genuinely believe if you wanted to damage my business smad
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: model and that of my colleagues, you would create barriers
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: to entry for marriage, like you would like what like
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: a driver's license, Right, you have to take a written test,
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: then you have to pass it. Then you get a
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: learner's permit where you're allowed to learn how to drive
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: under very restrictive conditions, and then you take a road
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: test and then they'll let you drive in most states
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: for a couple of months. You have like a restricted
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: radius of where you can drive and what times you
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: can drive.
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, married, fifty bucks. You pay a guy who's dresses
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: like Elvis in Vegas, and you're married.
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: That's it. You don't get a pamphlet.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: That's a great nothing.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: So I think if you made people take a class,
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: I don't know, maye people sit down with a divorced
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: lawyer for half an hour, so we can just explain
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: to you basic like give them a pamphlet, give them
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: a fighting chance.
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: I'm not kidding when I say you don't get a pamphlet.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: I have to be honest. I've never thought about it.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: I'm not married, and I'm like, I've never really thought
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: about the legal ramifications, aside from prenups, which I know
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: you discuss a lot.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, most people never think about it. They're just caught
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: up in the romance of it, the moment of it,
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: the bond of it, the sort of pheromones of the
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: whole thing. Which again I don't blame anybody. I've been
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: in love, Like, I get it. Man. Like the last
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: thing you're thinking about is, hey, we could potentially hurt
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: each other. And remember, like love and marriage are two
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: completely different things. You could make an argument that they
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: don't have a strong correlation with each other, like you.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: Could are hard though, because it's.
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: Hard to be married. Yes, it's hard to.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: You, but it's hard to be married if you don't
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: have the love the other one you can do. You
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: can be in love and not be married.
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: That's a fact, which is a pretty good argument for
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: not getting married. Right, because you're going to get all
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: the benefits of love without any of the risk that
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: comes with marriage. But eighty six percent of people who
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: get divorced are remarried within five years. That's the statistic
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: that blows my mind because the fail rate of marriages.
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: I kind of go, yeah, right, Like that's not you
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: know a lot of married people, but do you really
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: know a lot of really happily married people. That's a
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: question worth asking, Like I know a lot of married people,
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: but I only know a handful of like really happily
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: married people people that if you say to him right now, like,
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: would you choose again this person? Like if you could
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: hang out with anybody, is this the person you'd hang
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: out with. I know a couple of people that the
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: answer is like, oh yeah, it's my favorite person. And
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: some have been married twenty years and they're like, no,
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: it's still my favorite person, you know. And that to me,
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: like you won the liary, Like that's incredible, Like you
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: know how much better your life is because you found
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: that those people have a superpower because of that. So
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: to me, I'm like, dude, shoot the shot, like try
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: like give it a shot, because if that's the potential prize.
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: Go for it, go for it. But you know, remember
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: this is a legal status. It's the most legally significant
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: thing you're going to do in your life other than die.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: It's the most legally significant thing. And by the way,
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: every marriage ends, it ends in death or divorce. It's
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: like one of the only things in the world that
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: you go, I really hope this ends in death. But
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: what I will say is most people don't realize that
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: you are submitting yourself to a set of rules made
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: by the government. And that's a really weird thing. Like,
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: I don't know who the first person was who went like,
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: I love you, like I love being with you, I
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: love how you make me feel. Let's get the government what, Like,
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: where the hell did that come from? Like I understand
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: the feeling.
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: Of like I love you, I want this to be forever.
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: I want to feel like this one I'm with you forever,
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: Like I want to be here for you, I want
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: you here for me. Like who doesn't get that? That's amazing?
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: Who wouldn't want that? But then to go, let's get
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: the government involved. That's the craziest. Like I've been to
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: the DMV. Have you ever like walked into the DMV
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: and went like, oh, yeah, these people should be in
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: charge of everything. They have got it together here, like
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: they really know how to just do things efficiently and
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: in a way that makes sense. It leaves everybody feeling good. Like, no,
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: you walk in there and you just go like, oh
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: my god, it's the height of government bureaucracy. Why would
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: you say, like, these people or this type of person
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: should be in charge of the most significant decisions in
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: my relationship. That's insane.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: It's insane. And also some would say that the US
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: government incentivizes marriage and kind of punishes divorce. Do you
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: think they punished divorce?
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you could make that argument. I mean, I think
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: they definitely incentivize marriage without question, which is why there
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: was such a fight for marriage equality and lesbian couples
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: for many years are like, why don't we have these
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: estate protections, Why don't we have these tax benefits? Why
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: don't we have this access to medical care and medical
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: decision making for this person who I have a serious
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: relationship with. So, you know, marriage equality was an important fight.
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: It was always kind of funny to me because it
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: was like I live in a primarily gay neighborhood, you know,
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: I live in Chelsea, and I just remember, like, you know,
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: thinking like why would you guys want to sign on
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: for this, like this technology that most people hate and
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: fail at, like and we want it? Like if you
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: actually disliked gay and lesbian people, you'd be like, yeah,
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: we're gonna make you get married. We're gonna let you
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: have access to this awful technology. But people fought hard
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: to have it. And I think it's because there definitely
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: are some incentives legally for it. What some people perceive
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: as the punishments that come with getting divorced by the
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: government are really well intentioned, right, Like I mean, the
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: road to Hell is paved with good intentions, but they're
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: designed to protect you know, children, some of these things,
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: but again they're weaponized the wrong way. But part of
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: it is it's also a revenue raiser, feeding tickets. Like
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: police are expected to have a certain quota and they
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: have to get it, and it's a certain amount of
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: revenue that's anticipated to be generated from it. So it's
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: similar in the sense that there is a whole sort
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: of divorce in corporated out there. You know, there's a
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: whole industry. And my hands aren't clean, I mean, I've
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: made a very good living facilitating the demise of unhappy marriages,
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: and you provide of service. I don't make it rain,
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: I sell the umbrella. But the truth is, like, there
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: is an industry that's been built around the ending of marriages,
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: and you know, people when they're getting married, it's the
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: last thing they're thinking about, is that industry.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: You mentioned that you've seen cheating, You've seen.
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: Money, financial impropriety, sit There's.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: A lot of reasons and a lot of obvious reasons
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: why people get divorced, but social media is at the
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: center of a lot of divorces. Now. It's even sort
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: of weird to say out loud because it's like a
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: fake world, yet it's totally infiltrating people's real lives.
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: I think it's at the center of a lot of
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: the things that are going sideways in our world. You think, yeah,
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: I think it's at the center of our political discord
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: and the division that we all feel, whatever side you're on,
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: Like the feeling of how big that chasm between the
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: sides has become and how much lack of goodwill is
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: now there it used to be. You know, I don't
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: like this person's ideas and now it's I don't like
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: this person. Yeah, Like it used to be like this
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: person has bad ideas and I disagree with them, And
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: now it's this person's a bad person, and it's not
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: okay to just say, yeah, I don't agree with their ideas.
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: I think that they love this country, but I think
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: they have a different version of what would make this
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: country great than I have. Like that's gone, and I
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: think it's very much affected our view of our self
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: and of our partner, and of the partnerships around us,
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: and of the potential other people we could have had
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: relationships with and still potentially could have relationships with. Like
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: it has fundamentally changed so many aspects of the way
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: we perceive things, but starting with self, like how we
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: perceive ourself and our relative worth and our relative success
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: that it's now become untethered from objective reality. You know,
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: Comparison was always the thief of joy, But comparing your
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: relationship to other people's presentation of their relationship, you don't
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: stand a chance.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: Is that what you see in terms of when people
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: are breaking up via social media? It's the comparison game?
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: Or is it ye? Cheating media and.
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: How dishonest people's presentation of their relationships are because I
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: have clients who are in my office actively negotiating a
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: separation agreement or in the middle of a private arbitration
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: of a heavily contested divorce, and they're still posting on
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: social media like.
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: Happy anniversary of the best hubs ever hashtag.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: Blessed, and I'm like, you were in my office earlier
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: today because you're.
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: Cheating on him, and there's like you know all the time.
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: I've had celebrity clients who remain nameless, who I've seen
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: interviews with them when they're getting married and they're like, oh, yeah,
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: we don't have a prenup, Like I don't believe in that.
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: I mean, well, I'm like, yes, you do. It's in
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: my safe, like you guys signed it at my conference
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: room table. But you know, because it's not published anywhere,
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: it's a confidential document. It's not filed anywhere unless there's
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: a divorce down the road, people get away with saying
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: these falsehoods, you know, in a very public way, and
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: it shifts our perception of our relative relationship to other
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: people's relationship in a really significant way.
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: That's really interesting. Do you think it's true? That the
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: more people post, the less happy they are.
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's been my observation, like it really is
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: is a.
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: Very quick progression from endlessly posting about the relationship to
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden the person is conspicuously absent. At
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: every trace of them has been eliminated, you know, and
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: you kind of look at it and go like, oh, well,
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: that'd escalated quickly, Like they're just erased from this person's timeline.
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: You know. I see that a lot. What I see
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: more than anything in terms of social media is how
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: I think it's changed people's perception of the relative success
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: of their own relationship. Because you're looking at someone else's
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: greatest hits while you're living your gag reel. You don't
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: look at We're having a really interesting conversation right now.
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: We're engaged with each other, so neither of us is
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: looking at our phone. So like anytime you're having like
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: a heightened experience, you're having a one wonderful meal, you're
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: having an interesting conversation, you're having good sex, whatever it
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: is you're doing. You're not on your phone, Like why
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: are you on your phone? You're on your phone when
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: you're like sitting on the subway and your board, you're
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: on the toilet. It's not your best moment. It's like
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: a moment where you're a little vulnerable, you're not feeling
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: great about yourself. Maybe you're in transition between activities and
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: what are you looking at? You're looking at the moments
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: that someone has decided are like, look at me, Look
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: at how good I look, Look at how cool. What
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: I'm doing is think about what that does to somebody
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: that when you're at your low, you're looking at people's
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: curated high. And by the way, it's not even a
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: real high. It's like a curated bullshit high. Like they're
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: not actually flying private they just went up to that
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: you know, set or whatever. Or they're not even in
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: first class. They just took a picture in first class
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: and went back to economy. It filters, you know, they
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: make them look the way that they look. You don't
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: see the parts of their vacation where the kid got
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: sunburned and everyone was unhappy. You just see like the
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: smiling picture where everyone's you know, blissful, like that kind
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: of discord, that kind of unhappiness with what you have.
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: Think of how it used to be, Like maybe at
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: church you'd see what someone else was wearing. You know,
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: what watch they had, or what car they drove, or
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: maybe you'd see your immediate neighbors like what they had.
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: But how much did you really have opportunity to compare
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: yourself to people now? Like you've the opportunity all day
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: to look at like just incredible versions of people.
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: Again, three quarters of which is absolute bullshit.
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: Does AI make it worse in your opinion?
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: I think so, because again we're further untethered from objective reality.
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: We're just becoming untethered from anything real.
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: Do you see a shift in the way people are
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: viewing marriage? And just for context, I live in Los Angeles,
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: so I'm aware that coastal areas, particularly Los Angeles, I
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: think socially things happen there first, sometimes before they spread
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: other places.
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: And it's always been a place where I kind of
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: class tend to gather and.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: I see a lot of people and hear a lot
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: of people talking about ethical non monogamy. Yeah, and people
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: who are wanting I think the want for a life
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: partner is still there, Like someone wants someone they can
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: count on, especially if they want children, They want to
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: raise children with somebody, maybe even live under one roof sure,
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: but I don't know that they want to sleep with
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: that person all the time. And people are starting only
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: that person right, and they're starting to question what are
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: the alternatives? Do you hear that or see that? Or
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: is that just a lot of angelus?
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: So I'll say a couple of things. One is, I
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: do think that some of the technological innovation that we've
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: been talking about is a function and has also created
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: a second order effect of people asking interesting questions why
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: do we do it that way? Like Uber came about
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: from someone being like the why are taxis the only
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: cars allowed to drive people around? Like I have a car,
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna drive people around. Why can't I just like
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: share my car with somebody else and they pay me?
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: And that's a really great question, Like, Yo, how do
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: you not think of that? I like that this generation
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: and seems to be asking a lot of like, yeah,
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: why do we do it that way? You know? Like
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: it's actually why I like having young lawyers around my
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: office and I hire interns every summer and I hire
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: from the intern pool when people graduate law school because
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: I like having young people around me because they kind
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: of go, yeah, why do you do it that? Way,
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: and if the answer is that's how the person who
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: taught me did it, it's like, okay, but why was
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: that the right way to do it?
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: You know?
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: Like tradition in some ways is you know, the wisdom
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: of people who were here before us, And tradition is
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: also peer pressure exerted by dead people. You might sometimes
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: want to say, like, oh, yeah, why did you do
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: it that way? Because grandma did it that way. Well,
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: grandma didn't have a smartphone. Like grandma didn't have every
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: single song that's ever been written accessible in her hand
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: at all times, so the way she listened to music
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: may not be instructive of how we should do it,
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: you know.
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: So I think it's good to ask questions.
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: What I will say is there are some things that
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: I really wonder if there is a different way that
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: it could be done. I'm the wrong guy to ask
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: about ethical non monogamy or polyamory because I'm a divorce lawyer.
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: So all I see are where that ended in a
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: car crash of a divorce. Right, so I only get
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: to meet people who that was the hail Mary pass
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: of maybe we can stay together, you know, And so
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: I see a lot of people where they tried that
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: and it didn't work out and it ended in divorce.
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: But that's like, you know, talking to someone who's an
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: oncologist and they're like, oh my god, everybody has cancer,
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: Like everyone I met today has cancer. It's like, right,
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: you're an oncologist, Like that's pretty normal. Like if you
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: were a cab driver, most of the people you met
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: wouldn't have had cancer. Like it's okay, Like it's not
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: like everyone has it. So I am sure there are
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: people who are, you know, exploring other permutations of relationship,
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: including ethically non monogamous versions of it, or even unethically
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: non monogamous ways of doing it, the latter being very
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: popular for a very long time, unethical non monogamy, And
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: maybe they're they're successful at it and they're just not
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: ending up in my office. I haven't met those people,
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: But do I think it could potentially be possible. Yeah,
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: of course. I mean I think there's lots of ways
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: to do relationships. I think Freud and civilization and it's
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: discontents and a lot of the people that talk about
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: like how do you have a civilized society? A lot
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: of it is we have to suppress our drives, like
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: to sleep with lots of people. We'd like to kill
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: people or beat people up who don't do what we
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: want them to or who make us angry, and as
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: a civilization, we have to come to some rules of no,
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: we're not going to do that, you know. This is
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: how we're going to organize ourselves in a way that
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: restores order or maintains order. I think monogamy is one
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: of those things that we were like, oh, no one
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: at a time, you know, But I think we can
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: all agree, like I'm not spoiling the plot. We're bad
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: at it. We've been bad at in a really long time.
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: Like I think infidelity was probably invented like twenty four
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: hours after monogamy, Like monogamy was invented, and then the
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: next day somebody was like, hey, wait a minute, you know,
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: and went in the other direction with it. Because I
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: think a lot about the history of male and female
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: interaction and what is the purpose of it, what's the
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: point of it? Where are we good at it, where
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: are we bad at it? What need in us is it?
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: Like I think it's funny that it's strange to ask
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: the question if somebody says I'm getting married, that it
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: would be rude of me to go, oh, really, why.
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: Why are you right? That would be rude.
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: It would be rude.
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: That's a great point, is that rude?
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: Like if you said to me, Jim, I was starting
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: a podcast and I went, really, why? Yeah, like that's fair, Like, well,
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: you know, I love talking to people and I think
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: I have an interesting point of.
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: View, like and you have great answers like funny. But
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: if someone had asked you.
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: That question, you wouldn't have been like, how dare you? Well?
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: You know, if I said I'm quitting my job, you
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: go why? And I don't like it anymore. I found
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: something else i'd rather do. If someone said.
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: To you, I'm never getting married, you would say.
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: Why, Well, divorce rates above fifty percent and I think
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: it's very hazardous, and you know, I don't think i'd
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: be good at it or whatever.
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: But if somebody says I'm getting married and you go, oh, really, why,
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: they would look at.
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: You like you're being very rude. And I don't understand
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: why that's a rude question, because there are to me,
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: very logical answers to that question, like oh, it's really
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: important to my parents, or I'm of a religion where
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: you know, you can't have sex with someone unless you
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: marry them, and so I want God's stand up approval
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: because I'd really like to have sex with this person.
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: Very fair. I'd like the tax benefits to come with marriage.
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: Very fair. That's very reasonable answer. But if you said,
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: like I don't want to be lonely, getting married is
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: not necessarily going to solve that problem, Like you might,
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: in fact actually be signing up for a very uniquely
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: awful kind of loneliness, because if you've ever been sitting
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: on a couch next to someone and felt really lonely,
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: that's like a uniquely awful kind of lonely. Yeah, So
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: I just think it's interesting we don't even get to
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: asked the question.
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: Do you think that's the question people should be asking
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: before they approach marriage.
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: I think the question you should ask is what is
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: the problem to which marriage is a solution, and then
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: maybe ask the question do I have that problem?
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: I don't know that's why people get married, though, And
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: so it's like, oh, then just no one should get married.
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: No, I don't know that's true.
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: Like what would be a problem. Trying to think how
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: I would answer that, Like, well.
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: I mean sometimes it's a very practical one, which is
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: that there's a religious under right. Sometimes it's a familial one,
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: like oh, it's really important to my parents that I
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: get married.
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: And by the way, like I sometimes that's okay.
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: It's okay to do things to placate your family. And
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: in a happy relationship, I don't think getting married is
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: going to buy action make it worse. Like I think
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: a happy relationship, you get married, you're probably still happy.
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: In unhappy relationship, you get married, you're probably still going
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: to be unhappy. I think there's a lot of people
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: that think that getting married is going to add some
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: magic or value or connection or security or closeness or
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: guarantees that.
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: It thinks to guarantees I think maybe more for women.
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: But tell me if you think it's for men to
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: people think if I have this piece of paper because
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: it is so difficult to get divorced and so costly
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: to get divorced, that we will fight through whatever issue
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: that we wouldn't fight through otherwise.
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: I think that's a very human and understandable way to feel.
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: And I think you're right, But I think it's part
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: of a very core and to me, beautiful but really flawed.
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: Part of being human is that we want to have
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: control over things we don't have control over. It's the
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: same thing as when I'm on a plane and turbulence
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: hits and I hold the seat like that's going to
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: hold the plane together somehow, or if the plane suddenly
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: falls out of the sky, the fact that I'm holding
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: the thing's going to help. It's not like I have
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: no control over what's happening in that situation, and it's
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: very scary. It's like when someone says, Oh, I have
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: this family member and they have terminal lung cancer and
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: part of you wants to go or were they a smoker?
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: And it's not that you're trying to say they deserve
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: to take at cancer, but you're like, oh, my god,
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: Like I hope that doesn't happen to me or to
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: someone I love, Like, please tell me they were doing
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: something that I'm not doing and my mom and dad
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: aren't doing, so then they're safe. And I think that's
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: so beautifully human, Like to want to feel safe in
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: a world that feels really unsafe, and to want to
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: feel alone in a world where we feel really alone
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: sometimes Yeah, And I think that's what it is. I
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: think it's like I love you and I feel so
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: connected to you, and I want this to last forever,
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: So like what can I strap on to it that's
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: going to make it feel like this forever? And I
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: think that's like a very beautiful and human sentiment. But
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: it's also ridiculous because we're not going to feel this
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: way forever. We're not going to be this forever. We're
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: not even going to be here forever, Like we're going
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: to lose each other for sure. Love is not permanently gifted.
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: It's loaned in every permutation. Like everything you love, you'll lose.
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: That's the nature of love. And I don't say that
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: to be a pessimist. To me, that is a wake
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: up call. That is a like, oh my god, Like
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: there is a finite number of sunsets I'm good to.
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: See, right It's like the urgency of life.
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: Right like, and the beauty of it is the impermanence
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: of it. Like I wouldn't want to live forever.
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: I like the fact that the clock is ticking on
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: this and that there's only so many permutations of things
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: I'm going to get to do, and like that's what
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: makes it beautiful, is the impermanence to some degree. So
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: I think marriage is like a seat belt. It makes
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: people feel really safe, but there are a lot of
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: accidents that are still going to happen, and the seat
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: belt won't save you necessarily. I agree that, like barriers
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: to exit, sometimes might make a person think twice, but
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: does it really you know, I remember reading an interview
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: with Russell Brand where he was talking about when he
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: was a heroin addict when he was younger, and he said,
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: you know, he was rallying against at the time, like
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: the criminalization of addiction. And he was saying, you know,
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: in all the time that I was a junkie, not
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: once did I ever think like, oh I really want
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: some heroin. Oh wait, it's illegal. I shouldn't. The illegality
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: of it never crossed my mind. People aren't evil. They
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: don't do evil things because they're evil. They mistake it
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: for happiness. Like nobody ever gets up in the morning
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: and goes, today, I am going to screw up my
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: marriage and start an affair. They just make increasingly bad,
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: small choices that lead them down a path and then
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: they're like, okay, I've made this choice now and I've
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: screwed up things, and I might as well just keep going.
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: And so I think that marriage is something that gives
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: us a false sense of security in our relationships sometimes
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: and in that sense, it may actually be bad for
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: preserving the bond of our relationship.
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: I read that seventy percent of divorce is initiated by web.
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: That is true, seventy three percent.
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: Actually, I think that statistic would shock a lot of people.
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: It would, but it's also widely misinterpreted and also very
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: unfairly weaponized.
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: Okay, so it's weaponized by some people I really like.
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: Actually, you know, I think there is a crisis in
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: mass ulinity and a crisis happening for men right now
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: and particularly boys, certainly for men in their role in society.
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: And because of that, there's all of these you know,
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: what's called red pill space, and there's you know, like
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: a men's movement, and it can be a healthy version
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: of it, or it can be like a somewhat toxic
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: version of itut it. So I think that some men
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: on the furthest extremes of the men's movement use that
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: statistic unfairly to create the false impression that the majority
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: of women who marry treat it like they went to
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: the casino and they stocked up, and then once they
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: were winning, they cash their chips out. So they marry
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: a guy, they have kids with him, they create a
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: child support obligation, they watch him rise in success, and
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: then they cash out and they get rid of the guy.
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: But they get like the husband dolla carte because the
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: guy still has to pay for the kids, He still
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: has to pay alimony, he still has to pay her bills,
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: but she no longer has to be with.
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: Him anymore and she can go off with a different
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: guy and be happy.
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: That is so not how I interpreted.
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: It's how it's been weaponized. Look to a person with
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: So to a person who's trying to be convinced that
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: men suck, you can find evidence of men sucking. You
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: think women suck, you can find evidence of women's Like
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: I see this all the time.
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I even see it when I speak.
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: Like people take one out of context thing I said
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: about men and they use it to show how much
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: men suck, or they take something I said about women
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: out of contact and say this is proof of how
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: much women suck. And the truth is I'm actually presenting
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: a very balanced view where yeah, we both suck sometimes
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: and we're both heroic sometimes. The reality is that, of course,
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: are there some women who weaponize the divorced system and
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: process to maximize the return that they get financially at
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: the end of a marriage. Of course, yeah, we've seen it.
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: It happens all the time. There are people who openly
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: admit like, oh, yeah, I got child support from three
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: different guys and it's a very lucrative career. I've had
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: kids with three different people, and people are very open
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: about that. Again, I think that's the menari and most
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: people you know, I think are just trying to survive.
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: But part of the reason why women are in the
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: position of commencing divorce actions. In my experience, I would
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: venture to say that men ghost more than women do.
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: Like men don't like the confrontation. Men very often are
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: conflicted verse and just bail. Like I've seen a lot
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: of men go out for milk and never come back.
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: When you say bail, you mean like just leave the marriage,
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: Like they just leave, like they just abruptly said.
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: Move to another state.
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: No, they might just move out. They just go yeah,
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: like this.
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: Is over and then the woman has to actually legally
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: initiate the divorce, because.
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: What she'll say is she'll say, to me, he left, Yeah,
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: I didn't want the marriage to end. He apparently does.
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: He got an apartment, but he's not paying the mortgage,
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: and he's not paying my car loan, and he's not
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: paying you know, the electric bill, and don't have the
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: funds to do that. I'm have access to these bank accounts,
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: or I don't have the earnings that he has, or
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: I earn one tenth of what he does.
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: And he always paid the mortgage.
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: So when I say to him, like, hey, you know,
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: you got to keep paying the mortgage, He's like, well,
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: I don't live there anymore, and I have to pay
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: my apartment now. So I'll say, okay, well we've got
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: to file a divorce action. They're like, wait, I don't
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: want to file a divorce action. He's the one who
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: wants the divorce. Let him file a divorce action. I'm like, right,
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: but you want a judge to issue in order that
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: he has to maintain the financial status quo and continue
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: to pay the bills. I can't get a judge to
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: issue and order until I commence an action I can't
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: commence an action with him as the plaintiff.
• 50:28
  Speaker 3: I have to commence an action on your behalf.
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: So that's where I have found in my experience, it's
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: much more common for women to have to take that step.
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: I would have never thought of that.
• 50:38
  Speaker 3: So how did you interpret that statistic?
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: Then I interpret it. I sound silly saying this because
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: it's definitely not from a legal standpoint, but I think
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: a lot of times when women are in relationships that
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: are not working, we grieve the relationship long before we
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: actually exit it. And I've found that men have immense
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: guilt leaving their family and they'd rather sort of stay
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: in something bad than do something about it. And staying
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: in something bad means either cheating or trying to not
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: be around or whatever that is.
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I call it going without or going elsewhere, and
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: men are more prone to that.
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, what I will tell you that's insightful and it
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: does match up with my experience, So I think you're
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: onto something there. Again, there'd be no way to like
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: empirically prove it, but I think it makes sense to
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: me and it matches with my experience.
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: No, it's good that, as dumb as I thought.
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: No, definitely, not definitely, not No, I need you to
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: have some interesting perspective on it. I mean, even by
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: virtue of the fact that, like we have different experiences
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: as a function of our gender, you know, in relationship.
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: I think that that is useful, you know, it's useful
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: for us to have dialogues about these things. I have
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: actually found in terms of my observation of cheating is
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: men sometimes are actually shocked when they get caught cheating,
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: how upset their partner is or their wife is.
• 51:55
  Speaker 3: Because they're like, it had nothing to do with her.
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: I love her, Like.
• 51:58
  Speaker 3: She's still beautiful, I still love with her. I still
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: love her.
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: And you're like, right, but then why are you sleeping
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: to the other person. They're like, well, because they're like
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: really attractive and they were there. Like it's sort of
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: like why'd you eat the cake because the cake was there.
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: You're like, right, but you know you weren't supposed to
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: eat it. I know, but it was there, Like it
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: looks so good, I just ate it, you know. Whereas
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: women who also cheat. Breaking news women very often cheat
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: and it's like either a soft place to land. It's
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: like they're okay, this is going to be where I'm
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: going to go next, or it's like a way that
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: they show themselves, Oh yeah, this relationship's really over. Yes,
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: Like I've very rarely in a twenty five year career,
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: I've met so many men that leave the wife for
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: the mistress because they're convinced that they met their soulmate.
• 52:39
  Speaker 3: And I've had a lot of guys who cheat and
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: are just like oh yeah, like.
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: It didn't mean anything to me. Women, I very rarely
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: have it it's like, oh yeah, I didn't mean anything
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: to me. Like it usually is like, yeah, this is
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: what I had to do to figure out that this
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: is over, And the experience of having this affair is
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: what showed me. That's how severed I am from this
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: person that I was capable of cheating on them.
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: So I think it reveals different.
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: Things to the person. Yeah. Yeah, that's why it's sort
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: of you know, famous, and I think correct platitude is
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: that when a woman cheats and gets caught, the first
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: question the man asks is did you sleep with him?
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: And when a man cheats and gets caught, the first
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: question a woman asks is do you love her? Because
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: I think we know something which is guys, sometimes it
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: just didn't mean anything like, and sometimes it does.
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: Sometimes it's like, oh, I think I met my person.
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: With women, it's like a very like possessory thing of
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: like wait, no, like that your mind and somebody is
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: now sullied that. And men are in my experience, much
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: more unforgiving of infidelity. When a wife gets caught cheating,
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: the chances of the guy ever taken her back is
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: very limited.
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: I have a friend who's a comedian who I talked
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: about this with, and he said that if the man
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: takes the woman back after cheating, he actually will never
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: forgive her. In his experience, he feels like, say it
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: happens in January, he was like, he'll be fine, and
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: then one day in November of the next year he'll
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: cheat and totally rationalize or start to be mean or
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: start to like take it out on her.
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I've found that to be true because I do
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: have a lot of people that I represent where there
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: was infidelity and then the couple came back from the infidelity,
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: and then down the road something else is the thing
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: that ends at, whether it's more infidelity or whether it's
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: some other issue. So you get to kind of understand
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: the whole history of the marriage. And I see a
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: lot of people that had, you know, like infidelity, whether
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: it was just a dalliance or whether it was a
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: long term affair, and then they come back from it
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: and they have a period like a renaissance in their marriage,
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: and then sometimes it still ultimately breaks up for different
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: reasons or for the same kinds of reasons. Like the
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: forgiving is in the forgetting to some degree, if you
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: say you forgive someone, but you're like carrying it around
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: like you got that in the chamber now, and it's like, Okay,
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: that's gonna be my like get out a healthree card.
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's the better way of saying that.
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Or even the feeling of like I'm going to
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: really punish you now now by just like making you
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: wallow in your own guilt for a bunch of years,
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: I'm going to forgive you, and that's going to make
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: you feel even worse you did. And doing this twenty
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: five years, I'm still sometimes astounded by the ways people
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: can hurt each other and punish each other and hurt
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: themselves and you know, punish themselves.
• 55:19
  Speaker 3: It's really shocking to me still sometimes.
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: So you represent the wealthy and ultra wealthy. I've heard
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: so many sort of platitudes about love and money. One
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: of the famous ones is if you marry for money,
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: you pay for it the rest of your life. In
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: your experience, how does money change marriage?
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: I think it works on a couple of different levels.
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: So one, I think financial stress is very hard on
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: a marriage. So economic instability and struggling with money is
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: really hard on a marriage because it's hard on a person,
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: and you know not to gender it too much, but
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: it's really hard on men. When a man feels like
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: he can't provide for his family, there's a tremendous anger
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: that comes out of that person and a tremendous resentment.
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: And sometimes that doesn't find a target. It just sprays
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: in every direction, and it manifests in substance, us issues
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: and other kinds of things that really are toxic to
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: a coupling and to a family. So lack of money
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: financial instability can have a really profoundly negative effect on people. Similarly,
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: getting everything you want is sometimes the worst thing that
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: can ever happen to a person because there's really only
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: two amounts of money enough and not enough. Period.
• 56:29
  Speaker 3: That's interesting and representing billionaires.
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: I can tell you if one hundred million dollars isn't
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: enough money, no amount of money is going to be
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: enough money. You know, money offers you real solutions to
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: imaginary problems and imaginary solutions to real problems. Like if
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: you're lonely, money's not going to solve the problem of
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: your loneliness, Like that's a real problem. Money will offer
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: you an imaginary solution to that problem. You can go
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: to the club and everybody will hang out with you
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: for the night because you're paying for bottle service. That's
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: not an actual solution to the problem of lofe loneliness,
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: Like it's an imaginary solution to the problem of loneliness.
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: And the real problems that money solves are not real,
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: Like I can't afford this particular brand of handbag, You'll
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: get that handbag and it's just eventually another handbag. It's
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: never enough handbags, Like there's never an I've divided a
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: lot of burkins, like there's not. You really, I actually
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: keep a tally of who's the most burkins I've ever
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: had a client, And I have a client whose wife
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: accumulated thirty seven burkins. That's the winner right now? She
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: had them in like every color, every material. She had
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: like the alligator ones, she had the snake ones. I
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: think she had color lines that they only do in
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: certain parts of Europe, and they were miserable. He had
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: a wine collection that was worth like ten million dollars.
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: And these are distractions people create to sort of distract
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: their attention from the inevitability of their own demise and yeah,
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: unhappiness and disconnection they have, Like you could be miserable,
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: and I've learned very quickly doing what I do that
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: you can be miserable in the penthouse and you could
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: be really happy in a crappy studio apartment. You know, it's
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: really more about the person you're there with and how
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: connected you are to yourself into them.
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: What do you think you understand about marriage that most
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: other people don't.
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: I guess that it's fragile. I think I understand how
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: fragile it is in a way that other people don't
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: want to acknowledge that it really requires that you pay
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: attention in a way that people have a hard time
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: doing a because it's uncomfortable, and b because there's so
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: many things to distract you from it. And I think
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: one of the things people find false comfort in when
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: they get married is like, Okay, I'm married. That's done. Now,
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: I don't have to worry about that anymore. They're doing
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: themselves a tremendous disservice because part of what made you
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: fall in love is that you were interested and you
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: were interesting, you know, like you were interested in this
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: person and they were interested in you.
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: And you on the back of the card game.
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you felt interesting because you don't just fall
• 58:52
  Speaker 2: in love with the person. You fall in love with
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: who you are when you are with them, and the
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: parts of you that they bring out and shine a
• 58:59
  Speaker 2: light on parts of you that maybe you don't love
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: that they make you see differently. I know. Sometimes like
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: the most lovely thing about love is when you're so
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: self conscious about something about yourself and the person's like that,
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: like I love that about you, like, and you're like really,
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: like I hate that about me, and they're like, oh
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: my god, I love that about you. There's something so
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: lovely about feeling seen and loved like that. But I
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: think one of the things that really makes marriage so
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: fragile is that people just stop seeing each other. That's
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: so strange to me that you stop seeing this thing
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: because it's right in front of you. Like if somebody said, like, yeah,
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: I don't see that thing anymore, why because it's right there.
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: It's there all the time. It's like, well, that's.
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: Why you should see it all the time, because it's
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: right there, you know.
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: But that's why people just stop seeing it, like they
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: don't see this person. And it's so sad because it's
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: so easy to make someone feel seen. I often tell
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: my male friends because I've learned a lot about this
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: by spending a lot of time with women and hearing
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: about what made them feel disconnected from their marriage. And
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: I always try to tell my like happily married male friends,
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: just remember to make her feel seen.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 3: It takes nothing. It takes this much, Like.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: Just leave a note in the morning I married the
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: prettiest girl. That's a what does that take ten seconds?
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: Like ten seconds to write that note?
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 3: Would you ever not want to get that note? Would
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 3: that note ever not warm you?
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: Would that note ever not make you feel love? Like
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: that's so love? Like the text message that you send
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: that says, oh, you know, I'm in Starbucks and that
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: song came on made me think of you. At the
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: risk of being prone to superlatives like that is to
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: a woman what nudes are to a man, like, Hey,
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: I'm thinking of you, and you're with me even when
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: you're not with me, like I see you, even when
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: you're not in front of me, I see you, but
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: especially when you're in front of me, I see you. Like.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: There's something so human and understandable about wanting to feel that,
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: And there's also something so human and understandable about forgetting
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: how important that is. If I'm an evangelist for anything,
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: it's kind of to remind me people that, like, you know,
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: love is not permanently gifted, it's loaned. I just think
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: you have to be mindful and present, and that's really
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: hard to remember to be. So that's the long answer
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: to the question that I think marriage is really fragile,
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: but I don't think it has to be so hard,
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: Like I think that the fundamental fragile nature of it
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: is tied to the simplicity of that connection.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: Do you think you can have second marriage energy in
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: your first marriage?
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: You know? I think yeah, because I think second marriage
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: energy is you know what you don't want because you've
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: watched it go wrong, and maybe you're a little quicker
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: to tell the person something they might not want to
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: hear and disappoint them a little, so you don't disappoint
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: them a lot in the long term. Like I think
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: something divorced people learn is it's better to like live
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: an uncomfortable truth than a comfortable lie. And so they
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: learn that, Like, you know, I held my tongue in
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: and it doesn't go and right, it didn't say anything,
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 2: and then we got really lost, Whereas if I had said, like, hey,
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: I think we might be a little lost, we might
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: have stopped the car and been like, Okay, where did
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: we lose the plot? And let's go back to there
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: and figure it out. And I think once you've learned
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: that lesson, and again, it doesn't have to be marriage.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: It can be through a breakup. I'd like to think
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: that with every relationship, I get better at relationship. I
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: think we break in relationship and we heal in relationship.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: And I'd like to think that each one is a
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: lesson and a chapter and a long book, until eventually
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: you have the last one and hopefully that's the one
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: that you were best at.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: I have more divorce questions for you, but I've watched
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: so many of your interviews, and everyone asked about divorce
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: because it's fascinating. But I don't ever really see people
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: talk about you. You're covered in tattoos.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: I am really covered ted, like my whole back, my
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: whole I'm tattooed. My whole thing's tattooed. Basically. Really, I'm
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: like one big tattoo.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: Okay, so covered in tattoos. You listen to heavy metal
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: growing up.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: I also listened to show tunes growing up, so I
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: also know the entire of Oklahoma. So I'm the old
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: person that knows all the lyrics to the album by
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: Slayer Rain and Blood and also knows all the lyrics
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: to Surry with their friend John Top from Oklahoma.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: It's unique. But there's something I notice in your conversations,
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: which is there will be a moment where your eyes
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: well up a little bit and you hold back the tears.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah I do.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, But it's when you talk about love or talk
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: about being seen. What is that for you? I don't
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: want to start to go there.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: It's a really interesting question. It's a question about me.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: It happens to me a lot when I talk about love.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: I am much more prone to crying about something beautiful
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 2: than I am about something sad. I am very capable
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: of being deeply sad about something and not crying about it.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: I'm not afraid to cry. I'm very comfortable crying, but
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: often find myself moved to tears. Like frequently I'm moved
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: to tears when I read something it's beautiful. When I
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: listen to some piece of music that's moving, Like my
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: natural reaction to that is that feeling of like a heightened,
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: overwhelmed feeling is like, yeah, my eyes well up, and
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: I think when I talk about love and connection and
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: being seen, yeah, it's still so moving to me. Just
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: how beautiful that is. It's so funny to me because
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: you know, years ago, when my first book came out
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: and I was first doing press, people really expected me
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: because I'm this like successful divorce trial lawyer who's described
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: as like the sociopathy winer side, and who's very capable
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: of being very intense in a courtroom and being weaponized
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: and cross examining the hell out of people and stuff
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: like that. That people really assumed that I was just
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 2: not a not emotional and be certainly not like moved
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: by romance or love.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 3: A lot of times people say like well, do you
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 3: still believe in love?
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 2: And I was like, like, that's showing me is the
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 2: craziest question. That's like, thing, do you still believe in gravity?
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 2: Like I don't have to believe in gravity. Gravity exists.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 3: Like I can say I don't believe in gravity.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to all up, Like, of course I
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: believe in love, like I feel love.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 3: I see love everywhere around me, and I see.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: It's the only thing that really matters, Like it's the
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: thing we're all looking for. It's because there's so much
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: pain in the world, like life is incredibly short and
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: brutish in some ways, and we're all gonna die, and
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: everyone we love is gonna die. Like I mean, there's
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: so much about it that's like, oh wow, we're playing
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: a game you can't win, but the winning of it
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: seems to me to be like to feel these beautiful feelings,
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: you know. So when I feel those feelings, whether it's
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: a beautiful piece of music or experiencing some connection with
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: someone or like accessing some emotion, like yeah, I mean
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 2: that's to me, like that's everything, Like that's the whole thing,
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 2: and so I feel it really deeply. I think to
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: do what I do for a living. The secret as
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 2: won't be a secret when I say it out loud,
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: But the secret is like I'm the opposite of a sociopath,
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: Like I'm really sent you know, the tattoos and the
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: things like that. When I was a young man, I
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 2: hated the part of me that was that sensitive, Like
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: I wanted to beat it out of me. I'll hurt
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: myself as much as I can find a way to
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: not feel stuff so deeply. You know, I was afraid
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: of spiders, so I got a tarantula and I put
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 2: it in a glass cage next to my bed, so
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 2: I would have to wake up every day and look
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: at a giant spider until it wasn't afraid of spiders anymore.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: And that worked. But I could never beat the sensitivity
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 2: out of me. And I figured out, like, oh okay,
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: like it doesn't have to be my enemy. Can be
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 2: a superpower. And it became a superpower to be that sensitive,
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: to be able to like figure out like what's gonna
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: move the judge, what's gonna make my client feel safe,
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 2: what's gonna make the other side feel vulnerable and scared?
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: And you know, it took me a long time to
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: figure that out as a superpower. But I'm really grateful
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 2: that I did. And I think once I let myself
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: really that it was a superpower, I let myself feel
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: it more and I think that's where some of that
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: emotion comes from. I've also been in therapy a really
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: long time, so that might be part of it.
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: Can either of your kids have it?
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think they both have it in different degrees.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: I think my older son is a lawyer, but he's
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: very analytical and very academic. He's really smart, got that
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: from his mom. You can be a little cerebral, and
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: it's really easy for me to get along with him
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: because he's really easy to navigate. My younger son is
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 2: like me, he's like really sense it, and because of it,
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 2: we have a harder time getting along because we can
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: read each other and this situation like a book, and
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 2: our powers neutralize each other in some degree. So we've
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: gotten round and round, like we've had chapels where we
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: were not close. But what's really lovely is he's twenty
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: five now and then the last year or two we've
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: become really close, and that feels really lovely because I
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 2: had to sort of see that the parts of him
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 2: that were challenging for me were the parts of myself
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 2: that are challenging.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: Oh it's so confronting.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 2: Oh it's rough. It's rough. I mean one of the
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: unique things that divorced people with children get to experience.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: And it's a really great life lesson. You have to
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: learn to navigate the personality traits of your ex spouse
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: that you didn't like. But in your kids, no one
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: ever talks about that you love more than anything. And
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: so then you're like, oh shit, I can't just divorce them.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 3: Like I can't leave, Like they're my kid. I'm stuck,
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 3: you know.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: And I know my ex wife there must be times
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: where she just looks at them and goes, oh my god,
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: you have so much of your father and you.
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 3: And there are times where they'll react to something and
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 3: I'll go.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: Like, oh my god, that is so your mom right now.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: You know. But it's a really great lesson. You're like, no,
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: I can't quit on this, Like I have to learn
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: how to navigate this. I think that there's something really
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: valuable there. It's helped me grow as a person, I think,
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: and it even helped me have a good relationship with
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: my ex wife. I mean we never had a terrible one,
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 2: but it really helped us that, like, yeah, no, we
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: have to learn how to navigate each other, you know,
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 2: Like there's some parts of our relationship that are over,
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 2: but there's some parts of it that continue, Like we're
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: still a family. We're always going to be family. We're
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 2: going to be grandparents together someday. Like we're stuck with
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 2: each other.
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: What's the dumbest hill anybody's died on in a divorce
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: proceeding aside from the toaster.
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 2: It's a chapter in my book called the Case of
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 2: the Incredible Shrinking Penis. It tells the story of the
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 2: dumbest till I've ever seen somebody die on, and that
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: is that a guy married my client on false pretenses.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 2: He wanted a green card and I got married, and
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 2: he literally read after the marriage ceremony, left and never
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: came back. And my client came to me very upset
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: and said, I want this marriage annulled. And an annulment
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 2: is different than a divorce and divorces. We were married
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: and now the marriage fell apart, and annulment is this
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 2: was a fraudulent marriage, and you can get it annulled,
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: and then you've never been married, like it was not
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: a legal marriage. It's a void marriage. And this was
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 2: really important to my client because she was religious and
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 2: because she really I wanted this to be like you know, yeah,
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 2: I'm marrying this person forever.
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 3: And it was a fraud. This guy wanted nothing to
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 3: do with her, and.
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 2: We had him served and we said we want an annulment,
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: and he said, I won't give you an omen I'll
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 2: give you a divorce because that way he could keep
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 2: the citizenship. He said, no, we want an annulment.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 3: And the reason he didn't want to give her an annulment is.
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: They could affect his citizenship status. So we ended up
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 2: having an oment trial and he claimed that they had
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: consummated the marriage, meaning that they had sexual intercourse. Now
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: my client was like a thirty seven year old woman,
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 2: so like, how do you prove somebody didn't have sex
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: with somebody? So I was talking to her about, look,
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: maybe you want to just take the divorce because like
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: it's going to be really hard to prove you didn't
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 2: have sex. It's his word against yours. And I said,
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: you know, like you know, she was like, well, I'm
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 2: a virgin, and I was like, well, I mean congratulations,
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 2: Like that's an accomplishment at thirty seven. But you know,
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 2: the chances of your hymen still being intact are like
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: almost nothing, like because you know, as time passes, it
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 2: gets weaker. Any guynecologists can tell you that, like, just
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 2: because a woman's got a broken hymen doesn't mean that
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 2: they're not a virgin. And I said, but look, if
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 2: it was intact, that would be conclusive proof that you
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 2: never had sex with this person. I said, why don't
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 2: you go to your coologist and find out? So she
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 2: went to your getecologist. A couple of days later, I
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 2: walk into the office. My secretary says, Jane Doe is
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 2: in conference room B, and she's very upset. So I
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 2: was like, all right, I know what this is. So
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 2: I go in and I say, listen. You know, it
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 2: was a long shot. There was no way it was
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 2: going to be intact. And she was crying. She was like, no,
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 2: it's intact. She's like, I just came from the doctor.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: Myhymen is intact. And I was like, oh, game on,
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 2: Like it's game on now, Like I was like, are
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 2: you serious. She's like yeah, I'm like she would testify
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 2: to that. She's like yeah, she even like took pictures.
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 2: I was like, oh, it's on now. So we took
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 2: the case to trial and we didn't let the guy know,
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 2: and I had him get on the witness stand and
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 2: on cross examination, I said, you testified earlier that you
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 2: had sexual intercourse with my clients. Yes, I did. I said,
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: when you say you had sexual intercourse, you mean you
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 2: put your penis into her vagina. And Judge's like, mister, sexon,
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 2: I think we all understand that's what sexual intercourse says.
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 2: I was like, you right, if I could just have
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: a little leeway, i'd appreciate. So I'll give you a little,
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: mister section. But this is going to stay PG. This
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 2: isn't going to get X rated. I walked through and
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: I said, and did you have any problems when you
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 2: had sex? No, we had no problems. I said, no, sir,
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 2: I apologize for asking this. How big is your penis? Objection?
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 2: I said, your honor, I asked for a little leeway here.
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 2: This will be relevant, I assure you. She said all right,
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: and he said it's average size. I said, respectfully, there
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 2: could be some debate about what it means to be
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 2: average size. I said, so, how many inches approximately is it?
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: He said, well, you know, five or six inches? I
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 2: said five or six inches? When erect? He said, yes,
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 2: five or six inches. I said, very good, thank you.
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 2: I said, I have nothing further. Then I called her
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 2: gynecologist to the stand and I basically said, would it
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 2: be physically possible for a five or six inch penis
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: to have penetrated my clients vagina? And said absolutely not.
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 2: The only way a person could have had sexual intercourse
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 2: with her is if they had a microfallis, meaning a
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 2: penis less than one inch long and anything more than
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: that and they would not have been able to do it.
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 2: So the guy went back on the stand and said,
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 2: I exaggerated the size of my penis. It's actually much
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 2: smaller of him that And I said, it isn't your
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 2: testimony that your penis is smaller than one inch when erect?
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 2: And the judge said, all right, that's it. I want
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 2: to see counsel in chambers and brought us both in
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 2: chambers and said to opposing counsel, like, your guy's going
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 2: to grant her the annulment or I'm going to hold
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 2: him in contempt a court. I'm going to charge him
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 2: with perjury. He's gonna end up in jail. That was
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 2: the worst hill to die on it ever, because he
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 2: just was like, but I've never seen a person put
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 2: in the position they were trying to vehemently argue that
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 2: they had exaggerated the size of their penis before. It
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 2: was a really unprecedent and ever since, I've never had
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 2: that come up again. No pun intended.
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: So there is no segue from that story. So I'm
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: gonna go so much.
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not possible.
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: But I met a women's dinner probably a year ago,
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: women's health dinner, and it's a signed seating. I'm sitting
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: across from Laura wasston.
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Laura's great.
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, what first time I ever met her?
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 2: Brilliant?
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: And I was like, Laura, can I ask you the
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: annoying question that everybody wants to know, Like, as a
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: divorce attorney, what is your advice on marriage?
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 2: Yep?
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: And I preface the question by saying that I have
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: a friend who's a divorce attorney in Chicago and she
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: married my other friend and as they were getting married,
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: in her vows, she said that because she's a divorce attorney,
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: everyone asked her this question and her advice is that
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: marry somebody who does the right thing, not just for you,
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: but for everybody around you. And I said, so, what
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: is your advice, Laura, And she.
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 2: Goes, I'm dying to hear this. She took like a full.
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: Sixty seconds to think, and she goes, you know, I
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: think you want to you have to want to stay
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: at the same hotels.
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's an extremely Laura answer. That's great.
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: So I tell my college friends and they're like, there's
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: like a lot to that answer. Actually, right, there's more than.
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: Just yeah, that's a really interesting layered answer because it
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 2: has a lot to do with economics. It has to
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 2: do if like the style and feel that a person has,
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 2: what kind of experience you want to have, Like some
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 2: people want to stay at a hotel that's very emblematic
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 2: of the place where they're visiting. So if they're in Peru,
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 2: they want to stay someplace that's got that very like
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: inspired by the local And some people want to just
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 2: stay someplace that reminds them of exactly like it was
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 2: at home, like the accidental tourist concept, like I want
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 2: to approximate the sensation of being at home but being
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 2: in another country. So I think It's a brilliantly layered answer,
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 2: and the fact that she came up with it in
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 2: sixty seconds is impressive to me.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: I thought so too. Yeah, I think about it all
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: the time.
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of Laura's superpower is that. I
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 2: think she, as a lawyer, can say a lot with
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 2: less like and she can pack a lot into that.
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: As somebody who has seen tons and tons of divorce.
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: What is your best advice for entering a marriage?
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 2: Entering a marriage? Okay, I wanted to be specific in
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 2: the answer. In specific, I'm never going to have an
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 2: answer as good as Laura's. My advice would be pay attention.
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: It seems like a silly and simple answer, it's not
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 2: as artful or layered. But I think pay attention. I
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: think attention.
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: I think it's really layered.
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 2: I think paying attention to yourself, paying attention to the
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 2: other person. Don't stop seeing them, don't stop seeing the
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 2: small things, because the small things are really everything. I
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 2: think that no single rain drops responsible for the flood.
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 2: And I think that we think a lot about the
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 2: big disconnections, but the small disconnections lead to the big disconnections.
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 2: And I think that we fall in love so fast
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 2: and then we fall out of love very slowly. It's
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 2: like the way we go bankrupt very slowly and then
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 2: all at once. I think, if you're paying attention all
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 2: the way through, the chances of that happening go way down.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: I think it's really interesting that was your advice. Because
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: when there's someone and this is one of the shows
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: I do other shows, and anytime I feel comfortable asking
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: someone offline who's been divorced, I always say, did you
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: know when you were walking down the aisle? I've probably
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: asked thirty five people I've interviewed, all different industries. Only
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: one said no. Everybody said yes, they felt something and
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: they walked down the aisle for a number of different
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: other reasons. But I see how that happens.
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I will share that. When we got divorced, my
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 2: now ex wife said to me, you know, when I
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 2: was standing in the sort of vestibule of we got
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: married in a restaurant, She's like, and I was about
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 2: to like walk down the aisle. She's like a part
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 2: of me thought like, don't do this, like run. I said, really,
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 2: and she said yeah. She didn't tell me in a
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 2: hurtful way. She was telling me in a way like that,
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: Oh maybe something in her new and I would never
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 2: have guessed that. I think it's hard, you know, it's
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 2: hard to listen to yourself in an honest way. I've
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 2: been in therapy a long time, and anytime somebody says,
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 2: like how much they like being in therapy, I'm like, well,
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 2: then you might need to get a different therapist. Therapy
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 2: is supposed to be uncomfortable, like it's supposed to be
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 2: a little uncomfortable. It's supposed to be like that which
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 2: you need to see the most is in the place
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 2: you least want to look, and you have to dig around,
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 2: you know, and you have to be uncomfortable. And I
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 2: think that you know that discomfort is an important part
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 2: of the process. And I think that discomfort is the
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 2: discomfort you feel when you're paying attention. Again, I am
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 2: a fan of an uncomfortable truth versus a comfortable lie.
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 2: And I think the long term ramifications of ignoring the
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 2: voices inside you, of not paying attention, that cost is
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 2: much higher than the temporary discomfort.
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: True or false, don't marry anyone you wouldn't want to
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: be divorced from.
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 2: True. I think engaging how someone is with their exes
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 2: is important. I think it tells you something about who
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 2: they are. I remember when I first got divorced. I
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 2: went on a date. It was one of the first
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 2: dates I went out with after my divorce. It was
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 2: a long time ago. It was going really good. It's
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: going really well, and I was like, oh, this is cool, like,
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 2: you know, like I can feel a connection with the person.
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 2: We're having fun. We were at dinner and I was
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 2: already thinking about maybe I would see her again. And
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 2: we were talking about some like art galleries, some exhibit
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 2: or something, and I said, oh, we should, you know,
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 2: maybe we'll go see it together. We could do it, like,
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 2: you know, sometime soon. And she was like, oh, I'd
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 2: love that. You know, we could do it next weekend.
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 2: Like the asshole has the kids so I could do it.
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 2: And I was like, oh, boy, okay. Like and the
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 2: fact that she was referring to her co parent and
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 2: next husband is the asshole. I was like, we are
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 2: not on a good level here, like this is not
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 2: something And it was so different than my experience. I
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 2: would never refer to my ex wife that way. You
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 2: divorced who you married, Like people don't want to believe
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 2: that people are like, oh, when the ring comes on,
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 2: the mask comes off. Like no, Like, if you're married
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 2: to a person who's like petty and spiteful, you're going
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 2: to divorce someone who's petty and spiteful, and they're going
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 2: to be petty and spiteful and divorce. Like if you
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 2: marry someone who's like reasonable and prone to acknowledging the
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 2: possibility of their own error and like kind of kind
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 2: hearted and empathetic, that's who they'll be probably in the divorce.
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 2: Like and so it's okay, Yeah, you should be prepared
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 2: to divorce the person that you're marrying.
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: For someone who's not married yet, what's the number one
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: red flash that should make them run away before they
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: ever get there?
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 2: I mean, I don't think you should ever marry someone
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 2: who think you're going to change or in anticipation of
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 2: them changing. I honestly have to say the number one
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 2: red flag in my experience would be people that have
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 2: substance use issues. I think a lot of marriages, particularly
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 2: at this moment, I would say in the last five
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 2: to ten years, substance use issues is a big thing.
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 2: Whether it's alcohol abuse, cannabis abuse, opiates, you know, stimulants adderall, like,
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 2: substance use is usually emblematic of other significant mental health
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 2: issues or interpersonal issues that a person might have, And
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 2: if a person has mild substance use issues, very often
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 2: that can metastasize into something much more extreme. It's not
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 2: going to get better, it'll get worse. So I would
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 2: say that's a huge red flag. My other answer would
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 2: be a person who is incapable of apologizing. I think
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 2: you can tell a lot about a person by the
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 2: way they apologize, Like I think you should listen when
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 2: someone apologizes, because if they're prone to what I like
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 2: to call a bullshit apology, which is, you know, I'm
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 2: sorry you were so upset by what happened. That's a
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 2: bullshit apology. I'm sorry. That's a better apology, but it's
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 2: not a very good one. The best apology is I
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 2: know what I did that upset you, and then saying
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 2: what it was like I wasn't listening and I invalidated
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 2: your perspective. I shouldn't have done that, and I'm really
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 2: sorry that I did. And if I had the chance
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 2: to do it again, I would do it differently. That's
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 2: an aplus apology. You identified what you're apologizing for. So
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 2: this person knows I'm not just offering a blanket apology.
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 2: I don't understand what I actually did. I'm acknowledging what
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 2: it is that I did to make sure that what
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 2: I'm apologizing for is the thing that hurt you. Then
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 2: I'm apologizing unequivocally for the behavior, not for how it
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 2: made you feel, not for the effects of it, for
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 2: the behavior itself. And I'm acknowledging it was wrong of
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 2: me to do and that I won't repeat that behaveavior
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 2: now that I've learned the lesson that was necessary. That's
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 2: a good apology. If you are dating someone and they
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 2: can't apologize, and even when they apologize, it has to
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 2: be you know, I'm sorry, but you know I have
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 2: to say, like you were definitely pushing it. Okay, like
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 2: run because they're not going to get better at that.
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: That's a really good one. Okay. My last question is
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: what is the best gift to give somebody going through
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: a divorce.
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 2: You know, there's this new phenomenon I just heard about
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 2: that I kind of love. Tell me divorce registries. I
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 2: love this.
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: I you too, I agree.
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 2: Somebody pointed it out to me, thinking I was going
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 2: to piss all over it because I tend to like
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 2: laugh at some of these conventions like that people do,
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 2: like you know, there's all these new ones too, like
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 2: a baby moon or a push present. People have to
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 2: just like add holidays and ad opportunities to buy gifts.
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 2: So somebody brought us to my attention that a woman
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 2: was getting divorced and she put up on like TikTok
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 2: or whatever social media is. Like, listen, a lot of
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 2: my friends are asking me like how they can be
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 2: of support to me. And of course, like talking to
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 2: me and being there for me is a really lovely thing,
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 2: but like if you really want to do something like
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 2: I I gave half my stuff, like I let him
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 2: keep all the pots and pans. I got to get
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 2: pots and pans, like, and she made a registry. She
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 2: went on Amazon and made a registry. Somebody brought it
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 2: to my attention. I was like, that's not a thing,
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 2: and they were like, yeah, it is. And I looked
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 2: it up and I was like, oh my god, that's
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 2: the thing. I actually bought an item on her registry.
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 2: I bought her a forty dollars. It wasn't like expensive thing,
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 2: but she registered for stuff that like, oh yeah, like
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 2: it was useful. Yeah, Like she like gave them all
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 2: the sheets, Like I got the impression she left the
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 2: apartment or left the home, so there was like things
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 2: she needed that, Like you know, like you don't own
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 2: two pasta strainers. Yeah, so if you leave, you're like,
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 2: all right, you keep the pasta strings.
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 3: If you said, like I'm keeping the pasta strain.
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 2: You'd seem petty. So she was like, yeah, I let
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 2: him keep all that stuff. And it struck me as like, oh,
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 2: that's kind of a cool way to say to friends,
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 2: like I want to help me replace all the stuff
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 2: I lost in the divorce. You can, So I think
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 2: that's a really cool thing that you can do. I
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 2: think people when they go through a divorce, I think
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 2: they feel like who they are has foundationally been shifted.
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 2: Like we live in a world where everybody acts like
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 2: they meant to do everything that happens, even though half
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 2: the time I think they're lying.
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 3: You know, like even you get fired from a job,
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 3: you're like I hated.
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 2: That job anyway, people like really I meant to do that,
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 2: you know, and you can't do that with divorce, Like
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 2: nobody got married was like, yeah, whatever, if it doesn't
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 2: work out, we'll just get divorced, like people mean to
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 2: stay married.
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: It's a good point.
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 2: And so I think anything that can make a person
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 2: not feel like a failure and sort of see it
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 2: as an invitation to the next chapter of their life.
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 2: And I think as a friend, the best thing you
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 2: can do is just point out to the person, like
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 2: all the things about them that still make them incredible
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 2: and special and that make them appealing, not just in
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 2: the context of relationship, just in the context of life
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 2: and whatever this next chapter holds for them.
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: It's cool that you said that. I was going through
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: a breakup years ago and I was so sad, and
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: I got an email from a college friend out of
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: the blue, and it was short, it was one or
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: two paragraphs, and she just said all the things that
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: she loved about me.
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 2: Isn't that great?
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: I will never forget it?
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it isn't that lovely? It's so lovely, Like
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 2: it is such a wonderful feeling when we express to
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 2: another person. I mean, you can do this in a
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 2: relationship if you ask another person, like, what is it
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 2: you love about me? Like, sometimes you're really surprised by
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 2: the answers. Yeah, I work at an office, you know,
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 2: with a lot of women. I have a lot of
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 2: women in paralegal and administrative staff, and it fascinates me
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 2: sometimes because my office is such that I can hear
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 2: their conversations sometimes, and I've learned so much about how
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 2: little I know about women by that experience, because we're
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 2: all running around like trying to do as many shoulder
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 2: presses as possible and thinking we have to get like
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 2: Chris Hemsworth's abs.
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 3: That it's so not it and the stuff you guys.
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 2: Like when you're like, oh, you know, he was wearing
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 2: a T shirt and like you could just see like
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 2: the bump of where the like crossy wears. Was Oh,
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 2: I think that's so sexy.
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 3: I'm like wait what, like what is that?
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 2: Or he did that thing like that when I got
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 2: up to use the restroom, like he didn't know whether
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 2: he should get up or not, and he was so cute,
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 2: and I'm like, wait, what are you talking about? Like
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 2: the stuff that you guys are like blown away by anything,
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 2: some of the stuff that you're upset by.
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 4: If we do, I'm like, we would never have known that,
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 4: Like we really should have to like embed an anthropologists
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 4: like a lean goodall in each other's spaces.
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 2: Like I think like women should like embed themselves in
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 2: like some bar or some jiu jitsu academy and just
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 2: like hide and listen to what we're saying. And then
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 2: we should do the same thing with women, like we
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 2: should just like listen because we would be stunned by it.
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 2: And I think if you say to your partner, like,
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 2: you know, when do you feel the most loved by me?
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 3: Like that's an interesting question, beautiful, like when do you
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 3: feel the.
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 2: Most loved by me? I think you'd be shocked at
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 2: the answer. It would be such small things. It would
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 2: be such little tiny things that made you feel like
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 2: and you'd go that it wasn't the grand gesture and
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 2: I planned for your birthday and it's like, no, is
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 2: that one time where you did this, like or when
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 2: my mom was sick and you did this, And it's.
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 3: Like wait, really, like it was that easy, Like it
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 3: was that easy.
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 2: That little thing like that to me is like the
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 2: most beautiful thing that we just don't even know how
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 2: much power we have over the emotional state of this
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 2: other person, and we don't even see the ways we
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 2: make them feel loved. I'm always in my own relationships,
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 2: you know, even with my sons, like I've always said
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 2: to them because I know how you know, working as
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 2: a hospice volunteer and doing what I do for a
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 2: living and seeing the impermanence of things.
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 3: I'm always thinking about the impermanence of things.
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 2: And I always make a point of telling my sons,
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 2: like everyone in my life, where I love, I make
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 2: a point of the last thing I say to them
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 2: in every conversation is I love you, because I always
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 2: want to know that's the last words I said to
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 2: that person, because you never know when it's the last time,
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 2: you know. But I've always I said to my sons,
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 2: I'm like, you know I love you, but I want
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 2: you to know I know you love me, like I
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 2: want you to hear me say that I know you
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 2: love me, so you never have to worry if something.
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 3: Happened to me.
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 2: Did my dad know I loved him? Like, yeah, I
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 2: know you love me. And I think there's tremendous value
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 2: in relationship, whatever the relationship, mother, father, son, sibling, whatever,
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 2: in saying to the other person like I feel your love,
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 2: and maybe even say to them, do you know when
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 2: you did X, Y, and Z, I could feel that
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 2: you love me. Like, what a gift to say that
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 2: to someone.
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm probably like eight thousand hours of conversation professionally,
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: and no one's ever said that I agree with you.
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 2: That interesting?
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and it's so beautiful.
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 2: It's free, Like you don't need to buy the thirty
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 2: seven Birkin bags. Would warm you to the core. If
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 2: all of the people in your life right now could
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 2: just tell you all the times they feel loved by you,
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 2: I think you would be reduced to a puddle of tears.
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 2: How beautiful that is.
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 3: And I think that one of the great problems of
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 3: our society is that, like the first time most people
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 3: get everyone who loves them in a room is.
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 2: At their funeral. Yes, Like, that's crazy, man. We have
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 2: to cultivate spaces to talk more about our next company
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 2: other Maybe that's just what I need, is another job.
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: I have some rapid fire questions. Yes, go, celebrity couple
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: you think is the real deal?
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 2: I think is the real deal in terms of how
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 2: much they love each other, because I've got a couple
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 2: that I'm like impressed by in terms of how well
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 2: they divorced, like Bruce will listen to me, more like
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 2: had the coolest divorce ever. Really, Oh yeah, Like Leave
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 2: Schreiber and Naomi Watts had like the coolest divorce and
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 2: now they like just took their kid off to college
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 2: and they both posted on Instagram about it and they're
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 2: at lunch together, and like I was like, say, you
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 2: can do it. People do it all the time. People
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 2: are cool with each other. So that's couples that I
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 2: think are like a celebrity couple that I think is
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 2: the real deal. Gosh.
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 3: I think actually Brock and Michelle Obama.
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 2: I remember when they did their first dance the inauguration,
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 2: I think was to edit James at Last, which I
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 2: think is a very romantic song. And way they were
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 2: looking at each other, I was like, man, these two
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 2: like they got a couple of kids, and like, I
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 2: get the impression they still are into each other, like
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 2: they're still going at it. And maybe it's artifice, but
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 2: I didn't get the impression it was. It seemed to
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 2: me that, yeah, that's like real.
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: And palpable your favorite romantic comedy.
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 2: I think Love Actually. I've probably seen Love Actually like
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 2: fifteen times, and I still think it's a really beautiful
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 2: film because it's about a lot of different kinds of
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 2: love and a lot of different circumstances, and I think
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 2: it's a really lovely film. I know it's come under
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 2: some criticism in the past, but I think that's a
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 2: really good romantic comedy.
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: It's your favorite holiday, Thanksgiving.
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 2: Because there's no gifts. I don't have to buy anybody presents,
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 2: and it's just food, and it's a lot of people
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 2: getting together and we'll just gathering for a meal. I
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 2: really like that.
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: I love how anti consumerism you are.
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 2: I think we've convinced people that consumption will fill the void,
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 2: and it won't. Nothing drives that point home to you
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 2: more than representing ultra wealthy people like because they're just
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 2: miserable a lot of them.
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: What haven't you gotten in life that you've been chasing?
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 2: Peace? I think peace inside myself. I think that's what
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 2: I'll have always been chasing, and maybe we'll always be chasing.
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 2: I feel like I'm getting closer to it. I think
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 2: I spent a lot of my life uncomfortable in my
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 2: own skin. I would never go backwards. I'm fifty two.
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 2: My sons are in their twenties. A lot of the
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 2: guys who work for me are in their thirties and forties,
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 2: and I don't envy any of them. I like moving forward,
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 2: and I feel like I'm getting closer and closer every
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 2: year to peace.
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: Thank you for saying that and sharing that. If you
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: weren't an attorney, what would you be doing?
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 2: I think I'd be a writer. I love to write.
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 2: I wrote my book. I've written some fiction, none of
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 2: which has been published yet, but some of which is
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 2: in the works, and I like to write. It's a
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 2: very solitary activity. I also think I would probably work
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 2: in end of life medicine. I would probably be like
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 2: a full time hospice volunteer. I think that's what I'll
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 2: do when I retire, is I'll probably write books and
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 2: be a hospice volunteer.
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: Something everyone should try once.
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 2: Brazilian jiu jitsu. I've been trading Brazilian jiu jitsu for
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 2: about fifteen years. I think it's one of the most
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 2: rewarding and enjoyable activity. I jokingly call it struggle cuddles
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 2: because it's a very physically intimate activity to do with somebody,
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 2: but it requires a lot of trust and it's also
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 2: like chess with your body, and it's also really practical
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 2: from a self defense standpoint.
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: What's a book that you've read that changed your life,
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: something you think everybody should read.
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 2: I gotta go with two of them.
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 2: One is All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Door.
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 2: It won the Pulitzer Prize. It's an unbelievably beautiful book.
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 2: It's theoretically about World War Two, but it's not really
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 2: It's about being human. And so I think that is
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 2: one of, if not the greatest book I've ever read.
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 2: The others book that came out about two months ago
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 2: in June. That's a book by an author named Jason Green.
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 2: It's his first novel and it's called Unworld. It's a novel,
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 2: and it's a very readable novel. I would say that
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 2: it's about artificial intelligence and the nature of consciousness, but
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 2: it's really about life and grief and what does it
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 2: mean to be human? And like All The Light We
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 2: Cannot See, it was a book that moved me to
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 2: tears like two or three times as while I was
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 2: reading it, but with just how beautiful the sentiment in
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 2: it was. It's an incredible book. I mean it's a
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 2: new book, so I don't know how it will do
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 2: popularity wise. I kind of stumbled on it. It's not
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 2: even out in paperback, it's still in hardcover. But I
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 2: bought it when I was going away to Las Vegas
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 2: for the weekend, and I was like, Oh, I'm gonna
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 2: read like some light fiction, you know. And I'm sitting
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 2: like by the pool at the palazzo, like crying, like
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 2: it was such a good book. And in some of
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 2: the same ways that all the light we cannot see
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 2: is what it's about is not what it's about very
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 2: much about being human.
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: You can grab the question everything card game and pull
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: out whichever card calls to you.
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 2: Oh, this is the worst question for me? Why I'm
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 2: so antisocial? The single best party you've ever been to
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 2: set the scene. Everyone who knows me in real life
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 2: knows I do not go to parties. Like I refuse
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 2: to go to parties. I'm really good at working room,
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 2: but I find it exhausting.
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: Will you go to a small gathering like a dinner.
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 2: Yes, but I hate that too. I'm great at it,
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 2: I just I find it exhausting. And I also I
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 2: wake up at four am every day, so I'm usually
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 2: in bed by eight eight thirty. Yeah, so like all
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 2: the interesting things happen after eight pm, So I'm really
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 2: not that much fun.
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: Can I ask you a question? Taking all humilody out
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: of this for a second, Most people I know who
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: feel that way have a really high IQ, and so
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: they are the most interesting person at the table.
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 2: Usually I love talking to people. I find people fascinating.
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 2: I'm just way better with like one on one. Like
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 2: if you said to me, like, hey, let's like go
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 2: have coffee and talk to somebody for a couple of hours. Yeah,
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 2: if I had more free time, I would happily do.
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 2: Like as a hospice volunteer, I don't think I've ever
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 2: talked about death with anybody. Like they just want to
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 2: tell you about their life and what they did for
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 2: a living and their relationships, and like I'm riveted, Like
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 2: I'm fascinated by that. I feel compelled when I'm in
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 2: a group setting to like enter and be entertaining and
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 2: bring out the entertainment in the people around me. I
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 2: feel like this sense of control that I'm like, Okay,
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 2: I want to like make this as wonderful as possible,
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 2: and I'm good at it. But I just I find
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 2: it really tiring. So my answer to this would be
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 2: the single best party I've ever been to. Set the scene.
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 2: It would really be me and my dogs on the
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 2: couch and like, you know, something really interesting on Netflix
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 2: and probably popcorn with like some ghee on it and
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 2: some salt. And that's to me, like the best party ever.
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 2: Like I'm very much a homebody. My idea of a
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 2: good party is like a very small group of people,
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 2: if any, and maybe something lovely to eat, and definitely dogs,
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 2: like anything having dogs involved. Like I'm the person who
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 2: at the party. If I had the misfortune of being
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 2: invited to a party, I will definitely be in the
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 2: corner playing with their pets.
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 3: Like I love animals, so I'll sit there with their cat.
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 2: And I'm the guy too that people will go, you know, like,
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 2: oh god, that dog doesn't like anybody, you know, And
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 2: I'm like, oh yeah, well you just you only needed
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 2: to meet me, like.
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 3: And my energy with animals works really well.
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 1: Well, I heard that you love dogs so much that
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 1: you're launching pet nups.
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 2: Yes, pet nups Trusted petnup dot com. That is our
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 2: new venture. So the team Trusted prenup dot Com, which
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 2: is a company I've been involved in for most of
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 2: this year. We really only started up. I've done hundreds,
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 2: if not thousands, of prenups, and I was approached by
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 2: a team of really innovative thinkers who came to me
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 2: and said, we want to leverage AI and technology and
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 2: take these prenups. You've done these hundreds, if not thousands
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 2: of prenups, feed them into a large language model, come
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 2: up with the best possible version of the prenup. And
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 2: we did. And I was really the legal technical advisor
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 2: who took the time to put together like the best
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 2: possible version. And we've now had hundreds of people in
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 2: the last five six months who've now come onto the
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 2: platform and built their own prenup.
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: Co.
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 2: We're doing it a quarter of what the retainer would be,
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 2: and this is like soup to nuts, and we have
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 2: a guarantee in terms of its enforceability, We have guarantees
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 2: in terms of satisfaction with the process. Like we're really
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 2: transparent in the way we're doing it, and we're doing
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 2: it in this really innovative way, and I'm thrilled to
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 2: see how well it's doing. But one of the things
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 2: that I've been seeing more and more of in my practice,
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 2: and as an animal.
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 3: Lover, I'm very attuned to it is.
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 2: I'm seeing a ton of people who in the divorce,
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 2: like what happens with companion animals is a huge peak,
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 2: like they're a member of our family. We care about
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 2: them in a very similar way to the way we
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 2: care about our children. Some couples are making choices of
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 2: saying we're not having children and our pets are going
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 2: to be you know, our fur babies or whatever it
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 2: might be. And so, you know, the pets, just like
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 2: the children. They didn't ask for there to be a
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 2: division or a conflict. They don't really understand what's going on.
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 2: And I've seen people weaponize a pet in a divorce.
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 2: I've seen people, you know, really be terrified to lose
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 2: a pet in a divorce. So we decided, you know what,
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 2: rather than creating barriers to entry to this, like, we're
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 2: going to make it something that's total lead tomocratize. There's
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 2: a lot of law firms and even some online services
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 2: that are charging people to do cohabitation agreements or companion
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 2: animal agreements. Like if people are dating and they decide
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 2: to get a dog or a cat together even though
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 2: they're not living together, like they're charging people to create that,
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 2: and we said, yeah, let's not do that, let's just
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 2: do it for free. Let's do it to public service.
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 2: So what we're doing is Trusted Pet nup. If you
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 2: adopt a rescue pet anywhere in the United States, you're
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 2: entitled to a free Trusted Pet nup. You're entitled to
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 2: a free companion Animal agreement. Whether it's a we're dating,
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 2: whether it's we're cohabitating, whether it's we're married, whether it's
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 2: we're marrying. This is basically a way to protect the
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 2: rights and obligations related to a pet. And if you
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 2: aren't adopting a dog or cat or horse or bird
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 2: or whatever companion animals you're adopting, if you've already done
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 2: it or you bought it from a breeder, we're still
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 2: making it accessible. And what we're doing there is a
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 2: pay as you wish kind of a thing. But what
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 2: we're doing is giving fifty percent of it to foster
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 2: and stray rescue charities, and the other fifty percent we're
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 2: using for the costs of the platform, maintaining the website,
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 2: all of the back end stuff that's done by our
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 2: technical team. So yeah, that's something we're pretty excited about
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 2: and that I think is going to be a really
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 2: nice public service and I hope is going to raise
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 2: some money for, you know, the charities that I already
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 2: was very supportive of, and really help people see the
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 2: value in fostering pets and hopefully minimize conflict between people
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 2: when they split up, you know, when it comes to
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 2: their pets, because I've really seen that cause a lot
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 2: of pain for people, and I think that it doesn't
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 2: need to It can be something that we can contract.
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 2: You know. The law is starting to treat companion animals differently.
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 2: When I first started practicing, I had a case where
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 2: the people couldn't agree on what to do with the dog,
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 2: and he said, ah, I'm word the dog be sold,
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 2: and the proceeds divided. They immediately went and figured out
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 2: the solution. But there was a long time where courts
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 2: treated animals like property, like if you accidentally killed someone's dog,
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 2: you owed them the replacement value of purchasing a new dog.
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 2: Like that's crazy. So now the law really understands that
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 2: they have a special emotional place in our hearts. So
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 2: we're just trying to help people's contractual relationships, you know,
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 2: stay a pace with how the law is changing.
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: You are such a dynamic person.
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 2: Thanks. I mean, I think that's a compliment.
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: I don't know for sure. Thank you.
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 2: Exhausting to spend that much time with, but thank you.
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 2: I appreciate that.
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: No riveting. Thank you for sharing so much time with me.
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 2: No, thank you for asking such interesting questions and creating
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 2: such a nice space. I'm really appreciative of the time.
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: Nice. Thank you.
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 2: It's great.
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: Okay, you know what time it is. Today is a
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: good day. To have a good day. I'll see you
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: next week.