Transcript for:
James Sexton on Relationships and Divorce

we have been encouraged culturally to criticize people we're in long-term relationships with not new relationships new relationships you put the person on a pedestal you're allowed to just oh they're wonderful but every Trope out there and every form of popular media is like the wife rolling her eyes at the husband and the husband being like Oh there's loads some Harpy that castrated me as if like people are just passive players in their lives and I I think that is an incredibly toxic message to send to people that this is how we should be relating to our partner like we should not you don't take the piss out of your partner in front of people like the successful relationships I've seen are where people are just cheering for their partner where they are thickest thieves where there is just this feeling of like man they like each other like they are they got each other's back like you wouldn't believe like man you could take sides against anybody but take sides against their partner you're going down like and that when you see a couple that has that you just you know they it's that's so hard to break but but I think that comes from having like a steadfast yeah no I don't do that like I don't shit talk my partner yeah like and you don't shit talk my partner to me you know like and that to me is when because I think we're just so criticized by the world the world is so full of criticism we criticize ourselves so harshly that having a partner who no matter what is like you've got this I'm With You Like You Fuck okay yeah you screwed up I see it look I'm not gonna lie to you about your blind spots you screwed up but you know what people screw up sometimes you gotta write to screw up a lot of people screw up come on get up let's go I know you have it in you if you have that person like that I I feel like that's a that's a superpower following is a conversation with James Sexton divorce attorney and author of how to stay in love a divorce lawyer's guide to staying together as a trial lawyer James for over two decades has negotiated and litigated a huge number of high conflict divorces this has given him a deep understanding of how relationships fail and how they can succeed and bigger than that the role of love and pain and this whole messy roller coaster ride we call life this is the Lex Friedman podcast to support it please check out our sponsors in the description and now dear friends here's James Sexton what is the most common reason that marriages fail that's a great question but it's a question that everybody wants there to be a simple answer like they want me to say cheating or money or you know the internet but but the reality is I think it's a lot of little things it's this disconnection that would be my answer the reason marriages fail is disconnection what causes disconnection that's the bigger and I think more important question because like Tom Wolf said about bankruptcy it happens very slowly and then all at once disconnection happens very slowly and then all at once so most of the time what I think people want is an answer like cheating but cheating is the big all at once thing how did we get to the place where cheating was even something you were thinking about doing or that you would think about and then cross the line from thought into action and that's I think the the big question so disconnection would be my answer do you think it's possible to introspect like looking backwards for every individual case where the disconnection began and how it evolved sure yeah this is such a multivariate equation it's it's a it's a dance it's a chemistry it's a it's what did you do and what did the other person do and see that the interesting thing about being a divorce lawyer is I'm weaponizing Intimacy in a courtroom so I'm I'm telling it's full contact storytelling what I do for a living so what I do is I take my client's story and I have to present it to a judge and make my client the hero in every way and the other side the villain in every way now I have to be careful not to do that in a manner that that loses credibility because even a judge would know even a judge is smart enough to know that no one's all good or all bad but only if you were reverse engineering a relationship and saying how did this break you really have to look at both people the good and the bad you know what what each of them did that moved the dial in these different directions and I think that that's um that's very hard for anyone going through a divorce to do about their own relationship you know we don't know who discovered water but it wasn't a fish like if you're in it I don't think you see it clearly I think as a divorce lawyer whose job is to really drill down on the facts and figure out what's going on in this story I have to look at both sides so I have to think a lot about my own arguments but I also have to think about what's the other lawyer's argument going to be especially in custody cases so I really have been forced to look at both sides for so many years so deeply in relationships that once you do that it's very you realize that the good guy bad guy thing just doesn't apply I wonder if it's the little things or a few big things that caused this connection whether it's I mean you've talked about granola and blow jobs but those seem to be stories that you can tell to yourself like um maybe maybe that story should be explained uh or maybe you don't think you don't think for an online blowjobs is self-explanatory almost I think I think people can construct a good like if you ask GPT what do they mean I think the story that would come up is pretty good one but you know that's a story you tell about when you first knew it's the disconnection has begun is when you stop putting my buy my favorite granola or when she stopped giving blowjobs I would say when it's reached like a critical mass yeah phase shift because I think it started before that when she said yeah I used to give him blow jobs and you know when we were in our early relationship and then one day like I just was like oh well you know we don't have much time like I'll wait until later and we'll have sex and then we both enjoy it blowjobs are inefficient yeah exactly correct so you batch it all together yeah so she said well exactly and they had kids at that point so I think she really was like Hey we've gotten certain window yeah so let's have something we both enjoy so I don't think she had any negative intentions there I think that that she was working in good faith towards the betterment of the relationship but it was having this second order effect and so I I I really do think that yeah the blowjobs granola I mean they're anyone who's been in a long-term relationship I guess it's just worth asking the question what what does this person do that makes me feel loved because I I think it's very interesting in my own experience in life I was remember I had a difficult chapter with one of my sons my younger son when he was in his early 20s and we were having a heartfelt conversation and I said to him do you do you know I love you and he said well yeah of course I do I said but do you feel my love like do you feel it you know not just do you know it intellectually do you feel it and I remember thinking to myself when do we feel someone's love right like what what is it that they do and sometimes it's the weirdest silliest things that they would never know they are the person who's showing us that they love us and that we're feeling their love they would never show us like if you said why why does this person love you they wouldn't say oh cause um I always make sure that when the paper comes I bring it from the bottom of the driveway to the door so they don't have to go out and get it where I always hold the door for them or I you know oh I always like again I buy the granola that I know this person likes you know or I I remembered that they don't like it when I put on this particular record so I don't put it on like and and those are these yes they're small things but they're not small they're kind of everything do you think it's good to communicate that stuff what 100 it takes away some of the power of it right when you point it out then the person realizes oh okay he likes this or dislikes this so yes it becomes a deliberateness to it you know a conscious so I understand not pointing that out when it's a good thing I think when it's a negative thing like I I think in in the granola situation if she had said to him hey you used to do this and you've stopped that feels like something to me like she said she didn't say anything about that just like he probably didn't say anything about the blowjobs like I think if there had been a moment of this is starting let's talk about it while it's starting but people wait from what I can see people wait until the big thing happens the financial impropriety the substance use disorder the cheating they wait for that to happen and then they go where did we go wrong and the answer is quite a while ago with the granola yeah yeah so when you notice something like you notice that little something talk about it because that little something is probably kernel of a deeper truth of course there is also moods we're all like a roller coaster of emotion so you can not bring a granola one day just a just because you're in this place where just not nothing is just cynicism everywhere just anger and so on but it's a temporary feeling but maybe that temporary feeling is grounded in some other deeper current that's actually building up yeah and I think a good partner wants to understand the currents yeah they're of their party yeah if they want to understand like hey are you going through something like and look if I'm the one you need to take it out on that's okay like I'm a big boy I can take it you know like if you're hormonal if you're you know frustrated at work if you're whatever like we should be able to you know to to have a little bit of of that interaction in a relationship but I I do think it's so easy to just say to people communication is the key but it really is about Fearless kinds of communication it's about really honestly saying to somebody you know this this is feels like something to me am I wrong like this just feels like something to me and also how that's presented I mean one of the things I I'm very you know I'm very caught up on or or feel very strongly about is that we we have been encouraged culturally to criticize people we're in long-term relationships with not new relationships new relationships you put the person on a pedestal you're allowed to just oh they're wonderful but every Trope out there in every form of popular media is like the wife rolling her eyes at the husband and the husband being like Oh there's loads some Harpy that castrated me as if like people are just passive players in their lives and I I think that is an incredibly toxic message to send to people that this is how we should be relating to our partner like we should not you don't take the piss out of your partner in front of people like the successful relationships I've seen are where people are just cheering for their partner where they are thickest thieves where there is just this feeling of like man they like each other like they are they got each other's back like you wouldn't believe like man you could take sides against anybody but take sides against their partner you're going down like and that when you see a couple that has that you just you know it's that's so hard to break but but I think that comes from having like a steadfast yeah no I don't do that like I don't shit talk my partner yeah like and you don't shit talk my partner to me you know like and that to me is when because I think we're just so criticized by the world the world is so full of criticism we criticize ourselves so harshly that having a partner who no matter what is like you've got this I'm With You Like You Fuck okay yeah you screwed up I see it look I'm not gonna lie to you about your blind spots you screwed up but you know what people screw up sometimes you gotta write to screw up a lot of people screw up come on get up let's go I know you have it in you if you have that person like that I I feel like that's a that's a superpower to have that effect on another person yeah one of the things I love seeing when you look at a couple and one is talking uh like in an interview yeah answering a question especially like intellectual questions like uh what do you think about the war in Ukraine or something and then the partners talking and the other the other person is looking at them as if they're hearing the wisest thing yeah ever like they're they're looking at them not waiting for their turn to speak not thinking about how's the audience going to take that but they're looking at them like God damn I'm so lucky yeah to be with this smart motherfucker isn't that but there's this and they could be saying the dumbled shit there's a scene in the movie True Romance yeah because I love a great movie I mean that Gary Oldman seems like the greatest scene ever done in in film you know with Christian Slater and he but there's a scene in it where she holds up a sign to Christian Slater and it says you're so cool you're so cool and I I like man like that's it yeah that's it like I I've always I think I said somewhere in the book that you know you go to weddings and like when the bride walks in you know everybody's looking at the bride it's her show you know everybody turns around is the first Glimpse everybody gets the bride and I never look at the bride I always look at the groom looking at the bride because there's this like to me that's every like he has this look like this because this is the first time he's seeing her in the dress most of the time and also he's seeing her like holy shit she's coming down the aisle we're getting married like but this is it and everyone's looking at her and and I always look at him because I always think to myself like like the look on his face is like that's like this feeling of like holy yeah wow okay like that's everyone's looking at her and she's mine and she's coming up here and we're getting married and I feel like yeah like that that kind of adoration like I think that's the look we're describing is like adoration like that the words coming out of their mouth that they're like yeah that's mine that one's mine you know that's such a great thing like it's such a great feeling seeing the good stuff like with uh with True Romance I mean you could uh make fun of the guys totally cringe wearing Elvis like be essentially being a fake Elvis with Shades and like what what is he doing it's like watching these kung fu movies but from her perspective and from any perspective you could take on him is this is the the baddest motherfucker who's ever lived like he's willing to do those things for me but not like it's almost like an epic heroic figure yeah and we're living in this Epic hero story and what does that do to him though yeah that's what see that that's the point like if there's a point to this to this whole thing this whole couple thing yeah isn't that it yeah like I don't I don't understand this idea of you know we had a successful marriage we were married for 50 something years we were miserable for 47 of them but we hung in there like it this is an endurance event like the primary relationship of your life you've decided you're gonna turn into the the like a 50-mile trail race like why why would you do that like congratulations you you took the concept of monogamy and made it something that two people are absolutely not gonna enjoy but you hung in there like congratulations and I understand there's religious perspectives that say well it's a sacred Covenant but I I have a real chicken or the egg problem with that yeah because I think it was like well how do we sell this incredibly stupid concept that isn't working to people I know we'll tell them God says you have to and and we'll sign on for that I I don't buy it I don't buy it anymore I really because when you see a successful marriage where you see to be even without a marriage you see a pair bond you see a couple that really love each other and cheer for each other in that way and like hang on each other's words that way and like are just in each other's Corner that way you see the fake shit instantly yeah like you you see the difference right away it's like if you you know the first time this is the first time I've come to Austin I've had I thought I'd eaten a lot of barbecue in my life I've never had Texas barbecue I landed I went and had barbecue I was like okay I've never had barbecue before apparently this is there's a whole different thing I think it's the same thing I think it's like once you see real love like real love and and I mean romantic love like real love like that real Bond real you go oh yeah this other thing's not gonna do it do you think that's a daily deliberate choice that that a couple like that makes because it feels like a very easy to do deliberate step like choose to see the brilliant in it the beautiful in it and almost immediately everything shifts and it becomes this momentum or all you see is the beautiful and all you see is the brilliant that is a conscious choice I think approaching life that way is a conscious Choice approaching any relationship that way is a conscious choice I mean looking at someone who hurts you or does something hurtful to you and thinking about what's going on in their life that they're doing that or what's happening with them yeah that's a very conscious choice and I think a better one a better one than seething in animosity and letting that eat you alive but but I I don't know that it's I don't think it should be so difficult like with our children with our pets we don't have this problem like you never have someone look at their dog who they've had for eight years and go I gotta get a new dog like I've had this one for eight years like I gotta get like puppies are so cute what am I doing with this old dog like it's the total opposite they're like oh my God this is like my dog this is my dog like the smell of the dog it's like this my dog's smell the bad habits of the dog you're like that's my stupid dog that does stupid things and it's not like that has to be a conscious like they wake up every dingo I should be grateful for the dog like it's just you know and so and your children like people's children you know it's why people are like not aware of how annoying their children are because they're not annoying to them like I get it like to you the sound of your kids shrieking is like oh my kid's having a good time and you don't get that and see when I try to when I hear that I try to hear it with those ears like oh that like I'm a parent I get it my kids are adults now but like I get it like so when I hear a kid shrieking I just I'm like ah like to that parent that's the sound of that kid having a great time and good like it's so nice that that's in the world but it so for me it has to be conscious for that parent I don't think it has to be conscious so I think it would be great if it didn't have to be a conscious practice but I wonder if like anything in meditation or mindfulness it's a matter of exercising that way of seeing yeah and then once you've come to that it becomes it does itself right like it it really does like your I think it's it initially has to be a conscious practice and and by the way it's easier to make it a conscious practice before it started to fade right like the I mean that's what's so amazing about marriage is there's like almost eight billion people in the world and you're picking this one so when you marry in theory like the stocks at its highest like you're as crazy about each other as you could possibly be so that's the time to get into this mindfulness to get into this practice not once it's like the wheels are starting to come off it's much harder it's like gaining a bunch of weight and then saying okay how am I gonna lose the weight now well I think that even before marriage like right away just see everything is beautiful let me quote BoJack Horseman on this when you look at someone through Rose Colored Glasses all the red flags just look like Flags that's great there's a there's a certain sense where if you're from the very beginning of course you could end up in toxic relationships that way but you know life is short you're gonna die eventually might as well really go all in on relationships there's a line in the drugstore cowboy which is a great film where he says we played a game you couldn't win to the utmost yeah and I think everything I think life is a game you can't win and so you play it to the utmost like to love anything is insane because you are accepting that you're going to lose it like I I'm a dog person and I and you you get a dog and you're you've just resigned yourself to unbelievable pain because this thing's gonna die in like 10 years maybe 15 if you're lucky and why would you open your heart to that why would you let because the joy is just so wonderful of it the of the of the ride up until it same thing with us I mean every marriage every relationship every love is gonna end it's going to end in death or divorce so why not like just go in like go in like go in and just get get weird you know like don't Define it the way that's I mean look at you know again we keep going back to True Romance but just get weird like yeah I love this Elvis pretending to be weirdo I love this like you know like former sex worker who's like you know like whatever like just go in like love this person have them love you don't worry about what everybody else is doing in their relationship like we're in such I mean it's not to me surprising that that as the performative aspects of Life on social media increases people's satisfaction with their relationships and the divorce rate you know is is following the same Trend because I I think everyone's going well what's everybody else doing you know what how much sex is everyone else having the only two people that should worry about how much sex you're having to the two people if the two people are happy in the relationship great then what does it matter what does it matter what everybody else is doing yeah there should be an element to Great relationships and great friendships of like fuck the world it's US versus us it's us yeah and that's what I mean when I say that that thick is thieves like when they're when they're like a unit like that because it's look at it's just us it's just what we want it's what we like and that's why I I said like you know even when it comes to sex or things like that like if you can't be candid with your partner about whatever weird shit you're into or what fantasy you had and any particular yeah well no matter who the hell can you be candid with I mean because you're gonna either go without or go elsewhere and neither of those is a particularly healthy option or helpful option it's it's the start of that decline so why why open yourself to that decline which invariably is just the path to the chair in front of me in my office yeah you have uh a full section in your book on on foot fetishes I do I do yeah which is funny because I don't know anything about football images yeah like I can't I'm not King shaming anybody but like there's nothing sexual about feet to me at all like I just don't get it I don't but I mean listen people like things it's good you know but yeah I I have had clients that have odd fetishes or sexual proclivities or things they want to do and they don't share it with their partner at all and then they find an outlet for it because they try to go without it and that doesn't work so they try to find some other outlet for it and then that's interpreted as a betrayal and it creates distance and people split up and of course everybody likes to have like a you know a bad guy to blame it on so when you say Well why'd you guys get divorced oh because he's secretly out of foot fetish and he was on these message boards like people about well it gives you an easy answer as to why the two of you split up but I don't think you know most divorces have such simple answers is it was a foot thing but I also think too like listen if you got a partner and we all do stuff that we're not super into because we're in a relationship and that's what part of it is like do you really want to go see that chick flick do you really want to eat at this restaurant you really want to go to her cousin's wedding no but you know part of being a relationship is okay if you're into this I'm gonna pretend this song's a good song you know even though it's not my favorite song and and I think I I just don't know we've turned sex I mean sex has been so politicized in recent years maybe it always was but I I think we've made it into something where we can't just I don't know I'm not in defeat but if the woman I love was like you know I'm really in defeat like I really want to do stuff with your feet I'd be like all right I can pretend I'm into that like for it's not gonna kill me yeah no I'm not gonna be able to make it a centerpiece of our coupling but you know like yeah I can pretend them into feed if you want I don't personally have any fetishes that are outside of the um the normal discourse as a divorce lawyer I get to experience the whole Spectrum but if I like if I was into like furries for example yeah I don't know how I would initiate the conversation with my partner about that but but frame the question the other direction if you were into furries yeah how do you prevent your partner from knowing anything about that that feels like a real you'd have to make a conscious choice to not let your partner know sure sure so so I I don't think either of those is a particularly palatable or easy proposition but a lot of people live life hiding some part of themselves yeah quite unsuccessfully like it the the second order effects of that are very rarely positive sure I don't I don't think I've ever met someone and went yeah I really hid this huge part of myself for an extended period of time and that's the best thing that happened it's I'm really glad I'm really glad I stayed in the closet as long as I did you know it really worked out like it rarely does it's a question of how long can you hold it off yeah like I know gay men who stayed in the closet for 40 years 50 years of their lives and then they had a successful second chapter as a gay man I've had clients like that do they regret that they were in the closet no because they were married they had kids like they had experiences they're glad they had but with their advice to a young person in their 20s and 30s who's gay be stay in the closet because then you can have a wife and some kids and then you can come out when you're 50 or 60 and have a second chapter no they would say you know be who you are don't be afraid you know as you were talking I'm trying to think of because I I'm publicly and privately I'm the exact same person I try to be the exact same person so I usually try to make sure there's nothing to hide but I I was trying to come up with the counter example for you for if there's good things um well I mean there could be like past relationships like well if I you know slept with thousands of women or something like this maybe that you wanna put that to the side well you don't want to be in there's a difference between being honest about something and being indelicate about it right you know like I I I think we all do this with lovers like any of us who've been in more than one relationship you would not you know at the end of sex be like that was the third best sex I've ever had you know like you that's it's just in delicate it's rude you know so so I don't think it's a matter of like total Candor at all times but I I think if you were using the furry example I'm not picking on furries I just think if if that is a proclivity that is anything other than a passing thought like it's something that you just keep coming back to then you're making a conscious decision to withhold it from your partner and what is that out of I mean I would say it's probably out of fear I'm not a psychologist but probably out of fear fear that they would reject you that they okay well now see I I genuinely believe that that this you know I I'm I'm very conflicted in my religious Faith but I I don't know that I believe in the devil but if there was a devil I think his principal function would be to convince us that we are so beastial that God couldn't love us it would be to convince us that we're awful and that we should just lean into the awfulness and I know the the greatest low points of my life came whenever I just went you know what I'm just I'm just awful I might as well just behave awfully and I I really believe that when you don't when you push down parts of yourself like your sexuality like your insecurities your true feelings from your romantic partner the person who's supposed to be your you know your number one you are making sure you will never feel their love because they don't love you they love the you you've presented to them which you know in your heart is not the authentic honest real you and so if you know you're super into furries and you don't tell your partner about that and your partner says I love you so much and you know what I love one of the things I love about us is we have such great sexual chemistry you'll never feel that love because you know yeah that's not true though she doesn't know she doesn't know that actually I'm not really satisfied and there is this thing that I want that I know I can't even tell her because I'm so ashamed like that doesn't feel like a good option to me yeah yeah so that kind of vulnerability is essential to intimacy you know I'm prone to Jujitsu metaphors and this is one of the first conversations where I can actually use them because the person I'm talking to is a jiu jitsu person but and people should know that you are a quote-unquote Jiu-Jitsu person you have been Afflicted with the I am a brown belt under Marcella Garcia and I am like a seven year brown belt now so which is the right way to be a brombo well and also I am I am you know late middle aged middleweight and moderately talented so I'm I'm and training it at that Academy with so many incredibly talented people and training in New York City where there's so many unbelievably talented people you're you're constantly humble and feeling like you should just be wearing a blue belt all the time um but but a lot of I think as you know and as most most people who practice Jiu Jitsu know you start to sort of see Jiu Jitsu and everything I genuinely believe that in love you you have to give something to get something you have to CR everything you do creates a vulnerability you know every every move you make in jiu jitsu creates opportunity and creates vulnerability and so you have to be willing to create vulnerabilities in order to get any leverage in order to get any progress and any way to move the position you know you don't want a marriage that's just two people both in 50 50. you know like you're just sitting in that guard doing nothing you know you you wanna you want it to actually move along yeah I mean that's the way I see love in relationships is you should take that leap of vulnerability give the other person the option to destroy you what you have to expose and that's that's the part that I think is is um hard for everyone you know is is to expose yourself in that way but that's what I mean even when I said about getting a dog or having a child like love loving anything is tremendously courageous because it's terrifying and and it's only Brave if you're scared if you're not scared you know it's not brave it's just stupidity it's just you know it's it's it's bravery when you're afraid and you do the thing anyway and so love is like yeah it's scary like it I don't care who you are like I you know being you know in the Jiu Jitsu Community like I'm around you know as you are all like incredibly tough people like physically tough people mentally tough people but you know I've seen some of those people taken down yeah by a 120 pound woman you know not not not from a grappling perspective but they are taken apart Yeah by a woman in their life and and vice versa I've seen men you know who like it really is shocking how much leverage we give to our romantic partners and how little discussion we really genuine discussion we really have about it how much we really are ever trained to think about it you know there's nothing in school that teaches us about it so much of literature and art is an idealized version of it so little of it is is real and no matter how it evolves when it ends in tragedy or uh drama I feel like what people don't do enough is appreciate the good times like appreciate how beautiful it is to having taken the risk and two having experienced that kind of love I think when you look at people and that are divorcing each other uh there's a Edgar Allan Poe quote the years of Love have been forgot in the hatred of a minute I always kind of am saddened like deeply saddened how people seem to forget how many Beautiful Moments have been shared when some reason some drama some breakup leads them to part ways yeah yeah it's interesting that you came to that not being a divorce lawyer because I I felt that way for a long time and I really try to say to my clients like in the courtroom at the negotiating table I have a role to play where I have to be sort of like a Pit Bull or you know some kind of a like a courtroom sociopath but behind closed doors like I'm very candid with people I'm trying to be much more emotionally attuned with so you're in empath in the sheets and sociopath in the streets exactly correct that's well said I get a new tattoo idea that's good I like that I I but I I do believe when I'm behind closed doors with people I say to them how you end things is going to be how you're going to remember the whole thing and and that's unfortunate because you know you watch like a two-hour movie and if the last 15 minutes of it sucked you go well that movie sucked like well the first hour in 45 was great you know but you walk out with this bad taste in your mouth I I'm genuinely in awe of how easily people forget that they loved each other and and I'm amazed Because by the time I meet them and by the time they they hire me to be a weapon against the person they were in love with there's nothing but animosity there and so I have to try to imagine what these two people looked like when they were in love with each other and how that even existed but I have to tell you like I I you know I I don't function that way like I every woman I ever had a relationship with like I when I think of them I I don't think of the ending necessarily I think of I try to think about the greatest hits I try to think about the moments that were wonderful where I loved them and they loved me and like there was joy and there was connection and I I don't know why you'd choose not to you know it's there's that old Axiom I don't know who said it that if you don't learn to find joy in the snow you'll have you'll have less joy in your life and precisely the same amount of snow and I genuinely believe like okay the relationship ends this is where it ends we're done now I I am making a choice as to how I will remember you and and we do it in relationships like I I always tell people you know if you ever want to see a couple light up if they're ever like the couple at the table that's you know it seems like they got in a fight or something ask them how they met and most people when they talk about how they met like their face softens they both in the other person looking at them telling the story gets that look you were talking about before and because they remember that thing and how they felt at that moment and when when this person was a choice not a default not their automatic plus one but the person they asked to the wedding not though of course you're bringing her it's your wife you bring your fucking wife places like it was still hey there's like you know three and a half billion women and I'm picking you you know like that that feeling and and I don't know when why when a relationship ends you can't do that a lesson I learned when my mother passed away of a very two-year terrible battle with cancer and was on hospice and was very very sick and it was a very slow and awful end and I remember one of my worst fears was that this is how I would remember my mother for the rest of my life that I would never be able to think of her that I didn't think of what she had become in the last months where she was withered away to nothing in this bed you know and I learned over time that memory is very kind that like that faded somehow and that now like when I remember her I remember her healthy and vibrant I remember her laughter I remember positive things some of that is I like to look at photos of that or but some of it is just how I think memory works and I I don't know why we don't apply that to relationships and I think part of it is because we have this binary view of relationships that it's either success which means you live happily ever after for the rest of your lives and die together or like in short succession or it was wrong it was awful and I I don't understand why that would have to be how we do it I think we could look at relationships like what they are which is Chapters in a book and that book is our life and those chapters all have significance and none of them would have the later chapters none of them would happen without the prior ones so there's this beauty of me of that and it's I don't know if that it's a choice or if that is how it is and the rest is just narrative that we've put on top of it culturally for some reason well I think to push back a little bit I think memory can also I think it is a deliberate choice because I think memory can basically that's how trauma works it can Surface the negative stuff and the negative stuff completely drowns out all the positives so it's I think uh uh it's a deliberate choice to make your memory probably work that way you know in relationships betrayal can do that right sort of uh cheating infidelity like one event can almost erase the entirety of your uh understanding of the past and all the memories are sort of shrouded in this darkness of okay this what I believed was true is totally untrue and started to overcome that and still appreciate the Beautiful Moments I'm continually astounded by how long the hurt and anger of betrayal can reverberate I I have clients who were four years five years passed when the divorce ended the cheating was discovered and they're as angry as they were the day they found out and and I I don't know what that's about yeah because I also have clients that they like look back on it and they go you know we screwed up like we were you know we didn't do the best but we did the best we could do at the time and you know we like there should be stars for Wars like ours you know there should be champagne for the survival yeah that's beautiful like we made it through you know like we survived it and we were fools and we were fools for love and there are worse things in the world to be fools for it but I I also do think that most relationships where there was infidelity and it's not a it's not a popular thing to say and I'll get i'll get pilloried for it but great you know I just don't know and I don't want to blame the victim of infidelity but was the relationship really where it needed to be like had were you truly the most just dutiful spouse who was seeing this person's needs be met again we've established in the granola story that people can sometimes with good intentions not be meeting their partner's needs or perceiving their partner's needs or their partner isn't communicating them the right way or all of the above but I I've rarely seen very happy content couples that cheat on each other and so I I understand there's a shame in saying this person cheated on me or I cheated on this person because I represent you know I represent I represent the cheater and I represent the cheated I represent the victim of domestic violence I represent the perpetrator of domestic violence I represent the person with the substance use disorder the person married to the person so I I don't get to choose the white or the black hat like I have my client and that's my client and and it forces me to put myself into their story from their point of view and I think that kind of radical empathy that you need to engage in on a daily basis to represent people in those kinds of proceedings it just I don't know it's it it just doesn't seem like there's good guys and bad guys you know it just seems like it's complicated and people's intentions and where they actually end up are different yeah I think there's some sense in uh still remembering the Betrayal as it being a symptom of taking life a little too seriously too seriously where you don't uh life shouldn't be taken that seriously you should be able to laugh at it all I like the story you say you know be able able to appreciate the battle that should give stars for those kind of wars that we fought and just kind of be able to laugh at it all especially with love like life's just so absurd yeah like it's so it's just crazy it's so crazy I mean like I don't I you know I I think it's funny I think this is real Candor but you know as a man like there's nothing funnier than when you finish masturbating you know there's no more humbling moment and I like to think about the fact that like the richest famous most powerful person in the world they jerk off you know the most powerful man in the world jerks off I'm sure you know all of them do I mean you probably know them so you could ask but in that moment where you just you come and you go what am I doing like what the now I gotta wipe that like oh holy good Lord and there's this feeling of but a second ago this seemed like a great idea and it was by the way it was a great idea but but you there's this moment this Satori you know where you just go oh like what this is so silly well like that's love that's sex like it's crazy like when you read other people's infidelity the text messages the emails because I have to do that all the time and I'll tell you how we make the sausage in the divorce lawyer's office this some of the most entertaining moments is dramatic readings allowed of people's infidelity exchanges but they're lovers the sexts yeah the sects and uh the like you know like it's just so ridiculous because people have to go through like all kinds of gymnastics to be able to meet and have sex in weird places and you know and you're reading this and you're reading these texts and you gotta go like oh my God and by the way like I've represented some very powerful people and you read their texts with their lover or even their spouse like even their spouse you know and they're just pathetic I mean they're just like so not powerful they're so like hey babe you know I I have a I have a name totally nameless I have a very powerful wealthy famous former client where there's a whole series of texts about is my dick weird which by the way I think the answer is if you have to ask if you have a weird dick the answer is probably yes because I've I've owned one and I've never thought is this weird but but I I the fact that you're having this discussion like it's absurd it's hilarious like love is hilarious it's bizarre it's such a weird vulnerability it's such a a basic visceral human need you know it it really is something that we just you know it's mysterious it it it but it but it doesn't have to be that complicated I don't think that even betrayal like I said it doesn't have to be that complicated I think we can frame it differently yeah you can laugh with the whole thing I mean I I think what we don't often do with ourselves is uh look back at text or look back at emails or look back at Google search I did that recently just look at what I searched for like 10 years ago 15 it's like forget last week just look at your Google searches last week and you're like wait a minute what why did you just search for this right 50 times right like why did The Karate Kid 3 pop in yeah exactly why and like you're like where's Ralph Macchio now and where who is he dating yeah uh wise and his mother and then yeah and then you're like in a restaurant nearby yeah like how did I go from this to that but but it made sense at the time so so when you ask someone how did our relationship Fall Apart it's like looking at the Google search history of yourself from tenure you don't even know why you were thinking about those things yeah and now you want to understand why you did what you did felt what you felt she felt what she felt she did what she did and why the two of you how you impacted each other and interacted with each really you think that's doable but you've so you've in in the courtroom does that come up like text messages that resulted in uh with whoever you're cheating with yeah I mean you know cheating doesn't come up as much because most states are no fault States now so why someone's getting divorced whether it's infidelity or you know it doesn't matter there's no good spouse bonus or bad spouse penalty well there isn't I mean you know I'm wearing that like that's well you can have we've had times where we have to prove infidelity because we want to prove what's called wasteful dissipation of marital assets which means that you were spending money that was marital money on a Paramore That's What the legal name for a ex you know for a boyfriend or girlfriend in the marriage and usually the person calls it you know that whore or that piece of shit but we call them Paramore yeah the Paramore yeah and the the the you know sometimes we have to prove inclination and opportunity we have to prove that this person had the inclination to cheat and that they had the opportunity to cheat and then we want to show that okay so when they went away that should be considered dissipation and marital assets so if you go out to dinner with your brother you didn't dissipate the marital estate but if you bought your Paramore a Tiffany bracelet that would be a dissipation marital assets and the person's entitled to a credit back for that from what was taken out of the marital estate so we do sometimes have to authenticate text messages on the witness stand or in depositions you know and what's interesting about that is the way people approach it like people sometimes try to pretend oh no this is just my good friend you know and which is just like you kill your credibility you know if you oh no she's just my very good friend she's not she's not that makes no sense whatsoever for or no we were just friends at that point and then several months later is when we once this marriage was over that's when we got together as partner right that's ridiculous but sometimes people just own it just own it like I did a deposition of an executive once and you know opposing counsel like thought they were going to really hit them they were like and looking at this credit card receipt what was this charge for for this hotel he was like oh that was for a hotel room that I got with uh with my girlfriend and you were married yes yes what did you where did you stay at the hotel it was we didn't even stay we actually just did like an afternoon delight rolled around in bed for the day yeah and it was like well now you know took all the Thunder out of that what's the downside of doing that that seems like there wasn't it actually I think helped his credibility it was my client so I thought it was the right move we hadn't really discussed it in advance but he he was naturally intelligent enough to go yeah my credibility like I'm not gonna lie under oath I'll admit what it was but I'll do it in such an you know we did it like at the end like Eminem at the end of eight mile like it was very like yeah I cheated on her with this person now tell these people something they don't know about me you know and and that's kind of how I try to as a trial lawyer we we actually in my firm refer to it as the Eight Mile strategy which is like we will if I know there was a text message sent you know you piece of shit I hope you die my client sent that text message to his co-parent I I on my examination of my client I will say I'd like to have this marked for identification shown to the witness what is that it's a text message who's it to uh plaintiff you sent it yeah read it out loud for the court oh do I have to I think you should uh you're a piece of uh s does it say s no what does it say well it's a profanity so you say it uh you piece of shit I hope that you die yeah you sent that to her yes why I was really mad do you think that was good no do you think it's helpful to your co-parenting relationship with her no why did you send it then you know she sent me like 50 texts exactly like that and I never responded and I pushed it down every time and then finally I just blew up at her if you had it to do over again would you do it differently you know I wish I could say I would but the truth is I'm human and I was at my limits and I'm watching opposing counsel cross out entire sheets of their cross-examination because it's gone now they thought that they had their like Perry Mason moment they had their like did you order the code red moments and it's gone now because if you just own and accept your fault or your issues in the relationship you can take a lot of the power out of that and I wish we wouldn't take text seriously I don't think we should have substantive discussions via text I think text was designed for are you here yes 15 minutes away or I got here safely love you like that substantive discussions are people love having arguments via text and I have to say when you read other people's text messages as I am often forced to do yeah it is amazing because just like that Google history you were talking about I don't know how the hell you got from one thing to another like I was just reading on actually on on the way here in the car I was reading through a text exchange between two co-parents in the middle of a custody thing that I'm I'm involved in and you never cared about anything and I'm gonna you have no right to take the kids and then the next day nothing in between the next day Maddie got a uh you know a good great honor science thing oh that's great she's doing so well it makes me so happy yeah her teacher said she's doing really well yeah that's really great to see I'll be there about 15 minutes late no problem see you then wait like it was a day ago was there some I want to know was there a phone conversation in between where one of you went hey man listen I'm really sorry about that oh no look we were both pissed whatever or is it just like you did that and then we're supposed to pretend that didn't happen and now we're just going to talk about what Maddie got on her test yeah well sometimes a good nap or a good night's sleep can solve a lot of emotional issues totally get it but is there some if if you're looking just at the texts like it begs the question wouldn't you take the nap and then go Hey listen I just woke up from the nap it turns out I was really tired like does that not happen by text oh no that's uh because sometimes it's hard to probably apologize for being an asshole right so I think we use just text we humans use all kinds of forms of communication to kind of vent I think it's the wrong thing to do but people do do that text has a permanence though it's writing I mean it's writing you you think like a lawyer I like anything like a lawyer but lawyers think lawyers think like detail you know and and why would you write that down like you know writing it down like would you write it down and would you put it on a billboard in Times Square because like that's ex everything you say on Facebook or Instagram Canon will be used against you in a court of law like every photo you post I mean that's going on with uh what's his name Jake Paul or whatever Paul and Dylan danis right now that guy's girlfriend every picture's ever been put on the internet of her by her is being weaponized right now to reference an earlier part of our discussion that's love you take a big risks big risk putting it out there yeah um putting out there on text putting out there on social media what is the reward of doing it via text worthwhile I'm listen the reward of love I think is worth the risks of love but the benefit of communicating by text does it Merit that that risk of that being in writing that the person can reflect on and review and scroll back and get heated up again about I don't know we just take risks and we're vulnerable with each other there may be something about text that for whatever reasons inspires a kind of candor because I think it it is a new way to communicate right in the scheme of things and so sometimes you know we don't know the thing until it's really come into existence so I don't know I think it started as something that we just communicated in a very extemporaneous unplanned way like texts were meant to be I'm here I'm outside whatever it might be and so what happens when you start to talk about more emotional deeper bigger things or visceral things or more emphatic passionate things using a technology that was originally just being used for the other purpose I don't I don't know the answer that what I do know is yeah as a lawyer a from an evidentiary perspective and B I just know what it looks like on the outside like I I I know when I read it what it looks like and that's that's not always accurate like to just see the it's like when you watch you know a video of someone at just their worst moment you know and the person that tries to say but wait that's not me like that was just me in that moment that was me at this incredible low point and I I think as a lawyer my job is to weaponize that and to try to say okay this this low point is indicative of who they actually are yeah and when I'm defending someone I'm supposed to say you know well this is their low Point we've all been to a low point and this is just a moment in this person and to judge them by that moment would you want to be judged by your worst moment so I have to be able to look at that both directions yeah I mean I don't think anyone looks great on text I mean there's so much of our communication that that is missing your you know your your expression like my sense of humor does not do well via text like I I because I have like sometimes a sarcastic sense of humor or I have a dry sense of humor and it does not always translate well to text the Nuance of things is lost sometimes you know yeah but that's what makes the risk of it uh hilarious I mean the Emojis the memes all that um taking a risk the dry the there's a risk with the text if you do some like dark dry statement right that's a joke and then the pause and then there's no response for a couple hours I mean that's beautiful I don't know that's a that's like a it's this you know it's it's the gap between the two trapezes you know like once you've hit send and you're like well let's see where this goes like it's coming back now you know and and you're waiting and waiting it's like that moment of just hang is yeah that's a rush I mean that's a rush that's a beautiful thing we'll have uh my friend Michael malice living close by and if if uh the courtroom or ever to see the text between us I would we would be both in jail for many many years subpoena yeah when this finally comes out when I have my Johnny Depp ever heard moment is ready we'll get Michael Mouse well but that was one of you know the Johnny Depp Amber Heard thing was a great example of in a gunfight between those two everyone was cheering for the bullets I mean no one was I don't think anybody looked like a hero they both looked like what they are which is humans really flawed humans who had you know it really is like that that People magazine thing Stars they're just like us you know like we watched that and went like oh yeah they're just like us like they cannot keep it together they cannot have like they just have these ridiculous toxic moments where both of them look awful in that trial well what do you take away from that trial just just given given all the work you've done I mean for me I don't know if you could speak to that it's probably the first time I've seen that kind of a a complicated relationship even just to say a relationship laid out in this raw form like the fights of a relationship yeah my feeling about that trial is there is no amount of money that would be worth laying that kind of stuff bare publicly for you if you were dying to me yeah there's no way I don't know because they both look awful they both look awful and I don't think I I don't think I'm qualified to say if one of or both of them are awful but they both had moments in that courtroom where their behavior and words looked awful and and I just don't know that that exposing that to the world like the I just don't know I mean I understand the point of view that that by bringing that suit Johnny Depp was saying look I yeah I have to show these awful things to the world about myself but it's it's not as bad as what she's claimed I've done so I get it I'm not saying that's incorrect and for Amber Heard I think her response is well for him to say I'm lying you know I have to prove my but my God like what an awful thing to watch I I it was all it really is is just another it's just another couple like well there's so you know how banal that is you know any kind of stuff happens a lot a lot it's the norm it's not it's not the exception they just happen to have like a grand scale because they have you know lots of people around them and lots of money but yeah it's all this that kind of dysfunction that kind of chaos that kind of he said she said to people with completely differing his histories of what happened in the marriage false allegations of domestic violence or true allegations of domestic violence that are completely denied by the person and you have witnesses that'll say oh my God they never engaged in any kind because again no one engages in domestic violence with company over you know you don't like invite friends like people always say like oh no I saw them they seem so happy like people always do this to me as a divorce lawyer they come in and they go well here's photos of the kids you know smiling with me so that's proof that like I'm a good dad I'm like there's photos of Jeffrey Dahmer smiling with people he ate later and you're you think these photos prove something like I I don't the lack of I'm in the middle of a very complex domestic violence trial and the entire defense on the other side is well we have photos of them on vacation where they look very happy and she never called the cops that's no defense at all like most victims of intimate partner abuse don't call the cops they don't identify self-identify as victims of domestic violence and they probably have many stretches of time of intense happiness or happiness of course and by the way perpetrators of domestic violence are charismatic how else would they get victims you know it's not like if they were ogrish no one would sign on for that relationship it's that when they're good they're so good that when they're bad you go but wait no that's not him the really good person is him or her you know we saw that in in in the public testimony of that you know deaf herd thing is they there were moments where you look at her and go oh my God like I want one just like that and there are moments where you listen to the testimony and go oh my God she's awful like what that's just evil yeah and the same for him so I I really this should teach us something about how not only are there two sides to every story like that that there's just so much complexity and Nuance to these but I think it one was asking the question whether you were team depth team heard or team I could care less about either of these people everybody's looking at it going why like what eight billion people in the world why did you stay together just break up you're miserable it's obvious it's obvious you're not this this can't be worth it I've uh actually become friendly with Kamil Vasquez who's uh the lawyer on the Deb side she's an incredible woman great lawyer and just great human being just how passionate she's about to work I mean you you radiate this kind of same passion like she's just truly happy doing what she does yeah and and but also where the stress of a case is like takes like it is Becomes Her She's you can't sleep all this kind of stuff which is fascinating that's I think that's a function of our professions we we um even after 20 plus years of doing this like the night before a trial I can hardly sleep and uh excitement fear yes yes okay all of that all of that and and I even have moments as I I I pull up to the courthouse and I listen I wear certain cuff links that are like my lucky cuff links or something and and I pull up to the courthouse I walk into the courtroom and I have this feeling in the pit of my stomach and then it starts and the moment it starts something in me goes oh yeah I know how to do this yeah and it's instantly like I just I own it I love it and it's yeah it's the the people that love this job you know being a a trial lawyer being a particularly a divorce trial lawyer family law trial lawyer it's I love it I love I I love it more than I loved it when I started doing it I still you know I I can't imagine spending five days a week looking forward to two you know I I love what I do I I don't know that I'll ever love anyone or anything more than I love the work so I saw you on uh talk with Steve Harvey a bunch of times and it was I always loved it uh one thing just sticks in my head from something he said as advice that if you and your partner your spouse are you know if there's a fight there's a difficult thing you have to deal with keep that to yourself don't talk to anyone else like that's a little like uh what does he say like a two-armed circle or something whatever the expression is but basically resolve it all internally don't like when you face the world you have a front of like don't take off against the family yeah yeah yes like it all boils down to Godfather everything boils down to Godfather references it really does and True Romance yeah you don't take sides against the family you don't you don't you don't show that weakness to the world I I mean again I don't know that I don't know that Steve in Candor would say you shouldn't discuss it with your own therapist you know but but I think what he's saying is don't project it out to the world don't share that because I I think you know it will it can change the way people view your relationship which then will change the way you view your relationship you know and and so I I think um don't run Reckless when it comes to your that primary relationship don't run your mouth recklessly yeah it's one of the things uh I mentioned to you Offline that you know my now close friend Joe Rogan I've never heard him ever speak negatively of his wife it's always like super positive how awesome of a person she is and that to me has always been an inspiration to do the same for every everybody in my life to always speak positively about them is uh that has a probably a virtuous spiral effect I'm sure like I that's that's probably because he has a great wife and he has a great wife in part because of that yeah like I I think it's clear that he's in her corner and cheering for her it's clear she's cheering for him like they they have it's not like Joe Rogan's not a man who has opportunity I mean he's surrounded by UFC ring girls for God's sakes like this is a guy who has all the opportunity in the world and he seems to be quite a fan of his wife and that is you know that's a superpower like that's a real thing now the question is is you know he doesn't seem to talk about it like oh I gotta really work at that yeah you know and that's not a man who's afraid to talk about what he works at you know he's pretty honest about man yeah I gotta work really hard to stay and show I gotta work really hard to be able to do this like yeah I'm not good at memorizing that it takes time yeah but I've never heard him say like oh marriage is a lot of work like and I think that's to his credit because it seems like they're enjoying that yeah it's also not incredibly public like it's not something most people couldn't pick her out of a lineup he kept it private for many years and just because it's a private Joy it's a private like deep meaningful intimate partnership that's interesting that's also an inspiration it doesn't not everything about your life has to be this like like look at me I'm happy like uh I'm in a happy relationship everything is wonderful especially that I I think there is something about the womb like cocoon-like Joy you know of like love you know when you're just tucked in snuggled in like just pressed against each other with that like that that's such a you know like a it's just the two of you yeah and that's lovely you know and that's such a a good thing and I I like we're just dying for connection you know and and that connection is so big it's so everything you know one of my earliest psychedelic experiences probably when I was a teenager but a theme that's been persistent in every psychedelic experience I've ever had is this idea of like everything is connection everything is being pressed to someone and with them you know like the warmth of human connection like I one of the reasons I I enjoy listening to your work and your perspective has always been that I I think at the core you see connection and love and and I think for me from my earliest experiences with psychedelics at you know 16 17. I was very attuned to that I was very much that was put on my radar by psychedelics and just stayed part of my Consciousness forever and I I think I had a 30-something year break from psychedelics but it was like when I came back to it I went oh yeah it's still there that's still the core of everything is connection I mean it's fascinating How Deeply you value connection how empathic you are that you would be doing what you're doing which is uh or or is it not is I think it's the honor intuitive no I think it's it's actually why I'm well suited for what I do I think what I do is I have to learn the story of my client and know it and feel it very deeply and I have to feel it in a very human way that's very compassionate to this person and then I have to feel it and understand it in a way that's incredibly antagonistic to it so I can Shore up defenses so I have to I have to feel this person's story and feelings from every possible angle because every one of them is a vulnerability and every one of them is a potential strength and a potential defense and so I I actually think it's my number one other than extemporaneous speaking ability it is my number one job tool is the ability to radically empathize and to put myself in the emotional state of someone in its best possible light and its worst possible light so that I can see again the defense and I can see the vulnerability but I mean so that's beautifully put but also just to to Bear witness to this connection broken in the yeah in those dramatic way over and over and over and over that part is hard but I was a hospice volunteer for many many years when I first got out of college and it really showed me a lot about you know what is what is sadness what is tragic and what is just inevitable Decay what is pain and Decay like we all die like we play a game you can't win to the utmost and so if we know the answer to all of this is you're going to die then what do we do with the rest of that time if all your stuff is just stuff it's just going to go to the you know the money is going to go like everything's your looks is going to go your everything's gonna go Love's Gonna end one way then what are we doing you know and I again I think it's love and connection but what I'm doing for a living is helping and I don't look at it as what I'm doing is helping people beat the crap out of each other I look at it as I'm trying to help a client build their post-divorce life to sort of Rise From the Ashes of that which has fallen apart and move on to the next chapter and refocus and have the things they need financially emotionally whatever it might be interpersonally in terms of with their kids and so for me it's actually a job that is very consistent with my desire to build connection and to be empathetic and witnessing the ashes doesn't make you cynical about the whole thing of love no because again you know 56 percent of marriages end in divorce but 84 percent are remarried within five years like we keep doing it over and over again that's a good thing I think it is a good thing the mess of it the the absurdity of it the hypocrisy of it that's a that's something um that's something beautiful about that well it's just the return is so great on the investment you know like the listen man I've had more than one dog yeah like when my when my dog died the first dog I had died I remember when I'm never gonna love again I'm done I'm done with this I will never expose myself to this kind of pain again I'll never have to take the dog bed and put it in the closet and like oh and then some friend called me and said we have an adoption event can you just watch this dog for 24 hours and then we'll take him you know we just need you know and I went yeah all right I'll watch a dog for the night you know and this dog come and they say oh he has mange he's knocking fuck I got another dog he walked in my heart went yeah I got it dog and now that dog is 13 years old and his eyes are cloudy and he doesn't go up the stairs real well and he's gonna break my heart and and I wouldn't change that for the world I'm still there um I'm still struggling for the second one I have I lost the dog and broke my heart and yeah but and you'll and you'll never you'll never lose that pain but I promise you your heart has an infinite capacity for the kind of love you felt with that dog and you'll never feel a love that replaces the whole like there will never be another Buster for me but there was cava and like you know what like and when he's gone there will never be another one of him but you know what like when when that stupid puppy that was five months old stumbled in I went I guess I'm gonna do this again and you know what I'm so glad I'm so glad and I know by the way I know now because and that's where I I've said like you know it's that Joseph Brodsky poem you know a song like I wish I knew no astronomy when stars appear like I wish I didn't know the pain but you know what like I I don't care I don't care and I believe we don't care I again I think there's something to that if something hurts so badly and you go I'm gonna do it again I'm going to do it that it must be a value it must be of real value there's also a different perspective on it uh that pain so there's that uh from Louis the show of this interaction with an old man with Lucy K and he says that uh because Louie is mourning the loss of uh got split up he got dumped or whatever and his mourning the loss of that partner of of love and the old man says that that is the best part like missing the love is still love the the bet the real bad part is when you forget it when you when the pain Fades it's all gone but the pain is actually a kind of celebration of the love you ask of course well the opposite of Love isn't hate the opposite of Love is indifference yeah there's no question about that I mean it hate is a passionate emotion love is a passionate emotion but and and there is a school of thought that says that only unfulfilled love can be truly romantic but I I believe that it's what I think I learned from hospice is that I I think for me knowing the impermanence is is the thing you know it's the key yeah it's finite as eventually it's going to be over and so like that intensifies the feeling that that's when you can have Pure Love without the drama dogs are for me a great example and again I don't know what it all means right existentially but I just feel like they have that that kind of love has to be here to teach us something and I I feel like the fact that they're so amazing and just so loving and so wonderful and the bond we feel is so amazing and deep and it doesn't require a lot of maintenance and yet it's so finite like it's just this short little lifespan and I feel like that there's just such a lesson there you know there's so much there to unpack about the nature of connection and loss and you know that that that your heart has this infinite capacity like when you're I'm telling you when when my dog died when Buster died I remember I thinking with certainty I will never do this again because I'll never love that way again I'll Never Love A dog the way I love this dog and it's just not true that's just not true like you you have this infinite capacity and and it's that makes it scary actually because like right now there's so many people you could love there's so many dogs you could love like there's so much out there and it requires a certain bravery and tremendous amount of risk to do it you know and um a commitment because I I think to really experience love is you just dive in because there is a huge number of people but to really like I mean you you have to like really um dive into the full complexity the full range of another human being yeah which is hard because we don't even I don't know that we even feel comfortable diving into the full range of ourselves you know there's pieces of ourselves we try to push away or not think about or okay so uh speaking of the whole sociopath slash empath that is all embodied in one human being that is you let's go back to some cases perhaps that you've uh worked on just something that stands out to you what's maybe um the craziest most complicated thing you've worked on is there something that pops to mind craziest would be different than most complicated let's go craziest yeah so craziest ah gosh that's a great question so from uh chaos standpoint I mean I see so many bizarre fact patterns and so many variations of people cheating with people people sleeping with the nanny people sleeping with someone's a relative of their spouse people having same sex or polyamorous relationships and the other person doesn't even know they're not monogamous like so much craziness um that you could fill 15 books in terms of complexity you know I mean emotionally complexes any custody case is emotionally complex because you're you're dealing with parenting issues and what makes a good parent I think is a very tricky question because you know I'm trying to convince a judge who's a better parent and that is so loaded with subjective you know value judgments is there uh just a link on the maternal presumption is that a thing you uh come face to face with often well there was I mean it was real it was the law there was something in the law called the maternal presumption it was also known as The Tender Years Doctrine which meant that a child under the age of seven was presumed to be in the custody of the mother unless you could show she was an unfit mother so that's where the idea of like someone has to be proven an unfit mother came from now in the 80s 1980s that was changed but you know under my skin is under my sovereignty I mean you can't suggest that there isn't in the in the world a suggestion that a mother who births a child and feeds a child with her body doesn't have a particular bond with a child that's different than a father's bond with a child so where do we put that how much importance do we put on it now that there's better and more research in the mental health field about attachment Theory and infants there's also a lot of you know a lot of research on how is attachment formed how should parenting schedules be put together based on attachment Theory but you know it there's conflicting perspectives on that and so as judge to judge you see like is there a lot of variation yeah there is because there's lots of kinds of Judges like there's judges that are thoughtful enlightened interested in the mental health research and there's judges that just want were unsuccessful lawyers that were good politically and got elected and they just want to you know they just want a job where like they show up at nine o'clock they have a lunch break from 12 until two o'clock and that they leave at 4 30 and they get a certain number of weeks vacation and a pension after 20 years so what is in general the process of these custody battles like what what are the what's the landscape well most the overwhelming majority of custody cases don't end up in my office they they are a negotiation between two people that love their children more than they dislike their soon to be ex so the overwhelming majority of cases are just two people going okay how are we going to make decisions together because there are decisions that have to be made about kids will they go to public or private school can they go on medication if they need it or not should we change pediatricians you know all those kinds of things how do we make decisions and when will we each spend time with the kids and so most custody cases are just that most custody cases are just a discussion a negotiation between Council about those issues and and they're not ugly and they're not anything they're just people again sometimes people have differing perspectives you know but sometimes people haven't thought through their perspective so as a divorce lawyer a lot of what I'm doing is counseling a person because they come in and say well I've been the person who handles you know all of the homework and all of the everything so he should only see the kids on weekends and there's a logic to that like I've always done the homework with the kids so I'm the parent who's in charge of the homework and he's obviously not done that before but there's also a logic that you can then say right but then you're doing all the heavy lifting of parenting and he's doing none of that and you were a married couple and living together so he was trusting you to do that because you're good at it and you you seem to like it so maybe now we want him to have to do some of the heavy lifting of parenting because we don't want the child when they're 13 to say I love Dad we have nothing but a good time together whereas you make me do my homework and eat my broccoli dad's the grass on the other side of the fence that's Greener so sometimes it's about educating a client to like change their frame you know to look at this differently yeah okay we always go to my mother's for Thanksgiving so I need every Thanksgiving okay well you were married so you went to now you're going to have New Traditions things are changing for your children things are changing for your family you're both going to have New Traditions so a lot of times it's just educating people on looking at things in a different way looking at their parenting in a different way we're not going to live in the same house anymore but we're still going to parent these child you know this child or these children together what's much more interesting because like you know I don't get invited to a lot of parties but when I get invited to parties if somebody says what do you do for a living and I say I'm a divorce lawyer and they go oh my God you must have stories that's the way everybody's oh my God you must have so many stories and if I said yeah there was this couple and they you know slowly grew apart and then they decided that it would be good for them to end their relationship as a married couple but they wanted to continue to have an amicable co-parenting relationship so they divided their assets and and they figured out a good parenting access schedule that made sure that they both had both Leisure Time and responsibilities with the children people would be like that's the worst fucking story out that's so boring yeah so what they really want is the like and then he was sleeping with the nanny and then she caught him so you know the the truth is like people want to hear about those flame outs and by the way those are super interesting as a lawyer like it's super interesting it's usually going to be what infidelity you do have a chapter called everybody fucks the nanny everybody's fucking The Nanny yeah he's a nanny Fascination out there I try to explain it in the book but yeah I mean I've had some great Nanny stories I mean people run off with the nanny people end up getting married to the nanny I had one where the the he convinced her that they should have a threesome with the nanny they got the nanny drunk they had a bunch of threesomes with the nanny and then the nanny and the wife paired up and left him oh nice and they're still quite happy that seems like a happy ending for everyone but him but it was his idea well he's really gonna have a nanny Fascination now now he's yeah well now he's got to see the nanny who's now the like step parents to the kids and it was his bright idea of let's have a threesome with the nanny you know yeah I mean the nanny thing I I think is a function of in many circumstances is the characteristics of the wife that he remembers fondly and that have been extinguished by the presence of children so I I my words of wisdom is not don't get a nanny or make sure you get an ugly Nanny my my thought on it is that a woman should remember even when she's a mother that she's also a woman who a man you know they fell in love with each other and she should take time to be in touch with the part of herself that is an independent woman that's interesting and interested and you know like there's a lot to be learned from divorced couples because like divorced couples if you do it right it's awesome like I I had a wonderful experience parenting and being divorced because I divorced when my kids were quite young my co-parent you know my ex-wife is awesome she's a great mom nice person we're good friends and it was great I had half the time I had my kids and I could focus on them and the other half of the time they were with the other person who loves them as much as I do and I didn't have any of the responsibilities of of kids and I could just have you know all of the wonderful fun that you can have when you don't have you know the the responsibilities that come with full-time caring for children so what would you say now on the flip positive side we've been talking about the collapse of things what about success what's the secret to successful romantic relationship my mom used to say that it's hard to Define intelligence but you could spot stupid a mile away yeah so I'm much better at at pointing out where people fall apart because I spend a lot of time with people who have fallen apart in their relationship so it's easy to then say well just don't do what they do but I don't know that that's not an oversimplification um so again I I think the answer is connection I think the answer is um affection presence you know mindfulness and presence I I do think in my personal and professional experience that most people want you fully more than they just want you in a disconnected way so if you were to say to your romantic partner you can have me for two hours where I'm giving you my undivided attention and I'm really joyful to be with you or you can add me for eight hours where I'm sort of half paying attention and I kind of want to be someplace else for part of the time there's just no choice there it's so obvious so I think presence is a big piece and I think that um I think the the you the me and the we I think is important because I think in relationships there's you and there's me and we meet and something magical happens you know and we become we and now there's you and there's me there's we and then the we gets bigger bigger and bigger and isn't it great because it's such a nice warm place it gets so big but it gets so big that you get small and me gets small because we and if any of us dares to ask well what about you what about me no no the we what you don't like the way you don't want to be with the Wii like well no it's not that but we only exist because there was you and there was me and I really like you and you really liked me and so we picked each other out of lots of choices and now this we is so fucking big like it threatens to just consume all of it you know and I I really think that there's something there we have to look at more honestly so we should not consume everything but it at the same time not be small well the we is the you and the me and if you if you mix it so much that you and me loses it's it's you know it's components that all that's left is we like I don't think that that's the way to do it I I just think there's a the world pulls Us in that direction like we we get told culturally that well why aren't you going with this person to that why would you do that by yourself and and why why why like anyone knows that there's joy in being away from each other and there's joy being reunited together so why why don't we you know speak very honestly about that you know it's very and I think some of that's our own insecurity you know well why don't you want to be with me 24 hours a day or am I wonderful or in a delightful it's like oh wait what you know well but also probably people are either afraid or lazy in developing their individual selves I mean still it's slowly going out there in the world by yourself and it's comforting in that little Cocoon of we I mean it can also be incredibly adventurous going out into the World by yourself and then coming back to the Wii with a full report yeah you know coming back and saying like oh my God guess what I saw guess what I did oh maybe we have to go there together now because all I could think about was you yeah you know while I was there I was like oh my God she would love this you know like that's magical that's amazing like like I look what I brought you back you know I went into this and then I got you this present from there like there's something you know and we know this you know I I always thought it was you know like when you watch the old westerns you know or like the you know the heroes leaving you know and he's walking away from the cabin because he's gonna go fight the gun fight and she runs up and she goes please don't go don't go stay here with me and he like kisses there and then he goes yeah you know if he goes like yeah you're right I'll just stay here it's cool you know like this is I didn't want to deal with that anyway like he's not the hero anymore though yeah yeah that's deep truth to that uh and then probably like you mentioned sex is probably a big part of it friendship that seems to me like a really important one depends on how you define friend like I I you know I if if being a friend means we have some connection to each other and we have each other's cell phone numbers okay then we're friends but if it's a bigger definition than that if it's like you've picked me up at the airport you know or like I you know you're someone I could call that it's like dude I gotta hide a body like you get Shovel and lime I like how you escalated from airport pickups to murder yeah well I have to tell you I I Define you know the Ben Affleck movie The Town you know that scene that's friendship to me I mean to me the ideal male friendship is the scene where he says I need you to come with me we're going to hurt some people and you never have to ask me about it again oh yeah and he says whose car are we taking yeah and that's sort of like to me that's friendship so it's all it's a high bar you know to be like a friend so when you say like friendship I I think that's the kind of friendship you should ideally have with your romantic partner if you're getting married it should be the like whose car are we taking like it should be that it's you and me to be fair that bar has reached with me with with a lot of people yeah like if you call me tomorrow there's a body but you're a big open you're a big open heart but it's true like I wonder how many people out there are like that in terms of hiding the body I mean my theory on this because I think I'm like you in that way I think I think I I'm very sensitive I feel things really deeply you know and I think it's it's that's a tariff the world is terrifying when you feel things very deeply because there's so much pain there's so much betrayal there's so many opportunities to be hurt you know and I think when you are that kind of person you go through like stages and one of them is that I don't care I don't feel anything it doesn't matter I don't feel anything I don't feel anything I don't feel anything like you try to convince yourself I don't feel anything it's fine I don't feel anything and then at some point like you know you you do feel all of it and then it's like oh my God the weight of this is crazy I think it's the whole Arc of Pink Floyd The Wall it's literally the entire Arc of Pink Floyd The Wall you know and and the song stop you know where I want to go home take off this uniform and leave the show like you just when you feel all of it the army of hammers coming at you the slings and arrows of Outrageous Fortune you know a thousand natural shocks the flesh is there too when you feel all of that deeply you know it's very hard but but it can also be a superpower because I think when you can bring that to a relationship when you can bring that to a profession like you've done and I've done then you there's something very magical about that the ability to to to bring it out in someone to feel it in yourself to understand it you know is is a gift it's a wonderful wonderful I'm humbled by what it brought me professionally and I'd like to think that you and I have both found professions that enable us to use that sensitivity that empathy in a in a productive and good way and in a fulfilling or personally fulfilling way and ideally in a way that does does good for other people you yourself are incredibly successful in high performer you've dealt with a lot of CEOs and just High performers in all walks of life what can you say about successful relationships with those kinds of folks that's a good question I think um is it all the same stuff or there's something special when they're busier well you know I I think when you represent High net worth individuals but also High performing I would make a distinction between High net worth and high performing so I I've done High net worth divorces where the person's like a trust fund kid even though they're an adult you know but they're like they're what they did to achieve their High net worth status is their great grandfather died sure you know so that is different than someone who is self-made who through discipline Focus entrepreneurship you know whatever it might be um that that they have found success and there's also difference between financial success and fame because I've represented famous people that actually did not have that much money in this game of things or much liquidity I mean I've represented people that that were not in any way famous and were very high performing in their field like in New York we have a lot of Finance people so and what I find is um their divorces are challenging one on a technical level because figuring out what they have and how to divide it is tricky sure yeah because when something's moving that quickly like when you're when your portfolio's movement you know affects a market you know that's that's challenging you know Jeff Bezos divorce for a time when it was in its early stages could affect Amazon stock it did you know so that's a that's a real thing you know there are there are businesses that are affected by a divorce but in terms of of being in a relationship with someone who um who is a high performing person you know most of the high performing people I know are creatures of discipline and routine you know from from uh Joe Rogan you know we've talked about you know any of these people like they have a routine they have a discipline they have a focus they have a way they like to do things they have a type of coffee they like to drink they have a way that they like to do and and divorce is a tremendous disruption I mean divorce is fundamental things in your life or shifted out of your control like your spouse may be the one who has decided you are no longer going to live in that house you will no longer see your children on these days so to take that control away from someone is very very hard I mean when someone is a high performing High net worth person they are used to being told yes they are used to being able to buy their way out of a problem but just like illness you know I you can get you can hire the best doctor but you can't cure cancer because you have a lot of money like you can hire the best lawyer but you can't cure a custody case you know and that's I mean Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's seemingly endless custody disputes that have been going on for years now with the best lawyers in California working on them is proof of the fact that you can't just buy a resolution to those things you know that you have to go through it just like everyone else so that lets me ask the question how much does a divorce usually cost it's a great question average divorce I mean it's sort of like a what I always tell clients in the first consultation is I tell them the most reasonable question a person could ask me sitting in that chair across from me is too how long is this going to take and how much is it going to cost and those are two questions I can't answer yeah and then the next thing they say is give me a Range which is a bit like calling your doctor and saying I have a headache what is it well I can't tell you I'd have to do tests give me a Range okay it's a reaction to the barometric pressure and it'll be gone in 15 minutes or it's a brain aneurysm and you'll be dead in five minutes there's your range and so it didn't really help right so I I have the least expensive divorce I've ever seen is two people who who one of whom comes into my office and says we've written down on a yellow pad what we figured out at the kitchen table she's going to keep the house I'm going to keep the 401K we have a bank account at this Bank we're going to split that 50 50. I'm going to pay her this much in child support each month and we're gonna agree from time to time on what we're going to do in terms of the schedule with the kids but they're primarily going to live with her can you write this up and make it legally binding yes 3 500 bucks just as a side note of I have a friend who went through a divorce and uh handled it just masterfully by giving more than he's supposed to and having nothing but love in his heart and happiness with the kids and just like I don't know that to me is just an inspiration like not like his whole view was like who cares about money like well yeah and also like he refused like with every author of his being to have anything but complete love for the other person yeah I've had clients who with a straight face will say to me like well I'm not going to quibble over a few million dollars and they mean it because to them it's numbers on a page so I'll personalize this a bit so I I have a friendly relationship with my ex-wife who's the mother of my sons who are adults we have maintained a very good relationship and so now it's many years divorced later 17 18 years later and we were able to sort of post game that relationship even our co-parenting relationship you know we kind of post game it when we chat with each other and I remember once saying to her you know yeah you never you know you never like screwed around with me when it came to the kids like you were always so like cool you know like like if I called you like if I was having a really bad day at work and uh or like seeing just an ugly custody case and like it just felt like I would call her and say like hey can I just pick the boys up and like take them out for ice cream or something tonight I know it's not my night but would you mind if I just like took them out for a couple hours she'd be like yeah sure come on by yeah she was always flexible like that and I said to her like was that just Goodwill like you're just a good person or like what was that about and she was like yeah it was partly that but she was like it was partly that like you never screwed around with me when it came to money like if the kids needed something or if I needed something as the mother of the kids like you were always like yeah sure of course like I heard conditioning kicked out and she needed to replace it and she didn't have like liquidity I mean I didn't have a lot of money at the time because it was a long time ago and I was like all right no no because I don't want you hot and upset and I don't want the boys you know to be in like of course and so I I think yeah when you when you approach a conflict with like it's very hard to argue with someone who won't argue with you if the person approaches the argument from the point of view of like I'm not gonna argue with you like I'm gonna absorb your aggression I'm gonna I'm going to just not meet it with that I'm going to meet it with love I'm going to meet it with positive it doesn't always work because sometimes people are so angry that they just are they're Relentless yeah but I have to tell you like the louder you get the quieter I get the more you seem irrational you know and and that's what I always try to bring that to court proceedings like I always try to bring to court like if I know my adversaries coming in hard I'll come in quiet and slow and deliberate because I want the volume to be turned up way too high over there and then it looks like what it was your honor what's their problem over there you know and I think that I say this to clients they got a four-year-old they're getting divorced let's say there's gonna be a wedding in like 20 something years there's gonna be a wedding and it's either going to be the wedding where they got to put these people on opposite sides of the room because if they pass each other by The Shrimp Boat they're going to kill each other or it's the wedding where like you stand there you take some pictures you kind of go like yeah we fucked up this whole marriage thing but man we did a good job with this kid did we you know and the decisions you make right now there's a straight line to that wedding and so even if you don't like this person even if you're mad at them even if you're mad at yourself for the choices you made in choosing them as a co-parent like like every single Mother's Day for 27 years I have told my now long time ex-wife happy Mother's Day I'm so glad that we had kids together I'm so glad you're the mother of my kids because they wouldn't be who they are if it wasn't that they were part me in part you and I'm so grateful for you and you know I'm always cheering for you like how hard is that how hard is that well it's really hard for some people but I don't understand why it's so hard for some people I'll tell you I do find that hard there's not a lot of things that I kind of don't understand but that's one that I kind of don't understand like I put in one of the one of the weird things I did as a divorce lawyer that caused like a little stir among my colleagues for a few years was some years ago like we all steal from each other's work divorce lawyers like we're like the matrimonial Mafia like we all know each other we all deal with each other over and over again but we all have the same job and so we we're the only people that really know the unique stresses of that job so even though we try to kill each other all day it's like boxer like professional fighters like yeah your job's to take each other's head off but like nobody knows what the two you went through like the two of you yeah you know that's why like I always get like I go like all kinds of rubbery when I see after the fight like the two people hug each other yeah because I'm always like like yeah because you know what they they relate to each other better than anybody they suffered they bled you know the competitors they bled you know so I I really think divorce lawyers we have that same kind of relationship like we we went through this stress you know on opposite sides trying to take each other apart and I I find that you know we we all steal from each other's material when it comes to separation agreements Provisions that we use for agreements like all the Agreements are like these Frankenstein Monsters of oh I like his estate planning provision so I like her you know Provisions related to maintaining a life insurance policy to secure the alimony award and I wrote this paragraph for this select this section because what what occurred to me is that when you have a child with someone and let's say they're three 4 5. they're old enough to know what Christmas is but they're not old enough to go buy a Christmas present but they're old enough to know that you get presents on Christmas and you give presents on Christmas but they're not old enough to buy one for the parent so someone has to do that for them so I thought I'm going to put in a provision that says that as long as the children are so young that they can't independently purchase a Mother's Day or a birthday present for the co-parent that you'll take the children either to buy a small gift or to make a card something like that this struck me as a no-brainer who could disagree with this like it's not for the person it's for the kid it's so the kid happy birthday Mom I don't have a present for you I don't have a card for you because I'm fucking five yeah like I'm five like like you you can't go do that so wouldn't you want your child not your co-parent who cares you maybe you want them to have the worst birthday ever fine but you don't want your child to be embarrassed and I even put in the provision the parties acknowledge that it is the intention of this provision to ensure that the child is not embarrassed and feels you know that they were able to say I cannot tell you how many people refuse to sign that how many lawyers said to me we're taking that out and I went wait why well why does my client have to buy a present for your client I said they're not buying a present for my client they're buying a present for the child to give to my client it can be one of those little three dollar boxes of chocolates they sell at the drugstore like it's a kid they don't know they don't know what anything is and people nope and I have to tell you of the conundrums of the puzzles that I can't figure out in existence that's when I can't figure I do not understand why that's so hard that's basically just an illustration of their complete inability to do anything nice for the other person right the level of hatred the level of vitriol that they like maybe this is me I'm if you apologize there's I there's not a lot I won't forgive like I'm not saying I I'll forget it I'm not saying oh we're totally good like it never happened I understand that but if someone says what I call a non-bullshit apology right like a bullshit apologies oh I'm sorry you got so upset when I did that like that's a bullshit apology you know I'm sorry that you were offended that's a bullshit apology or I'm sorry for what I did because we what are we talking about we might not be talking about the same thing or you might be saying I'm sorry that you found out about that not that you did it so a real apology is I lied to you and I realized that that hurt you and I'm really sorry I shouldn't have done that I regret that I did that and I know that it hurt you and I'm really sorry that's a real apology Okay so someone's willing to give you that and you still want to walk around with like the level of vitriol that you will harm your child rather than do something nice for them I don't have a solution and I'd say I see that all the time like parental alienation is a thing it is a thing like children can be weaponized like I always tell people you want to get married get married get a prenup ideally but if you don't have a prenup okay you're just risking money don't worry you're just risking money money and hassle you know of paperwork and of time and of going through an ugly Financial divorce but you have a kid with somebody you have you have that is a missile like that person has a power over you for a long time if not forever so the child could be used as part of a manipulation oh routinely the secret weaponize children all the time and they do it they do it with the permission of their own conscience because they they genuinely believe I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna protect this person this child from this person who by the way is a bad spouse but that doesn't mean they were a bad father or bad mother you can be bad at being a spouse but the skill set of a spouse and of a parent it's not necessarily the same and and I've seen you know people people alienate children from a parent in such subtle ways but they're so powerful and as a lawyer you know it doesn't matter what I know it matters what I can prove and and it's very hard to prove alienation because it's usually a very subtle process and the example I always give to people is it's a rare kind of crazy person that will say to a seven-year-old your dad is a bad person but this hello here's your dad you just said your dad's a bad person you just did it with your eyes you did it with your the expression on your face when you handed the phone to the kid you told that kid your dad's a bad person you didn't have to say it out loud and that that is something people are guilty of all the time you know when when the kid comes home and says you know there's a divorced couple kid comes home and says I met mom's new boyfriend and you go oh yeah that's nice remember he's not your dad you know like whoa like you just told that kid a whole bunch of information about how he's supposed to feel about this person whereas if you go that's nice it's a nice guy oh that's great I heard nice things yeah I heard he's really he likes bicycles that's cool that's really neat like you just told this kid okay it's okay you could like this person it's okay to like this person it's okay that your mom is with this person like and again whatever you feel about your ex your co-parent you usually you love your kid more than you hate your ex ideally also I wish people would even without an apology forgive each other because I it goes back to the earlier discussion we had like I I usually forgive people if there's something in them especially if we shared something but even just if there's something about them that's beautiful like it's great that they exist in the world so I'm just grateful for that and I use that as the uh the fuel of forgiveness I don't know to me like forgiveness is very often it's for me you know like when I let go of anger I feel lighter you know I I I think my heart enjoys peace I mean partly it's because I fight for a living you know I I work in the world of conflict like I I jokingly used to say to my sons when they were teenagers you know like I can only argue if you've paid like it's not fair to the paying customers If I argue with you for free that's not fair you know but I think we're talking about the the incredibly wide range that a divorce can cost yeah so so the cheat and you were saying the cheapest one was the yellow yeah yellow pad two people came to an agreement write it up make it legally binding five grand maybe you know tops but usually 3 500 five grand that kind of vibe most expensive Millions millions of in Council fees and that's because of the duration the complex the duration the complexity of issues like I have clients who've paid two three million in Council fees to me so it's like acid to custody or like what well it can be complex custody that requires a hearing that requires expert testimony dueling mental health professionals opining on the parenting um it can be a situation where emergency circumstances occur like where an individual tries to abscond to another country with the children and you have to bring them back under the Hague convention on International child abduction oh wow yeah we've done some Hague cases um you know there there are cases where people have have very different facts like before I came here today a client of mines soon to be ex-husband who she's in the middle of it where he tested positive for cocaine on a hair follicle test where it was said he was definitely not going to test positive and he tested positive so it was like we were scurrying now with okay we gotta get a motion filed we got to suspend access we gotta protect the kids we gotta get in front of a judge we got to think about what are the implications of this because he was about to transition to an unsupervised parenting like this is the kind of stuff that can can amp up the amount of work the lawyer has to do which then translates to money I mean I get paid for my time you know and the time of my team you know I have attorneys and paralegals who work for me so I when you have a team of lawyers working on a case you can burn tens of thousands of dollars a day if it's a big enough case there are also very complex Financial cases you know people move and hide money High net the high net worth space is a different world like if if an average person owns a home they own a home in their name or their name with their spouse a high net worth person owns an LLC that owns that home that LLC is owned by a trust they are a beneficial interested party in that trust like this is how some of my clients who make tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars a year Pay Less in taxes than a cop or a firefighter because they they have structures and the structures that were designed for tax planning purposes then in a divorce become very tricky to unwind and to figure out wait no what is mine and what is not you know well then that takes us to the question of prenups what's your view on prenups prenuptial agreements it's not popular to quote Kanye West but if you ain't no chump Hollow we want prenup we want prenup I mean that's what he had to say meaning uh so it's a prenup is a good idea prenup is an excellent idea prenup is um a prenup is a contract between two people that binds their respective rights and obligations in the event of a divorce when it comes to financial issues that's all it is and it's a there's there's a lot of reasons to have them and there really aren't any reasons not to have them other than the fact it requires an uncomfortable conversation so uh I mean there's a few questions here first do they work legally in general yes if they are crafted correctly which is not that hard to do for a lawyer to do I'm saying for a lawyer to do because with the internet everybody thinks why would I spend a thousand dollars I can just Google prenuptial agreement and I can get one and then it'll be that is a bad idea like it is it is like a will like if you're going to have a document that binds your rights at that level it's worth like the most expensive prenup I've ever done was like three grand that's ridiculous that's not a lot of money like so there's no reason you wouldn't do it but people still people will still I've had clients that have hundreds of thousands of dollars and they did their print up downloading something from the internet and because of some imperfection you know it doesn't have the right what's called acknowledgment which is the section where the notary signs and it has to say that it was duly sworn before this person on this date and if it doesn't have that it's invalid it's not binding so there are weird technicalities but yeah prenups are binding as long as there's been some minimal asset disclosure which is easily done in a prenup and as long as there's not a language deficiency meaning that the person who is reading it understands English to the level that they understand what they're signing and if they don't that at least they've they've acknowledged in their native language that there is some opportunity for this to be translated for them yeah they're binding they're they're they're presumptively binding you know we live thankfully in a culture where people are allowed to enter into contracts about money what uh like what are some prenups that you've seen that can be um effective or what that people converge towards in terms of what does that agreement look like because uh you know the popular conception is when there's no prenup both sides get half and that's generally true that both sides get half um equitable distribution which is what the law is called it's the law of equitable distribution it's not called The Law of equal distribution for a reason because it's Equitable not equal now equal like Equitable is presumed to be equal but there are exceptions to that presumption and that's where lawyers can get into fun and or trouble depending on how you view it it's where we make our money we make our money arguing that the fair result will not be just a 50 50 split and so um there's there's the very generic standard prenup which is easy and I you know that's I call that Yours Mine and Ours like if it's in your name it's yours whether it's an asset or a liability my name it's mine joint names we split at 50 50. simple clean and you go in to the marriage now knowing what the rules are so if you get a bonus at work and you put it in your soul name then it's your separate property in the event you divorce you go out and buy a boat and she doesn't support you buying the boat but the boat you got a big loan on this boat you're responsible for that loan so I like that because I like people having some control and I also like people having to have discussions well why are we putting that bonus just in your bank account why wouldn't we put it in the joint bank account we should have that discussion while we're married not when we're in a divorce lawyer's office 10 years later because we should be able to talk about those kinds of things so you know what's interesting about prenups is that that somehow people think there's something like it takes away from the romance of a marriage but but I've said it before and I'll say it again all marriages end they end in death or divorce so having life insurance or having a will it doesn't mean you can't wait to die it doesn't mean you're looking forward to death it doesn't mean that you're you're you're you're predicting you know your demise sometime imminently it just means that you know you're being realistic and honest so when you marry and I don't mean spiritually marrying having a marriage ceremony I mean legally marrying you're making changes to your rights and obligations under law that's what you're doing like marriage from a legal standpoint what we mean when we say I got married is a is a it's a state agency it's been created by the state like this is a a legal status that most people who are in it know nothing about they they just did the most legally significant thing they're ever going to do other than dying and they have no idea what rights and obligations it created in them and the first time they're going to get an education about it is in my office that's crazy when they get divorced that's crazy and so prenup is an opportunity to learn something about it at the start so first of all whenever someone approaches me about prenups and and that's like four or five times a week probably depending on the season right before wedding season we get a lot like when's wedding season well it used to just be the summer you know say they say when you marry in June you're a bride all your life that's from some Rogers and Hammerstein musical um now the fall is very big too people love fall content fall weddings pretty you know pictures and things yeah good on the Ground full of content yeah all right weddings is for the gram I have to tell you weddings is performative man see the problem is though it's curated so you it's here's us picking the cake it's not here's us doing the prenup you know how many you know how many people I've done prenups for that I've watched on their social media or them being interviewed by Andy Cohen on Bravo and saying well no we don't have a prenup yeah you do yeah you do you do it's in my office it's in a folder yeah no that's beautiful but prenups are not published any place they're not filed with a court they're maintained by the two people that signed it and they're lawyers that's it so nobody has to admit that they have a premium beautiful but it's but there's a yes but there's a certain problem with that in so far is a lot of people have prenups and we need to normalize prenups like there's no reason not to normalize prenups there's no reason not for for until some famous people say yeah we have a prenup we're crazy about each other that's why we're getting married you know but yeah look we're getting you know I don't want to get a car accident but I got a seat belt you know like you have it just in case and uh I mean what do you do if you're running a company like how what does that have to do with the prenup you know you're running a 100 billion dollar or trillion dollar company Jeff Bezos I suppose his marriage was before Amazon as was before it was anything but like how does that work in a prenup like well no actually it's it's the same I mean what you're what you're doing with the prenup is you're identifying you're identifying how things will be classified in advance so you're creating a set of rules and then you both can function under those rules during the marriage so like I for a brief time I taught a a family law drafting class at a law school and when we would do separation agreements and we would do pleadings you know it was lots of fun when we would do prenups I would say to the students you know what's the main thing you need when you're doing a prenup and they would say well you know you need asset disclosure and say well that's not the main thing and they said well you need um you know technical language I said nope main thing you need is a crystal ball the main thing you need is the ability to see what's going to happen in the future who's going to have money who's not who's going to be successful who isn't what people will inherit problem is we don't have that we don't have that so what can we do we can create tranches we can create structures we can create systems and then people can live with those in mind you enter the game knowing the rules right so you know if this is going to be a submission only event you know if this is going to be no time limit you know if we're after a certain number of minutes we're going into points now okay so I can work with that rule set and I'm going to amend my game based on that rule set same thing same thing you're just gonna say look what's the rule set let's agree on the rule set and then let's conduct ourselves with the rule set in mind let's plan the rule set in mind and I think that you know and by the way and if you're gonna cheat you cheat with the rule set in mind you know you're cheating right you know you're trying to get around the rule set so prenups are when I do a consult for a prenup the first thing I do is here's what's going to happen legally if you marry without a prenup here's what happens to your rights and obligations then what we can change with that there's almost no limit you can you can amend anything you want to the example I always give is there was a case that went up to the Appellate Court where High net worth guy married a very beautiful woman and there was a provision in the prenuptial agreement that said for every 10 pounds she gained during the marriage she would lose ten thousand dollars a month in alimony if they divorced and there was a here's a baseline weight as of the time of execution of this agreement and I wondered if she was like a like did like what a wrestler does like did she like you know yeah did she like bulk up right before and then cut when she eventually got divorced like is she in there with sauna you know with the suit on um but but the and and the Appellate Court essentially said um I don't know why you married this person having had them make you sign this but it's binding yeah but it's binding I wish somebody would do a contract like that like like the rent for this place would be more expensive if I was fatter and cheaper if I was skinnier and that way I would have to weigh in motivation like some motivation on you yeah exactly that's that kind of prenup is motivating well what's his name I think Tim Ferriss says that about how he does like um he said you should make Bets with people like it's like if you gain this much I got to give you this amount of money you know Nick says that in one of his early books and trying to make it binding somehow which is tough yeah I think when we create incentives of that kind you know that's why like there was like the no not November or No Shave November you know sober like all this yeah it was a competition when people make a competition of something they gamify something it you know makes it something that people are more likely to stick with so I mean I guess the prenup be interesting there you know the problem is there there's also people put in prenups what's called Fidelity Clauses uh oh yeah yeah it was yeah Fidelity Clauses and people still do these I discourage people from doing them they're the two things that people put in prenups that I discourage people from putting in prenups but very often people still put in prenups even with my caveat is Fidelity Clauses and sunset clauses so Fidelity Clauses is um I'm waving alimony I'm waving this I'm waving that but if you cheat I get a million bucks or I get this much alimony or I get this amount and I know the intention is to disincentivize the person from cheating it's a deterrent to have them cheat but all it really does is just creates like an interesting legal battle for lawyers like how did you prove that they cheated or not all right because uh what what yeah what constitutes cheating also right right is an emotional affair and Affair is oral sex cheating is you know like what what is and by the way how do you prove it yeah like well I was in a hotel with her but how do you prove that I had sex with her you know like and it's it's very very um you're opening a can of worms with that kind of a thing but people sometimes still put them in um and sunset Clauses Sunset Clauses is if we're married X period of time this goes away as if it never existed and why is that a bad idea the same reason the community property law in California is a bad idea so the community property law is after a certain number of years I think it's seven everything including your pre-marital property all becomes marital property and the idea of that was supposed to be that if you've been married that number of years like you're in enough of a serious relationship now that everything is one unit you're one person what it actually does is creates a very uncomfortable thought experiment that people have to have at the six year mark because you have to now the honeymoon's kind of over you might have a kid or two and you go okay wait a minute am I so happy in this relationship that I'm willing to take all of my pre-marital assets and throw them in the pot right now because if not I got six months to get divorced yeah like and that's not so like if you say to someone like if you got married tomorrow and then you found the company that's worth a hundred million dollars and under your prenup that's your separate property but there's a sunset Clause that says that your prenup goes out the window in 15 years man at year 14 and six months you got to ask yourself some serious questions about where's this relationship going to be in 5-10 years it's brilliant and that's why kids you pay for a lawyer that's it we get paid to see around corners you know I get paid to be paranoid I tell people that all the time okay so you mentioned infidelity you write in the book which everybody should get it's a great book it's a great read it's a window into your soul you uh in this book right that there's five kinds of infidelity do you remember can you explain um yeah I mean what I wanted to say is that all infidelity is not the same that there's different kinds and some of them are more obvious than others like there's the the soul mate you know that's the one I think I see most often which is a person meets another person or rekindles on social media or elsewhere a reconnection with another person in their life and they go oh my God this is the person I'm supposed to be with I'm in love the heart wants what the heart wants like I'm I'm leaving you for this person because I have found my true love that's one type and it's an incredibly common type and there's a you know there are plenty of cautionary tales associated with that where people thought that they found their someone and then it turns out it was you know no it was just unfair you know um and and you know a man who leaves his wife for his mistress just leaves a new job opportunity open and we should also mention that you uh you know talk about Facebook and Instagram oh yes if we were going to invent a infidelity generating machine it would be called Facebook which by the way is a function of the fact the book was written in 2019. I would now change it to Instagram oh because you said just Facebook yes but now if I had to rewrite it it would be if we were going to invent an infidelity generating machine it would be called meta that would be yeah there you go yeah very Tech forward it's a was a function of what Facebook and I think Instagram also are which is it is a communication tool that has people looking into windows that I think are antagonistic to marriage you're looking into the lives of other people you're looking into um these social lives of people that you meet casually so there was a time where you would be at your son's soccer practice and see the attractive mom across the way and you wouldn't really talk to her interact with her if you did it would just be at practice but now we add on social media those people because for legitimate reasons we need to maybe communicate about when practice is or we want to message the person but now it's sort of an invitation to a connection and then it's you know there's a picture of her on vacation in a bikini that's very intriguing and then you have a benign oh I saw you guys want a vacation where did you stay you know oh was it good did you like that oh that's tonight and now we're talking and now we're having an interaction and now this is how the spark of Affairs begins it's usually people don't usually meet and go would you like to potentially wreck your marriage yes would you oh my god let's do this yeah like it's much more you know it slowly happened so when I talk about types of infidelity the soulmate the unexpected soul mate you know this connection that you didn't expect I didn't expect to fall in love with this person but I did in the heart wants with the heart wants and I'm sorry that one's tough that one's tough because you know it's an interesting distinction between men and women to some degree that when a man finds out his wife was cheating the question is did you fuck him and when a woman finds out that a man cheated the question is do you love her you know and those are those are different things you know I feel like there could be many and have been many books written on that yeah by much smarter people than me yeah but but um I I think that the soulmate thing is very very painful for a lot of my female clients when a man says listen I found the one I found the one and it's not you um that that is really really hard to get past um even when it turned out to be true I mean I've seen some people that you know it was an affair that turned into 20 plus year marriages you know so I I an unhappy marriage and then a happy Affair that turned into a very happy marriage like I've not seen there's not a formula you know like I've I've been doing it long enough now that I've seen permutations I never would have expected um so that's one one type of infidelity um the other is what I call the push out of the closet which is is and that I think happened more often earlier in my career there have been tremendous strides I think in in the the lesbian and gay community um where including marriage equality obviously where there's a lot of change as to people accepting people as being gay or lesbian um and I think that there was a time where you know people were having being in the closet was much more important you were subject to professional scorn and you know all kinds of things if you were gay or lesbian so people were sneaking around and having affairs with their same-sex partners and then they get caught and then you know it really was a function of the of the of the um the fact that they were closeted and again that's another kind of complicated dynamic because you know I I haven't had that happen to me where a woman left me for a woman but I'd like to think it would be easier for me yeah because if you left me for a man you're saying I want one like you but better than you whereas if you leave me for a woman well that's a whole different set of equipment I don't have that yeah so like I can't like okay like it's not me it's you it's something you want that I can't offer it's I don't we don't serve that at this restaurant so you know it's okay like yeah I get it I mean there's a betrayal there's a sadness whatever but yeah you know it's a different thing um the the saddest type of infidelity in my opinion is the mistake which is someone just makes a mistake they they just people do dumb shit when it comes to sex like people just in a moment you know they sub they follow temptation their impulse control is poor you know and they they do something that they that doesn't reflect their morality or doesn't reflect the depth of their feelings like if you spend enough time in a room with people who've cheated in a relationship and are speaking candidly to you about it because you're their lawyer they'll say to you very openly like no I really love my wife I really love my wife like I just I don't know I was just an idiot like I just you know I saw this bright shiny object and I went for it I really wanted to sleep with that woman like I I wanted to I wanted to fuck her I love my wife I make love to my wife I love my wife but I just want to sleep with this one you know and we created a culture where one of those eradicates the other I don't that's a whole nother discussion is you know or is there ethical non-monogamy like should we is marriage about who I have sex with or is marriage a different kind of a partnership is it of is it a pair bond that's about building a life together you know and where does monogamy fit into that and people like us they're perel and they're they're those are people who are making very intelligent discussions about that you know yeah that's a complicated one just to actually just Linger on that I view how often have people with open marriages have been in your office well let's see and this is one of those like from a research perspective this would be flawed because I see the they're in my office because their marriage is falling apart yeah so there may be lots of people having open relationships that don't end up in a divorce lawyer's office so I'd never meet them but I meet a lot of people that that was the Hail Mary pass sure like I meet a lot of people that they tried that but it in retrospect it was a Hail Mary pass it was like uh look we've just figured let's try this you know like maybe it's maybe this will this will keep the glue together on this thing you know and and um and I've also seen open open relationships go wrong you know where we agree we're just going to have sexual connections with other people or we're going to bring other people into the bedroom um but together like we're going to be together with other people or with another person and then that that connection of those two people like do you think it's a soul mate all of a sudden now and it goes in this other because and again is that novelty is that like it's the reason why I don't understand why people have threesomes it's kind of like you know when someone sings to you I don't know where to look like I don't know where to look like if someone's singing to me I don't know where to look like it feels weird right like this is a conundrum no this I'll say this to this they'll never but I it's the reason I can't go to strip clubs yeah I don't know where to look like if I go to strip club you know like you go to strip club and and there's you know the part where they the woman's on the stage and she walks past each person and does a little thing and then next person and the next little thing so when she's right in front of you I like a woman's face and I like a woman's body I like both of them so I'm looking at the woman's face which is very beautiful but she's naked and I think oh she's naked I should be looking at her naked body because obviously that's like it's almost rude not to because she's naked in front of me of course so then I'm looking at her naked body which is lovely to look at but then I find myself going oh my God you're just still like you should look at her face for God's sakes yeah and then I look at your face and and find myself having this whole thing in my head where I'm going like oh my God where am I supposed to look so I think a threesome with two women you don't hardly know or you're not that's different but a threesome with a long-term partner where you're in a relationship with and a new person seems to me a very dangerous ground because you're going to want to enjoy the novelty of this new person but you're gonna have to spend time with this person after so how much attention do you spend to the new novel exciting thing without creating the impression that you don't you're not interested in this because you want you're my favorite person but this is fun so I want to just try this for a few but then also I don't want to forget about that like it it just seems tricky that analogy by the way is brilliant and also I guess it's tricky because the consequences of mistakes are quite High because you're gonna have to talk about it wait and there's a there's an easy way to misinterpret the data right like so if I'm if I really like sleeping with my partner but I get one chance to sleep with this other person like well of course I should indulge in that because I can do this anytime like what it you know but but this person my partner might interpret that as oh so you're more interested in her than me because that voice in in my partner that would be you know insecure might hear that you know so I I just why would you even why would you open yourself up to that level of chaos you seem to love chess in the courtrooms it's a kind of uh intimate human chess of sorts yeah no that's that's too high risk how do we get on threesomes oh open open marriages well we got half we get on threesomes I don't know I always wonder how people get into threesomes um I figure if they like if one is fun two must be better if two is better three must be better um yeah I I think we we the way that that this becomes an issue is why would you have a non-monogamous relationship what is it about your sex life with this person that's not satisfying and I think that that is the question that's harder to ask yourself and to try to answer with your partner I mean you've said that this idea of soul mates great business is great for your business but so like human being in a partnership can't be everything is that true I think it's unrealistic it's a True Romance right the uh the document of that we keep referencing here I think it's wonderful if you do because sometimes now people don't get that reference anymore like I talk to people in when I try to teach negotiation to young lawyers who come work for me I tell them to watch the Gary Oldman scene where he offers him the Chinese food yeah why is that scene the one that really because it's the best negotiating lesson I've ever heard in my life where where he comes in he's he he just called the record yeah Gary Allman plays a pimp yes and he owns his girl is Patricia Arquette right and Christian Slater's character the protagonist is coming in to tell Gary Oldman that he no longer owns this girl Alabama is going to be with him now and Gary Oldman is a a amazing performance and he's sitting in a living room with a shotgun next to him with armed guys around him watching television and eating Chinese food and he's got Chinese food laid out in front of him and Christian Slater comes in and he says I need to talk to you about Alabama and Chris and Gary Allman says do you want some Chinese food and Krishna Slater sort of taken aback by the question he says no I I came to talk about Alabama she's with me now she's there and he proceeds to tell him what his offer essentially is and Gary Oldman says you know you fucked up right in some in substance he says you know if you'd sat down and started eating my Chinese food I would have thought who's this guy he didn't have a care in the world just sitting down eating my egg foo young but instead you tried to be hard and now I know you're full of shit and so I think that scene summarizes how in negotiation the more you enter into it with that like any time I deal with another lawyer and they're like well we'll see you in court okay see in court like empty barrels make the most noise like you and I as people who've been in the Jiu Jitsu Community or been I know some dangerous people I know FBI SWAT people I know you know I know people that are they know how to do things to people and they're the calmest guys you ever meet in your life you you scuff their sneaker oh you don't worry about a minute it's okay like they're quick to apology like they're just chill what uh what were we talking about um we were talking about um oh uh wait True Romance oh the soulmate yeah yeah you're saying that this idea like what would that film underlying there's this current of like they were made for each other yeah I think there's a distinction between the feeling that someone is your missing puzzle piece that you're made for this person I think what that just means is there's a lot of overlapping beautiful connections I love them intellectually I love them sexually I love them interpersonally we have some shared history we have some shared commonalities we were raised in the same culture raised in the same religion like we view we have politically similar ideas like these are all or we have totally opposite ones but they're complementary like I've always joked that like finding someone with complementary pathologies you know like I'm obsessively disciplined so having a partner who's like flexible and like spontaneous is really good for me and and also me being like no no come on come back we're gonna do this now no no it's time to actually do this now like we're good for each other it's Barefoot in the Park you know it's this idea of like you know the yin and the Yang so what I have an issue with is that the definition of soulmate that I think is sold to so many people now is this idea that if your partner is disappointing to you in any way meaning they're not the perfect travel companion they're not the perfect vocabulary companion they're not the perfect roommate they're not the perfect lover they're not like the odds of someone being all of those seems crazy to me like it's infinitesimally small and they don't have to be everything like I if I go to a restaurant and eat 10 courses and one of them is kind of subpar and the other nine are the most amazing culinary experience I've ever had how dare I say well that wasn't that wasn't the right restaurant no what do you mean like that's a great restaurant what are you talking about like of course there's one little thing so I think it's impossible to have someone never disappoint you it's impossible to have someone who never lets you down or doesn't say and do the exact right thing at the exact right time and to create the idea or expectation in anyone that your partner should never let you down never disappoint you never not know what to say yeah is I think crazy I mean I I find for myself when someone for example loses someone when someone loses a family member or pet I I often say the same thing to the person I'll either talk to them or send them a text or call them and I'll say if I wish I knew the perfect thing to say because I would say it right now like but but I know there isn't like I know that you know I don't say that part but like I know there isn't like there isn't a perfect thing to say like but if there was a perfect thing to say I would say it right now like love to me is not that you never let this person down it's that you never want to let this person down you know it's Love Is A Verb you know like it's this feeling of I I never want to disappoint you I will disappoint you but I never want to disappoint you I I will hurt you but I never want to hurt you when I hurt you it will be my insecurity my stupidity my Humanity that causes me to hurt you but I will never intentionally hurt you you know I will betray your trust I'll never intentionally betray your trust like I I will by my stupidity say the wrong thing or or loose lips say something to someone that you didn't want me to but it won't be intentional I will always try to be on your team that feels to me like a realistic thing yeah the intention leads the way but there's some aspect of um like you know just like the 10 course meal that over time there's a kind of convergence uh towards Perfection and along the way there's the Rose Colored Glasses where you see every the beauty and everything so it's just it it feels um it's probably destructive just to really internalize the idea of soulmate because then any imperfections can can make you doubt it can make you step away can make you lose the connection but it just feels like uh I don't know it's too heavy it just feels I I feel like when you see a couple if it's 90 years old and they've been together for 60 years 70 years there was of course a temptation to think about all the beauty that they've seen on that journey together the children the grandchildren maybe the great grandchildren all the joy that they've seen all the pain they've endured and struggled together you know but they've also disappointed each other a whole bunch of times probably let each other down they probably lie to each other a bunch and yeah and to me that is a beautiful thing like that's what that is not it's great in spite of that it's great because of that they still love each other even though they've been so flawed and imperfect and and they're human and they still love each other they still rode that thing together because the reasons to do so were greater than the reasons to not we've mentioned some of this but I'd love to get your opinion on having seen things gone wrong how much and having mentioned Amber Heard and Johnny Depp how much fighting do you think is okay in a relationship and how to resolve the fights such that they don't escalate to that disconnection is there some wisdom you have for that I imagine you've seen some epic fights yeah I you know it's very I've seen some crazy fights I I have even on my phone I I have uh some recordings because now there's you know cameras everywhere it's like Nest cams and you know ring cams and so a lot of this gets recorded and um and people you know have phones so readily available that they can record and the other person to know it and I listen to the way people speak to their first of all I listen the way people speak to each other and I'm shocked I listen to the way people speak to their romantic partner to their spouse and I'm I'm blown away like I'm Blown Away disrespect or what just disrespect insults profanity just degradation just brutality just just and then like to then kind of go on like the next day you kind of go on like nothing happened I I don't I'm shocked by it I mean I I listen to it and I think like if someone ever spoke to me that way I don't know that I could ever really feel deep connection to them like freely I I would feel so betrayed like that they just so brutal like I can't imagine speaking to someone that way like it's saying you you just did such vicious insults to someone you know like I but I I understand that's how some people communicate perhaps I guess the the question of how much fighting is too much fighting in the relationship is for me a bit like the question how much sex is enough sex in the relationship yeah it it depends on the two people and their individual tastes but what's problematic is when there is a disconnect between the two people like so if you know there's a I think it's Annie Hall it's one of the Woody Allen films where Diane Keaton and Woody Allen are both talking to their respective therapists about the relationship you know but it's like a split screen yeah and she says I mean we have sex all the time we have sex like once a week yeah and he goes we never have sex we have sex like once a week and you know it's funny because it's true it really is this you know they both know the same data but they're interpreting that data set completely differently and I I think it you know the question you have to start asking is like what is you know Steve Harvey actually once said something funny to me said that success is not where you are success is where you are in relation to where you started yeah he says because if success is where you are Oprah's got us all beat yeah or maybe elon's got a salty yeah I don't know but if it's where you are versus where you started because there's a lot of people that started on second and you know start on third act like they hit a double you know like well I was given 10 million but then I turned it into 100 million wow the first million is the hardest so you know come on but I I think the question of like how much sex were we having at the beginning of the relationship that might be the wrong gauge because that's like we couldn't keep our hands off each other and we just it's novelty but you know like how far how much sex we're having post children versus before the children that might be worth looking at you know like how do we compare it you know like am I overweight compared to what when I was 20 and running marathons or most 50 year old men I don't know I gotta I gotta like what do you compare it to so I think fighting there are some people that I think they enjoy fighting like they enjoy argument you know I know people that enjoy political debate I don't particularly enjoy political debate not that I'm not very interested in political Concepts economic Concepts I just I argue for a living so in my free time I don't find argument that enjoyable when it's intense um I find discussion more interesting so interesting they use you just keep the battle to that particular to your main profession and everywhere else you want peace well did you ever you know Bob Bob Goldthwaite Bobcat Goldthwaite the comedian very very funny and he had all second chapters like a director and a writer but he has this you know I saw an interview with him once where he said you know yeah he says like I'm a comedian I've been a comedian a long time people always come up to me and they're like oh you're a comedian do you want to hear a joke he's like and all I can think is oh yeah that'd be a real fucking treat yeah like I haven't heard jokes all day all night for years that would be a real special occasion yes like I I get it you know uh yeah and I mean a sadder story I've been reading quite a bit about Robin Williams and his wife would talk about how quiet and introspective and thoughtful and intellectual he was and not really that humorous in his private life but but that may be a function of um you know that it is enjoyable to be the other thing yeah you know one of the things I've always thought was very um funny in relationships my own relationships is most women I know who have a husband who doesn't wear a suit every day for a living um when their husband gets dressed up like they're going to a wedding or something they get like oh my God look at like look at him you know um and I wear a suit every day you know on the weekends I don't I wear like jeans and a black T-shirt but the rest of the time I wear a suit and I remember I I think this has been true in every relationship I've been in since I was a lawyer including Mike's wife it was always like if I had on jeans and I wasn't shaven it was like look at you you're like yeah it's like are you kidding me you're like like I'm like really like whereas the suit they wouldn't even notice wouldn't even notice the suit sometimes the other thing well that's what it is it's the novelty of the other thing so I think that if if you're Robin Williams and you're like being shot out of a cannon in terms of your performative style and your energy and explosive yeah being quiet must be very refreshing like I imagine you know incredibly intelligent people must love just watching Stupid humor or having a dumbed it's why some of the smartest people I know like really dumb shit you know it's why like Rick and Morty I think is brilliant because it's both smart and dumb yeah it's a perfect combination it really is yeah it's I think it's possibly the perfect show is there advice you can give to somebody like me on how to interview well how to do conversations well is there do you think there's something transferable from the courtroom to this setting with complicated people yeah I think so I think what can be learned about interviewing is um the distillation like what what what is most important when I hear a story that I have to present to a judge the totality of someone's parenting the good of their parenting the bad of their parenting the good of the other parent the bad of the other parent I have to sort of boil down what are the best examples because I can't lay it all out and then what what greater principle do they speak to you know the best Jiu Jitsu teacher that I think I've had is Paul Schreiner and Paul doesn't teach just teach you techniques he's teaching you ways of thinking about Concepts in Jiu Jitsu and then here are some techniques that illustrate that John Donahue from what I can see does a lot of that as well I think they're like soul mates in the Jiu Jitsu world yeah and then there's that element that you spoke to which is maybe considering the other side always doubles advocated kind of thing yeah I mean straw man Steel Man stuff you do you do a lot of that and I think all the best interviewers do but yeah I think it's really really important to think about you you I have to know the other side's case much better than my own you know I have to know what are their defenses what are their strengths I have to to map out a strategy that keeps those in mind and that's hard because early in my career I would attribute to the other side and intelligence and strategy that sometimes wasn't applicable like I've learned like you know there's like the simplest explanation is the accurate one you know the Occam's razor I think like Sexton's you know would be never a tribute to strategy that which could be attributed to stupidity for laziness yeah because I have lots of adversaries that like they'll not file emotion I thought they were going to file and I'll go wait why didn't they file that like tactically what are they thinking I'm gonna do and what what is that about you know and I would go well if I didn't file it why wouldn't I and the answer is like they just didn't think to file it or like they were too lazy to draft it or they went on vacation last week so that's why they didn't and I'm you know driving myself crazy going there's some tactical read there must be so I think you have to um look honestly and don't attribute to the other side your Constitution you know if I said that I'd be saying it sarcastically if you said it maybe you weren't saying it sarcastically like you have to think about the fact that we're we're unique human beings who Express themselves differently and for you the audience is usually the judge yeah no we don't do jury trials that's the interesting thing about Family Law Attorneys Family Law Attorneys don't do jury trials we do bench trials we just persuade there's a person in the black rope that's the only person I have to convince does the person of the black hole do they have emotions are they human are they very they are human they are all too human do they impose that Humanity on you like do you steal it oh yeah oh yeah oh no they do you feel it like they're human they're working their shit out okay they're parents yeah their husbands and wives yeah you're you're and you're talking about stuff they deal with yeah I had a I had a woman on this Stan an expert witness on the stand who was talking about the the emotional and physical abuse that was perpetrated on a seven-year-old and I this person had written a bunch of reports that were in evidence in this trial around like day six or seven in the trial and there's all of this information in the record about this verbal abuse and mental abuse and like gaslighting and like really intense stuff that this woman was doing to this seven-year-old and the judge is like vaguely paying attention for most of the time and at some point the person says well when a parent is abusing a child and the judge just interrupts she goes well you know do you think like if a person spanks a child if that's abuse she's like well I I'd like a person in general like and by the way if my adversary asked that question I could object but I can't object when the judge asks a question they get to rule on that objection so I'm like uh where's this going she's like well no I mean I mean spanking can be a form of abuse right but like you know are you saying like everybody who spanks and I'm sitting here going on in your house yeah so what went on with your parents like because you're you're bringing some stuff here that's not this is not what you're supposed to be this is not your role you know but there are good judges and bad judges and and that's a big big deal well I've noticed that no I don't have kids so I have a certain perspective on the world I really want to have a family and have kids but I've noticed when I talk to people that have kids and gender matters also like fathers or who like with uh with daughters and so on like it changes the landscape of the conversation it sure does it's like you're no longer this intellectual that's like wow there's this and there's this it's it's more like like go fuck yourself anything that fucks with uh kids yeah can can like Burn It To The Ground I don't care yeah I don't care what the Nuance is of the little intellectual thing oh you want to learn about this represent someone as accused of child sexual abuse I've had about a dozen of those cases where I've represented someone who's alleged to have perpetrated sexual abuse of a child you are guilty until proven innocent and let me tell you as a lawyer that is the toughest cases because you put sex and kids together and everyone loses their goddamn mind immediately there's a rush to judgment there is a disregard for procedure there is a confirmation bias there's a desire to be a protector and again all motivated and informed by really good things that desire to protect the innocent the desire to protect the vulnerable but but gang no like we have these I like living in a world that has due process I like these rules I like the Rules of Evidence I like innocent until proven guilty I like that I'm not saying it's perfect it's such a I'm so torn on it because I also like living in a world where people are so emotionally invested in um in connection to other like that's those two things aren't mutually exclusive they shouldn't be I I know but if you dedicate yourself fully to the law you might lose some of the humanity I don't think you have to I have to tell you I once actually went off on a on a D.A on a district attorney who was very vehemently Prosecuting a child sex abuse case that I was involved in and I remember I I it was I came in thankfully I came in very early in the case so the accusation was made and I came in right away because very often you get this case there have been 15 interviews this person's been interviewed by police by child protective services and it's like they've already they're already so far down a hole they didn't even know they dug themselves into you know so I got in very early on and I just kept saying she's like well we're gonna do this we're gonna do this I was like wait wait wait wait wait wait don't we should both want this to be fair done properly like we there's an expert again a well-respected expert who's a clinical psychologist who their job is their validation expert so their job is to interview a child they record the interviews with a hidden camera so that everyone can see they didn't ask suggestive questioning they're a very stringent standards that they follow to prevent like suggestive questioning or any of those kinds of things and I was saying listen no no one should be interviewing this child other than this person who's a neutral qualified person and I kept saying to the other side like wait no no you're see this is the problem like you want to win you're a lawyer you want to win I want to win too right but but but we want to win fair like that's like saying you know I'm going into a boxing match I want to win so if the referee's looking to the side I'm going to kick the guy in the nuts like okay then then you might have won but you didn't win boxing you want some other thing you know like I want to win a fair fight like I want to go in with the rules set the law The Rules of Evidence I don't want a judge who doesn't understand evidence I don't want an adversary who plays it fast and loose with the rules I want to go in and win a fair fight and and that's where when it comes our our passion to protect the innocent to emotionally connect to feel deeply about children and protecting them I don't think that that's antagonistic to like we we always treat dandruff with decapitation in this culture and I don't understand it and that's what I like about the law the law there's rules there's and there's rules about procedure and so that's that's our job is to bring out the truth using the rules and the procedure and I I love that job but still there's a human being in the judge right that's the problem it seems like a really hard job because you have to be paying attention to the whole thing you have to pay attention the whole thing and everyone is trying to persuade you and lie to you yeah and and and and everyone can keep their shit together in a court appearance most of the time yeah like it takes a rare kind of crazy to blow up in a courtroom so most of the time everybody looks really put together and like yeah you gotta have an amazing bullshit that sector I'm not saying they don't have a really hard job they have a really hard job they're a way harder job than I have what's their uh source of ground truth like how do they sharpen the radar for bullshit I think that there credibility which is what you call it in the law is something that you know I I think you're supposed to develop it on the job you know do you have the data of who was lying in the end or not no not really not really I mean you can try to demonstrate a lot what I always tell clients and this is this is the art of advocacy right is is I want to use examples of misrepresentations to show that this person's a liar like I'm trying to extrapolate from the small the large like I'm trying to say here's three times he lied therefore he's a liar when in fact you know we know human beings don't really work that way but I've seen people submarine there could just torpedo their entire case because they lied about some dumb shit some dumb little thing and and I I I say to them why would you lie why did you lie about that like I had a case where a person was accused of child sexual abuse and on cross-examination they were asked did you have an affair with this babysitter they're like no no no no no no and and then it was shown through text messages and things they clearly had an affair with the babysitter and I said why did you lie and they said well I didn't want that to come out I said right but now you're a liar like did you molest your child because if the answer to that is no and now you destroyed your credibility because you didn't want to admit that you slept with an adult woman by the way it would have been good for your case would have been good for your case for you to say yeah I slept with her because I like sleeping with adult women that's how I am I don't sleep with children much less my own you know so so why would you lie and so that that that concept is incredibly important and judges theoretically they have to make very tough calls I feel like it's the most impotent place to just sit there and dispassionately sort of listen and rule on objections like I I just would be so frustrated because I'd want to get up and you know I had to do jury duty once and it was it was like a horrific experience for me because I'm sitting there and I have no power yeah I'm just watching these two letters I'm like why did you ask that question that way I would never have asked it that way why would you object like you when you object you bring more attention to what are you doing like I'm watching both of them it's like watching like a Jujitsu maybe but probably what it feel like for like John donoher to watch two white belts Spar like why are you doing wow my God what are you doing why would you grab that what do you think what are you thinking like and you know it it's frustrating it's frustrating to watch and as a judge it must just be unbelievable so divorce lawyers sometimes get a bad rap uh is there a reason for this I mean no one's ever happy to be spending time with a divorced lawyer like if you have a criminal lawyer they're defending you against the Maelstrom of Injustice and false allegations they're protecting your freedom and maybe you're acquitted and then you're like oh that person saved me you know you buy a house you know that lawyer helps you get the house you know you're happy about that sign the paperwork you do a will like you help they make you feel secure like at best I'm a representative of a chapter in someone's life that was very unpleasant I have a friend who's a Juilliard trained classical pianist and um he was having a humidification system installed in his home because his piano required a certain level of humidity and it was very expensive to install this humidification system and we went out to dinner and then we came back to his place and he said man this is the most depressing fifteen thousand dollars I've ever spent and I said why and he said because there's nothing different like I spent fifteen thousand dollars and I feel absolutely nothing different My Piano does but I don't like I don't have anything to show for it like you finish getting divorced you really have anything to show for it yeah you know like best yeah best it's the same it's one of the things I think that's interesting about divorce is in our increasingly performative Society you can't pretend you meant to get divorced you can't like everything everybody does like well I wrote that album for me it didn't matter that it was not going to be popular no you wanted that album to be popular like come on like you're lying and that's fine but you're lying oh I think my haircut came out great I wanted it to look this fucked up no you didn't you didn't you're lying and that's fine because we live in a society now where everybody's just oh yes I meant to do that okay divorce nope you you got married you wouldn't you wouldn't you break up in a relationship not a marriage okay well we were only going to be together for a little while it was never serious we were just like you know we were having fun that's all it was it wasn't we were never gonna be a happily ever after now you got married you got married guys you got up there and you said forever and it didn't go forever so you can't bullshit anybody anymore like you no it didn't go the way you thought it was going to go didn't go the way you signed on for so now that that's undeniable like what can we make it what can we make it into like it can be you know the barns burned down now I can see the moon you know like let's make it something and so for me I think people look at a divorce lawyer and they just go yeah like this is this horrible chapter and I associate you with it also too listen some of the things we do it's difficult to simultaneously prevent and prepare for war yeah the things you do to protect your clients sometimes look like acts of aggression but really they're just trying to shore up a defense and so I get paid to be paranoid and I have to say to clients sometimes like well are you sure that they're not doing this and then they go well I don't know and I go well let me inquire did she accuse me of that no no I'm not accusing you I'm just trying like we get a reputation divorce lawyers as amping up conflict because we get paid for the conflict right it's like if you get paid by the bullet you're going to start a lot of gun fights right it doesn't really work that way with most good divorce lawyers like there are plenty of people that are bad lawyers and they Stoke up conflict because it jacks up fees they usually don't do well they don't build a successful career because you live and die by your reputation yes reputation everything but but good lawyers like good experienced divorce lawyers we do the whole you know Hey listen you're going to say this I'm going to say this you're going to do this I'm going to do this this way let's skip it we're gonna end up here you know we got judge blah blah and you know what he's going to do he's going to go right here so why don't we just agree right now to XYZ sounds good we're done we're good so you want to minimize the number of bullets it's like the two it's like you know it's like the the two Swordsmen who see each other and they just stand there at the edge and they see the whole fight in their minds and they know who won and who lost and they walk away like it's we do a lot of that we do a lot of okay you know it's it's like when you watch high level chess yeah and someone resigns and you go wait what it happened he didn't you go no no he the other guy won yeah it's 15 moves from now but he won and the other guy sees it so now we're done can you speak to some uh recent high profile divorces uh like the most recent I saw is Kevin Costner yeah Kevin Costner is a great um I mean I don't know him I'm not involved in the case by the way Yellowstone's just so great oh it's so good right and I hope Matthew McConaughey who I've gotten to know I hope I hope he does one of the one of these shows is Yellowstone or anything else he's just he born for the role right yeah but anyway he'd be amazing in that yeah your conversation with him was a great one the Kevin Costner divorce is interesting because Kevin Costner had one of the most expensive from a district of award perspective like he he gave a huge payout to his first wife um and then this time he had a prenup so it's actually it's a very public showing of the fact that once bitten twice shy like he had a very public divorce that cost him a lot of Assets in terms of the division of assets and now it appears by all acknowledged reports that he had a prenuptial agreement that was well crafted and enforceable and you know he's he's um the argument now is over what is child support what is spousal support what's covered in the prenup and what isn't so it seems like the prenup worked actually the prenup worked you know and Kevin Costner's career which has always been a steady career I don't know that in the like Hollywood stock market that people would have bet on Yellowstone like I don't I think you would have said hey the best years of that guy's career were behind him you know how do you get better than Dances with Wolves and Robin Hood and like all these big big The Bodyguard yeah and then Yellowstone and it's like holy cow did he knock that out of the park and he's Central to it I mean he knocked the skin off the ball so I think that's why prenups are important you don't know what your career is going to do you don't know where it's going to go and so he saved himself a lot of money he also has a great lawyer he has Laura wasser Laura wasser's you know La you know just a top professional brilliant lawyer um even tempered but intense in the courtroom and just a smart smart human being the thing I liked just you know I haven't been following it but I saw a few comments he's made in he like refused to comment negatively about his spouse and just smart but like the way he said it it wasn't lawyer advice it's good lawyer advice probably but he said it from the heart which I always like I like seeing that yeah like where he he refuses even the drama even the public nature of it to throwing Jabs or well Laura his lawyer is actually notorious for like not speaking to the Press about cases in an extended way and that's smart move like I don't speak about pending cases I'm involved in um publicly and I discourage my clients from doing so I can't always stop them but but I discourage them from doing so I I don't think there's any good to come of it there are lawyers who try to try things in the court of public opinion um I think there is a to take it to the broader principle you just brought up I I think there is a lot of value in talking about your ex in a favorable way I have to say when I first got divorced many years ago I went on on a date with a young woman it's one of my first dates as a divorced man and she was a divorced woman she's a beautiful woman and we were having dinner and it was going quite well and it was one of those things where I was like oh I definitely want to see this girl again and I said something about oh you know there's going to be this thing at this Museum we should go and she's like oh yeah that'd be a lot of fun and I'm like yeah we should definitely you know maybe the next thing we do together and she was like yeah we should go next weekend like the kids are with the asshole so we can go and I just it was like you could hear that record scratch like you know I just went oh yeah no this isn't good like I'm not you're referring to the father of your kids is it the asshole like we're like we're we're already I'm walking into something here that I don't know that I want to be involved in Matthew McConaughey before he was married you know if you look at his history he dated some of the most beautiful women in Hollywood in their Prime and none of them ever talked bad about him in the Press they all were like oh my God he's such a great guy such great I always wondered like how do you he got out of all of those relationships without a without a scratch on him and when you'd watch an interview with him they would say like so you you know you dated Penelope Cruz and he'd go Penelope that's just that's just a special lady that's just a what a what a special lady she's just a wonderful what a wonderful woman are just so blessed to have the time with her what a beautiful wonderful woman and and I would think to myself I'm like I'm like you're a genius like he's a genius because like it it he never came off as Petty spiteful bitter any of that he just came off as like just dignified strong smart self-assured and like it left you know it left like it it left the the viewer with the impression that like when he was looking off and especially like he's probably like just thinking about some wonderful time he had with her and you think to yourself like God that guy like he just became cooler and cooler whereas if he got into like the whole you know oh yeah that was ugly and then you know this happened and that like nobody wants to hear it it's awful the funny thing about him just having to interact with a little bunch I don't think he's in the he's in the Rogan school of thought I think that I don't see him ever having a fight now his parents were as he as he's spoken about a bunch non-stop fighting it got divorced and remarried and yeah just insane and they were volatile yeah very he seems maybe you kind of uh it depends on swinging the other way he just seems cool as a cucumber like always just lets it roll off yeah but you know even if it's internally yeah not rolling off there is value in just Rising above it in your discourse that's true yes like like you lie to your children like people say this to me all the time clients they're like you know why did you tell your child that Dad had an affair well I'm not gonna lie to my kids fuck you yes you are you lie to your kids all the time yeah Mommy are you gonna die someday yes babe I'm gonna die and daddy's gonna die and then someday the Earth's gonna hurl into the Sun and we're all gonna die sweet dreams like that's not you lie to your kids all the time you know what's wrong with me we don't know what's wrong with you we're gonna take you to the doctor and hopefully it's nothing serious and you won't die like you lie to your kids all the time you tell them that Santa Claus exists when he does whatever to so so to say I'm not gonna lie to my kids like you lie to your kids all the time you don't like your husband that's okay you don't like your ex-husband but it's their father so just grin you know Oh Daddy took me to meet his new girlfriend Kiki oh that's nice you guys have a good time good all that's yeah and she helped me do my hair and she did my makeup listen I'm sure that's burning you inside but you go oh that's great because why you love your kids well that's fine I mean again McConaughey has a as a web bottom with that he's like he basically says never lie but a little bullshit is okay sure sure yeah I mean I'm very like uh Tom Waits says that song lie to me uh you gotta lie to me baby I I you know honesty is a funny thing but Tom Waits also believes that God's away on business so I think his words man and who do we who are the ones that we left in charge Killers thieves and lawyers that's a Tom Waits quote well it must be true then yeah um I don't know how many I don't know how many limbs I have but I will give all of them to talk to Tom and he's a very private person I feel like he's the musical equivalent of Cormac McCarthy yeah even if you get the interview you're not I don't think gonna get in there no I don't think you want like uh honestly I don't think you want to I think you've seen in his public interviews over the years with Letterman and I think he just he is the Poetry I would put Tom Waits um Cormac McCarthy Maynard James Keenan like these these are artists that like I think they want the art to speak for itself they would like to be lessened they don't want you to you know I remember early early days of tool that he like this he could not have been less interested in the spotlight yeah to the point where I think it was almost to the detriment of the band early on you know and that's there's no surprise that those are three artists that I think are unbelievable and in a category of their own and that you hear their performance like you can give me a page of a Cormac McCarthy novel and I'll know it's a Cormac McCarthy novel you can a few notes of manner James Keenan or Tom Waits voice you know that that's them yes genius and genius highs from the spotlight but you know doesn't stop me from feeling sad about it but anyway yeah that does I would like to hear that interview she's the girl that got away yeah yeah I'm just standing outside of that girl's house yeah just playing in Your Eyes Peter Gabriel yeah yeah anyway uh was it lie to me this this whole idea of honesty in relationships is interesting I mean clerks with a blow jobs uh yeah I I don't know how to phrase it eloquently but like there's stuff you should be honest about and there's still of maybe you don't need to be honest about so when the law it is illegal to commit fraud fraud is a material misrepresentation of fact but the law specifically says you're permitted to engage in quote mere puffery nice puffery puffery so and that's that's the term that was used for it puffery and puffery is when you are inflating something you're being like hyperbolic but but people wouldn't necessarily think you're telling the truth you know like that it's not you know like if I say to you this bottle of water you know was held by Elvis and that's why you should pay me fifty dollars worth that's fraud but if I say this is the water that has been it's this water is drank by the finest people presidents drink this water this is a now this is puffery you know and so I I advertising marketing is based on puffery it's not fraud when it's fraud it crosses the line so I I think there's a difference between honesty and candor right so so in relationships being honest is good being totally candid is probably not a great idea like it's indelicate to be totally candid about some things if a woman you're in a romantic relationship with says to you do I look good in this dress and they don't you or do I look fat in this that's a that's a better way any heterosexual man who's ever been in a relationship has had that question asked of him do I look fat in this does this make my butt look big or does it whatever it is this do I like fatness if you go yes that's in delicate it's honest but it's indelicate and it's almost mean right but there's a and if you say no but it's true she doesn't look good in that like the concern she sees is a legitimate concern do you lie and go no no you look great in this it's great that's not a good thing either so what do you say you know that blue dress you have really complements your body like in a way that one doesn't you know that the dress is such that it doesn't flatter you I see what you're saying now now it's the dress it's not you babe you know but I'm telling you the truth like I'm addressing your concern like this is what this is the distinction like don't don't material misrepresent the facts like don't steer people down roads that they're you know you know that that's not how it's gonna go right but you know so it's like if the woman says I love you don't and you don't love her don't say I love you back you know you do the like oh you know I have very strong feelings for you as well or you know like there has to be some Middle Ground you don't just plain you didn't hear them yeah I mean the uh I guess all of it requires skill just like you described and I I think just being honest in quotes is not enough well it's not a specific enough instruction I mean that's the problem is he when you write a relationship book which I never intended to do people come to you and say you know like what are some you know what are the things I should do to help my relationship or what is the cause of divorce and you go well disconnection but like what do you mean by that or like how do I improve my relationship pay more attention make small gestures okay what does that even mean like what do you mean like Jacks of love you should show your partner that you love them more often what do you mean like what I say what I do we should have more sex like what are you at what are you saying like people want measurable specific things so that's why I tried in my book to be like very specific about like things you can do things you shouldn't do you know and and they're practical suggestions like like like leaving a note I talk a lot about leaving a note like if you're dating someone or you're living with them or you're in a serious relationship send a text leave a note just little every day just some little thing that just tells them how much you like them like this is a low-cost high-value move doesn't take much and it's a practical thing but but but when we speak in these sort of like broader axioms these broader Concepts that people just don't have any idea how to practically apply I can't wait to listen to the audiobook where you talk about managing marital finances is like anal sex which you're you're um Mastery of the metaphor touches one's heart and soul your Shakespeare of the 21st century really I don't know that Shakespeare would have brought anal up in that context but I appreciate it yeah yeah my thesis there or my point there was you'll proceed carefully and have discussion in advance yes and don't just spring it on someone sure and realize that this if this goes wrong it will go catastrophically wrong um so good communication is important and you know yeah I I don't think it's something you should just uh dive into unless you're prepared for that to have potentially a very negative impact and you know finances is one of the sources of a huge amount of stress in relationships which is tremendous because it's it's about value I think I mean it's aside from having painful conversations about what you tried to do and were able to do or what your impulse control was in terms of what you spent money on like there's you know there's the conversation and then there's what's underneath the conversation you know there's gender stuff about men feeling they need to be a provider there's gender stuff of of of men or women thinking material Goods will fill the void and buying things and then creating stress on their partner there's the very human desire to make things seem effortless so your spouse doesn't feel any stress when in fact it's causing tremendous Financial stress and then when the Dam breaks it breaks hard so yeah there's a lot finances is tricky stuff and and you could probably be wonderful romantic and sexual partners and have very different styles of of how you handle your finances and how you handle your finances is informed by you know not only your individual psychology but also how you were raised and you know how your family taught you about finance and how you should conduct your finances so and there's interesting power dynamics in play tremendously yeah and those are there those are very tricky because the standard of living of a couple becomes important in a divorce but sometimes this toxic standard of living that created toxic levels of stress is one of the causes of the divorce and so you're asked they're asking the court to maintain a financial obligation on you that is the reason why the marriage fell apart and that feels like a particularly insulting form of of uh indignity well you're a fascinating human being on many levels but you're also exceptionally productive and you've talked to me about waking up early for you we've met today at 11 A.M and for you that's what late late afternoon I suppose yeah if we had we had to negotiate and come to an agreement because I went to bed at 4am and I was up at I get up at four every day well I woke it's three o'clock local time so I woke up at three local time nice yeah I wake up at four naturally then my body just wakes up oh it wakes up full on this speed wow like like my most productive writing and speaking is from 4 AM until noon or one so can you take me through a productive like a perfectly productive day I wake up at 4am very naturally I wish I didn't but I do check my phone first thing because I want to see if any emergencies came in from a client overnight so work emergencies yeah work related emergencies and it is a divorce lawyer [Music] our definition of emergency can be very serious it's people absconding with a child it's a police being involved in domestic violence and so they can be like time sensitive things and when someone is hiring a divorce lawyer I think you know they're hiring they want someone responsive my clients have my cell phone number and I go to bed early because I get up early and so I go to sleep by 8 PM latest I don't think I've seen 9 p.m even on New Year's Eve um so I wake up at at four I check my phone check my email usually even if there's something that's you know time sensitive it's usually not so time sensitive that it needs to be responded to it for him because most other normal people are asleep I have espresso black espresso which I enjoy very much and then I work out um and that someday is going to be weights a lot of days it's just going to be cardio I've changed my habits now that I'm in my early 50s it used to be much more intensive weight training and deadlifts and stuff like that and then I herniated my L5 S1 so 485 was my Max deadlift and now I I don't hardly do deadlifts well you can still relive the the past Glory I do I still have some pictures you have pictures I have videos I have videos me put on 485 for three which you can in stories when you talk about it you can exaggerate how much you're actually lifted that's true but then you he can't pack it up see I'm very evidence-based so if I don't have a photo or video of it it's just it's just puffing mere puffery at that point but I I work out uh and then I try to work out for like a good hour and I do that partly because of stress it's a I think when I don't work out it's difficult I had a group of guys that I would do Jiu Jitsu with at 5am they were mostly law enforcement they were cops who would either be starting a shift or coming off of a night shift and we would train together just do like an open mat and it was at 5am till six and that was Heaven I loved training Jiu Jitsu first thing in the morning if I can and then I always do either a sauna or Steam for 20 minutes half an hour and then I do a cold plunge or if I don't have access to a cold plunge cold shower um and then I have breakfast and it's usually a very uncontroversial simple breakfast I like to eat you know I eat like slow carb Tim Ferriss type style and uh and then I get right to work I try to do my drafting early in the day prenups motions things like that from you know let's say six or seven until 9 9 30 which is when Court begins so drafting is like writing up different documents right writing prenups writing separation agreements writing settlement proposals writing motions for the court pre-trial memos which is like research that I want to present to a judge that supports my arguments I do drafting I review documents that the attorneys who work for me have drafted and refined them and then court is usually from nine o'clock until noon and if we're on trial then it's a whole different pace because trials the lunch break isn't really a lunch break you're preparing the afternoon's Witnesses and you're trying to do damage control on what happened in the morning but if it's just Court conferences like most cases there's conferences conferences as you go in you make oral argument but you're not you don't have witnesses on the stand you're not taking testimony it's like everybody's just shouting allegations back and forth and making temporary arguments pre-trial it's kind of the foreplay of the trial right is that exhausting by the way it's exhausting when you're done with it like while you're doing it it's exhilarating I always say that I I never sleep as poorly as the night before a trial and I never sleep as well as the night I finished a trial because when I am on trial I am speaking listening watching the judge closely to see what they're reacting to and when they're paying attention or not paying attention watching opposing counsel and the opposing party like when are they when is the opposing party writing a little note to their lawyer to show it to them when is what is the opposing Council objecting to my client is trying to pass me notes half the time while I'm speaking and making my arguments I'm trying to like adjust what I'm doing strategically based on the objections that the judge is ruling on so I'm so hyper stimulated on trial that when you finish you can't even talk you you're gone your brain is jello yeah conferences is harder because at least with a trial there's a singularity of focus like with a trial it's just one case and they have all my attention the problem is is then on the lunch break all the other cases that I've been ignoring for the last several hours while I was on trial they all have stuff going on so it's like Hey where's that settlement proposal on this hey this she just did this we need to file a motion so now it's like okay I have an hour to eat and to answer all of this in some preliminary way to delegate some responsibilities and then I got to go back in and put 100 of my focus on this other case again so you find yourself in a play that's why I'm very disciplined as you find yourself in a place where I live my whole life in six minute increments tenths of an hour because we bill in tenths of an hour so everything I do it's like point two point four point six and I'm logging time throughout the day and you find yourself at the end of the day my son is a lawyer my older son he's a district attorney and uh I'm very proud of him he gets to put bad guys in jail uh and he's very smart he's doing a great job he's just about a year ago and when he graduated from Law School we were very close and we were talking and he said um we were just talking about like the career in the law that he was about to embark on and I said to him you know the feeling at the end of the day when like all your homework or all your work is done and you just go okay it's all done now and I'm gonna go home you'll never have that feeling ever again ever you're just gonna every day go all right it's enough it's enough I gotta I gotta I gotta get out of here like because you could with every one of these cases you could stay up 24 hours focusing just on it so you have to have the discipline to go yeah no that's it like I'm done for now I've done what I could do today and now I'm going to sit and read for a half an hour I'm gonna watch this show for a half an hour I'm gonna have this meal because you you it's never done you know so that's challenging that's a hard that's a hard part of this job but I think my discipline helps with that and then I like I said I I finish my day around 5 30 6 o'clock and I have something to eat and I try to wind down a little and I'm usually in bed by 7 30 and asleep by eight uh you mentioned Jiu Jitsu uh what your brown belt what role has Jiu-Jitsu played in your life I ah I love Jiu Jitsu I I train martial arts from the time I was a little kid I think I was seven or eight I took a poker now in goju karate and I did Judo and it was always part of my life and then I got to college and grad school and I didn't have time for it and I didn't do it so much and then I got divorced I was quite young still when I got divorced and I had two young kids and I um I thought well I can like you know grow goatee and buy a convertible and do like the thing you're supposed to do and you're a dude with kids in middle close to middle age um or I can I can try to do something more productive and so I said well maybe I'll go back to martial arts so I took up Muay Thai kickboxing and they had a jiu jitsu class at the same school after the Muay Thai class and I had been around the orbit of Jiu Jitsu having been my kids took karate and there was Jiu Jitsu there it was a Gracie Academy and uh I stayed for a jiu jitsu class and I had 120 pound girl Ragdoll me like because I just knew nothing about grappling and I remember just going well I gotta learn what this is and that was it I just dove into it my first Professor was Louvin tolaro in New Jersey's a hoyler Gracie black belt great teacher taught me amazing fundamentals took me all the way up to Purple belt and then right after I got my purple belt I moved to the city I moved to Manhattan I actually chose my apartment based on its proximity to Marcelo Garcia and I moved to West Chelsea because it was a short walk to to Marcella's Academy my core Jiu Jitsu was up to Purple belt it was Lou vintelaro and then it's been Marcelo um and Marcelo Paul Schreiner who's really you know phenomenal at his Academy and all of all the people at his Academy I mean are all phenomenal I mean Bernardo was was there for a period of time that I was there and before he went to Boston um Marcos tanoko was like his lasso guard stuff he was at Marcellus for a long time and what a teacher I mean my my lack of skill at Jiu Jitsu is not based on a lack of quality instruction like it's based on an inability to retain the information you know for very long I mean like for me that's one of the most reliable place I can go to humble myself I love I love jiu jitsu I love the progressive humility that it drives home constantly I love the impossibility of perfecting it although Gordon Ryan's probably come close and marcelo's probably come close to perfecting it let me ask you since you mentioned Gordon Ryan uh so apparently some uh close with Gordon and there's I'm sure you know and Austin just this Jujitsu scene this it's like credits I'm actually seeing John's honor her this evening so he's I mean yeah that's this is like yeah this is amazing truly special place but anyway apparently long ago you mentioned Jersey uh there's there's a bit of a conflict between you and uh Gordon that you mentioned to me Offline that you love them and um like just uh how much respect you have for him as an athlete and so on but can you explain why why is this yeah I'm actually glad I have that it's funny that you bring it up and of all the you know we're talking about all these heavy topics and this is probably the one that I find most the most actually emotional but you know Gordon's very I think a very young man still he's like Brian is 20s or early 30s and it's hard to imagine that because he's accomplished so much as an athlete and as a business person um but there was a time you know not that long ago I think it was eight or nine years ago where he was just a young guy on his way up um he's only I think a couple years older than my oldest son and I through a series of circumstances Jiu Jitsu wasn't you know it's really exploded in the last 10 years but there were not as many people sponsoring quote unquote super fights there really weren't like Jiu Jitsu super fights being sponsored if Jersey and New York particular and I got involved in sponsoring some Jiu Jitsu super fights and I also got involved in sponsoring some Jiu Jitsu athletes and Gordon was a young a part of the Donahue her death squad I was friends with Eddie Cummings I'm still friends with Eddie um I I was friends with John I'm still friends with John but I didn't really know Gordon I actually don't know that I've still ever met I don't think I've ever met Gordon um I've been the same room as him but there was a fight that I had sponsored some other fights with this particular promoter and they asked me to sponsor one and it didn't involve anyone from marcelos um but it involved Gordon he was one of the people and I like John very much and I liked everybody in the on her death squad I like watching them compete and I thought you know I think John's just brilliant I mean everyone at marcelos has such respect for John and for everyone and the stuff they were doing like when they were the early days of that Donna her death squad like the Eddie Cummings like his leg locks like he just blew the whole game up like it just was a whole nother thing you know it was like insane what they did such innovation and Gordon at the time was he was online and I'm much older than that you know I'm I'm in my early 50s and that's not I guess chronologically that much older but generationally I think it's quite a bit different and Gordon was smack talking with a guy who I about a guy who I was sponsor of who I knew and who I knew was a very good athlete and had been through difficult things in his life and um and Gordon just you know said some like nasty things about him you know some very it falls into the category of totally appropriate smack talking looking at it now and looking at what Gordon became you know which is he's someone who talks trash you know it's like part of his brand is to talk trash and I see now that that's like a Muhammad Ali Thing by the time I just didn't see it is what it was and although it doesn't excuse it my mother was dying I was not at my best I was having a hard time and Gordon had spoken of this person and I I got upset and I reached out to John and to Tom deblas and I said to them hey like could you tell this guy to knock it off like don't talk about this person who I sponsor if I'm sponsoring his fight I don't even know this Gordon Ryan kid and I'm sponsoring his fight and like he should say thank you don't talk bad about a person who I financially sponsor like that's not cool and I think on Facebook he like wrote some comments and then I wrote some comments back and I was incredibly obnoxious and um very soon after I felt really gross because I was an adult and I was talking to a young person this way who's on their way up who's like a little older than one of my kids and I just said these obnoxious things to him and I I felt really like that's gross you know and but I've never really thought much about it again you know I watched a star rise and and I was very I mean who who's not impressed by Gordon Ryan like and everyone at our Academy was always very you know like thrilled to see him rise and you know I've stayed friends with John and every time Gordon would have a big victory I would always text John and be like because you know Gordon's victories are John's victories too you know they have such a great Bond all the people in his orbit like are all people that I respect and like and I just would say Hey listen congratulations and please pass on my congratulations to Gordon and uh but I we don't know each other I don't have his number I have no way to contact him to apologize to him but you know if Gordon hears this um I am profoundly sorry I and not I don't say that because I'm trying to get in your good graces I don't know that we'll ever meet each other um but but that was an unbelievably wrong stupid thing to say to a young person well thank you for saying that this this warms my heart in general so you talk to a divorce lawyer and it warms your heart look at that well speaking of which so what uh you're a romantic actually uh what what role you've seen love you've seen love break down completely what role does Love play in The Human Condition a minute I think it's kind of everything right like it's love is romantic love Wars are fought for romantic love Empires fall because of romantic love like it takes down Kings it it takes down you know like it's it's we're all just struggling for it we're all just chasing it like we're all chasing the dragon you know it's like the rush we all are so it's huge you know it's huge I mean sex and love which I like to believe are some way connected and love and romance which again I like to believe are in some way connected I think it's huge I think it's a look I I've always thought most of what men do including me we do to get laid like on some level like you you want to be successful why so you can have money why so you can have nice things so that you can attract attractive members of the opposite sex you know like a lot of things come down to that and and even for like men you know like red pill you know men who are like yeah I don't care about women well you talk about them all awful lot like for someone that's not interested in women you sure are like in the orbit of women who you're telling how much you don't care about women which kind of feels like you're doing that to attract a certain kind of woman which I get you know like more power to you but like that a person who worships an idol and a person who destroys an idol are both idolaters yes you know so you're you're if all you're talking about is how you don't need women you're talking about women an awful lot so it's just such a splinter in people's mind you know relationships breakups and and like it's such a great equalizer I mean you're spending some time in the rarified air now of like big celebrity people and I remember when I started out as a lawyer just doing like the regular like the cop and the teacher with a 401k and they didn't have any assets I remember thinking like well someday if I represent celebrities or wealthy CEOs like it'll be different they'll be like smarter they'll be like different it's just weird petty shit the same infidelity the same the same kind of insecurities the same kind of jealousy the same kind of fights it all it's all the same but it is it's like it and it's all the same insecurity sadness it's the same like desire to be validated like mommy issues daddy issues like intimacy issues you know it and it's all the same stuff and and just because you're really good at other things like I've represented professional athletes who are phenomenal world-class you know doctors business people and they suck at relationships no better than like anybody else like there's no you know there's no connection between the skills that made you a good entrepreneur and the skills that made you a good you know spouse or partner I'm sure there's some overlap like patience is good and thinking strategically is probably good but I I I'm I'm just humbled by how we're called to it still like it's so and and even when we lose and even when like our greatest pains were caused by our desire to love and be loved in a romantic sense we just keep putting the money on the table and playing like we won't just quit we just keep going you know and the whole mess of it is worth it I mean I guess I guess so like it's calling us I don't know if it's worth it or not that's a value judgment right but I I it we don't stop I don't know a lot of people that that they played the hand they lost and they went well no more of that game for me like I'm not a good poker player I'm not playing poker anymore like I know people who've done that I know people that are like listen I don't drink like you know I'm allergic I break out in handcuffs and hospital bills like I'm not drinking anymore but I don't know people that are like man that relationship I screwed that up or I got screwed on that one I'm not doing that anymore you can say that everybody says that I'm through with love you know I'm done they're not they keep going they'll they'll they'll go up again never gonna fall in love again and then um a few weeks later yeah I got job security man I got job security people are not gonna stop walking down that aisle they are not gonna stop having kids with people that they probably should have thought through whether they would have kids with that person or not but I'm glad they are I'm glad they're taking that leap I'm glad they're taking that risk it's this whole Beautiful Mess that we're all a part of it's like taking that risk yeah taking that leap of vulnerabilities of what this whole thing is about man what a danger if we didn't you know like like every you know you you you hear about people like Alexander Hamilton or you hear about you know people who like they were born of circumstances that like these two people should never have had a kid and then they did and that kid changes the world you know and like moves the dial forward and what I like what a great mistake like what a great it's that you can't ever say it's a mistake like what an amazing thing that happened and and I think that that's one of the things I like about divorce as a practice and as almost looking at it like a spiritual practice I think you just don't know what is a blessing right in the world like you just don't know like I my father I've spoken about this before publicly and he does frequently my father is an alcoholic my father's been in recovery now for seven years I think yeah but he was a bad alcoholic Vietnam veteran my whole life and only got sober you know when I was in my 40s and a lot of the personality characteristics I have are consistent with those of adult children of Alcoholics you know desire for control and control issues um you know a lot a lot of those things and I love my life like I'm having a great time if I died tomorrow man I did more learn more earn more loved more than I ever dreamed and so I'm so glad my dad was an alcoholic and if you said to me how do you raise kids like I wouldn't say like well you definitely want to be an alcoholic because like your kids can eat a lot of really good discipline lessons from that experience like no like I wouldn't you know I wouldn't want that for but but but it's born like all these wonderful things were born of this awful situation so I think divorce the same thing like I I we make these mistakes right but they're not really you know I often have to say to my clients when they're like oh I wish I'd never married this person I'm like you love your kids right like your kids are half that person they would not be the organism they are without that person's DNA so you can't regret being with that person if you love your kids like if you love your kids those kids don't exist without that person and I I don't know how we refocus on that you know I don't know maybe we give anyone going through it I've actually had a theory which I've not said out loud but I'll say it to you because it's just us talking I I think if we could figure out a way to take a divorcing couple that is interested in potentially mediating and put them in a setting where we could give them both psilocybin like a good dose like two and a half three grams and have them do individual sessions with you know controlled setting with a a a guide right and and have them start to do that in her work and then have them do some kind of a of a session together after they've had that experience that's psychedelic experience I actually think you could do transformative divorce work because I I have found myself and certainly the many people that I've talked to who've had psilocybin experiences and in particular but any psychedelic experience many of the empathogens right um or even like MDMA you know like MDMA which is you know it is an empathogen and if if we brought that space and the divorce and conflict resolution space together that sort of psychopharmacological intervention on empathy one's empathy receptors or one's connectivity I think that would could be radically transforming it would be logistically an absolute nightmare it would never get done from a legal standpoint but man like I I think sometimes like that if because I think the more that you can bring people to the awareness of connection that comes from many people's psychedelic experiences I think they could then extrapolate that into their understanding of the conflict and disconnect they're having with their partner so really lean into the like use this brink of divorce as a kind of catalyst for doing a lot of soul-searching a lot of growth together that was what appealed to me about it I mean before I started doing it is it was this idea that this is a opportunity to for radical reinvention yeah like it was an opportunity for people to say okay now what like I didn't expect that now what and it was to be part of the architecture of that like I didn't look at it like I'm helping demolish the building it was like I'm tearing down the building so we can build the new one which I hope is filled with joy and abundance and peace and love and real love real satisfaction like my my ex-wife is married for over a decade now to a phenomenal guy who is perfect for her and he's Nothing Like Me by the way like like if you met him and you've met both of us you'd go well no one could love both of these guys like if you like this flavor you wouldn't like this flavor like I am impatient fast talking like skip to the end we gotta Land This Plane come on and he's like he's therapist he's chill he's like patient and they're perfect together and I can say that as someone who loves her and loved her you know and knows her or knew her like and and I I think if we can you know if we can radically view honestly like without jealousy without you know without the sense of like with look at it and just go yeah yeah okay like this like this is the love this person needed like that doesn't mean my love sucks just means it wasn't the right one for this person you know like if there's someone and there's a lid for every pot you know like she found her lid I wanted to find her lid that's good you know and there's billions of pots out there and we just need to match it with the proper lid yeah not hit each other over the head with them all day long yeah man this is such a romantic few hours we've got to spend together and there's even a candle burning off is there all this lovely all right brother thanks so much thank you thanks for having me thanks for listening to this conversation with James Sexton to support this podcast please check out our sponsors in the description and now let me leave you with some words from roomie your task is not to seek for love but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it thank you for listening and hope to see you next time