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, ugh,
this loathsome harpy that castrated me, as if like people are just passive players in their lives.
And I think that is an incredibly toxic message to send to people, that this is how we should be
relating to our partner. We should not, you don't take the piss out of your partner in front of
people. The successful relationships I've seen are where people are just cheering for their partner,
where they are thick as thieves, where there is just this feeling of like, man,
they like each other. They got each other's back like you wouldn't believe. Man,
you could take sides against anybody, but take sides against their partner, you're going down.
When you see a couple that has that, that's so hard to break. But I think that comes from
having like a steadfast, yeah, no, I don't do that. I don't shit talk my partner.
And you don't shit talk my partner to me. And that to me is, 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. Okay, yeah,
you screwed up. I see it. Look, I'm not going to lie to you about your blind spots. You screwed up.
But you know what? People screw up sometimes. You've got a right 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,
I feel like that's a superpower.
The 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 in this whole messy rollercoaster 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 the internet. But the reality is, I think it's a lot
of little things. It's 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 Wolfe 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 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 a dance. It's a chemistry.
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 telling it's
full context 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 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, what each of them did that moved the
dial in these different directions. And I think that that's very hard for anyone going through
a divorce to do about their own relationship. 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, 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 cause this connection. I mean, you've talked about granola and blowjobs,
but those seem to be stories that you can tell to yourself. Maybe that story should be explained,
or maybe not. You don't think granola and blowjobs is self-explanatory? Almost. 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 a pretty good one, but that's a story you tell about when you first knew the disconnection has
begun is when he stopped buying my favorite granola or when she stopped giving blowjobs.
I would say when it's reached a critical mass, because I think it started before that,
when she said, yeah, I used to give him blowjobs and when we were in our early relationship and
then one day I just was like, oh, well, we don't have as much time. I'll wait until later and we'll
have sex and then we both enjoy it. Blowjobs are inefficient. Yeah, exactly correct. So she said,
and they had kids at that point, so I think she really was like, hey, we've gotten a certain
window, so let's have something we both enjoy. So I don't think she had any negative intentions
there. I think that she was working in good faith towards the betterment of the relationship,
but it was having this second order effect. And so I really do think that, yeah, the blowjobs,
granola, I mean, there anyone who's been in a long-term relationship,
I guess it's just worth asking the question, what does this person do that makes me feel loved?
Because I think it's very interesting in my own experience in life. I 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 know I love you? And he said, well, yeah,
of course I do. I said, but do you feel my love? Do you feel it? Not just do you know it
intellectually, do you feel it? And I remember thinking to myself, when do we feel someone's
love? 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. If you said, why does this person love you? They wouldn't say, oh,
because 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. Or I always hold the door for them.
Again, I buy the granola that I know this person likes, or I remembered that they don't like it
when I put on this particular record so I don't put it on. 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? 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,
there becomes a deliberateness to it, a conscious. So I understand not pointing that out
when it's a good thing. I think when it's a negative thing, I think 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. She said, she didn't say anything about that. Just like he probably didn't say anything about
the blowjobs. 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, so when you notice something, you notice that little something,
talk about it. Because that little something is probably a kernel of a deeper truth. Of course,
there's also moods. We're all like a rollercoaster of emotions. So you can not bring a granola one
day just because you're in this place where nothing is, just cynicism everywhere, just anger
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 of their partner. They want to understand like, hey, are you going through
something? Look, if I'm the one you need to take it out on, that's okay. I'm a big boy,
I can take it. If you're hormonal, if you're frustrated at work, if you're whatever,
we should be able to have a little bit of that interaction and a relationship.
But I do think it's so easy to just say to people, oh, communication is the key.
But it really is about fearless kinds of communication. It's about really honestly
saying to somebody, this feels like something to me. Am I wrong? This just feels like something
to me. And also how that's presented, one of the things I'm very caught up on or feel very
strongly about is that 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,
this loathsome harpy that castrated me. As if like people are just passive players in their lives.
And 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 thick as thieves, where there is just this feeling of like, man, they
like each other. 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. And when you
see a couple that has that, that's so hard to break. But I think that comes from having a
steadfast, yeah, no, I don't do that. Like I don't shit talk my partner.
And you don't shit talk my partner to me. 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 going to lie to you about your blind spots.
You screwed up, but you know what? People screw up sometimes. You got a right 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,
I feel like 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,
like in an interview, answering a question, especially like intellectual questions,
like what do you think about the war in Ukraine or something? And then the partner's talking and
the other person is looking at them as if they're hearing the wisest thing ever. They're still
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 to be with this smart
motherfucker. And they could be seeing the dumb shit.
There's a scene in the movie, True Romance. I love the movie, great movie. Gary Oldman
scenes like the greatest scene ever done in film with Christian Slater. But there's a scene in it
where she holds up a sign to Christian Slater and it says, you're so cool. And I like, man,
like that's it. That's it. I've always, I think I say it somewhere in the book that
you go to weddings and like when the bride walks in, everybody's looking at the bride,
it's her show. Everybody turns around as the first glimpse everybody gets to 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.
But this is it. And everyone's looking at her. And I always look at him because I always think
to myself, the look on his face is like, that's this feeling of like, holy, yeah, wow. 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, that kind of adoration, I think that's the look we're describing is like adoration,
that the words coming out of their mouth that they're like, yeah, that's mine. That one's mine.
That's such a great thing. Like it's such a great feeling.
Seeing the good stuff, like with True Romance, I mean, you could make fun of the guys totally
cringe wearing Elvis, like essentially being a fake Elvis with shades and like, what is he doing?
It's like watching these Kung Fu movies. But from her perspective and from a perspective you could
take on him is this is 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 and we're living in this epic
hero story. And what does that do to him though? That's what, see, that's the point.
Like if there was a point to this, to this whole thing, this whole couple thing, isn't that it?
I don't understand this idea of, 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
this is an endurance event? Like the primary relationship of your life,
you've decided you're going to turn into like a 50 mile trail race. Like why?
Why would you do that? Like congratulations, you took the concept of monogamy and made it
something that two people are absolutely not going to enjoy, but you hung in there.
Congratulations. And I understand there's religious perspectives that say, well,
it's a sacred covenant, but I have a real chicken or the egg problem with that 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 we'll sign on for that. I don't buy it. I don't
buy it anymore. I really, because when you see a successful marriage or you see two, 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. Like you, you see the difference right away. It's
like, if you, you know, the first time I've, this is the first time I've come to Austin,
I've, I've 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,
this is 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 I mean romantic love, like real love like that,
real bond, real, you go, oh yeah, this other thing's not going to do it.
Do you think that's a daily deliberate choice that a couple like that makes?
Cause 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
where 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 got to get a new dog. Like I've had this one for
eight years. Like I got to 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 is like, this is my dog's smell. The bad habits of the dog. You're like,
it's my stupid dog that does stupid things. And it's not like that has to be a conscious,
like they wake up every day and go, I should be grateful for the dog. Like it's just visceral.
It's in them, 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 am like, Oh, 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.
And then once you've come to that, it does itself, right? Like it, it really does. Like you're,
I think it's, it initially has to be a conscious practice. 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 8 billion people in the world and you're picking this one.
So when you marry in theory, like the stock's 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 going to 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. There's a certain sense where if you, from the very
beginning, of course you could end up in toxic relationships that way, but you know, life is
short. You're going to die eventually. Might as well really go all in on relationships.
There's a line in a drugstore cowboy. It was 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'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 is going to 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 going to 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 think everyone's going,
well, let's everybody else doing, you know, well, 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. 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, cause it's look at just us, it's just what we want,
what we like. And that's why 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 in any particular, well then who the hell can you be candid with? I mean,
because you're going to 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 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 foot fetishes.
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 to people like things. It's good,
you know? But yeah, I, 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, cause he's secretly out of foot
fetish and he was on these message boards like meeting people. But, 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 as it was a foot thing. But I also think too, like, listen, if you got a partner,
I mean, 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 going to pretend this song is a good song,
you know, even though it's not my favorite song. And, and I think 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 think we've made it into something where we can't just, I don't know. I'm not into feet, but
if the woman I love was like, you know, I'm really into feet. 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 going to kill
me. I'm not going to be able to make it a centerpiece of our coupling, but you know,
like, yeah, I can pretend I'm into feet if you want. I don't personally have any fetishes that
are outside of 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, I don't know how I would initiate the
conversation with my partner about that. But frame the question the other direction.
If you were into furries, 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 quite unsuccessfully.
Like it, the, the, the second order effects of that are very rarely positive. Sure. I don't,
I don't think I've ever met someone who 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 would their advice to a young person in their
twenties and thirties, who's gay be stay in the closet. Cause 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, cause I I'm publicly and privately, I'm the exact same part or try to be the exact same person.
So I usually try to make sure there's nothing to hide, but I was trying to come up with a
counter example for you for if there's good things. Um, well, I mean, there could be like
past relationships. Like if I, you know, slept with thousands of women or something like this,
maybe that you want to 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 indelicate. It's rude, you know? So, so I don't think it's a matter of like
total candor at all times. But I think if you were, we're 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 genuinely believe that, that
this, you know, I, I'm, 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 bestial 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 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 really believe that
when you don't, when you push down parts of yourself, like your sexuality,
like your insecurities, your, 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 will 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, 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 jujitsu person. And people should know that you are a quote unquote,
jujitsu 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 brown belt. Well,
and also I am, I am, you know, late middle aged, middle weight and moderately talented. So I'm,
and training 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. But, but a lot of,
I think as you know, and as most, most people who practice jujitsu know, you start to sort of see
jujitsu in everything. I genuinely believe that in love, you have to give something to get something
you have to create everything you do creates a vulnerability. You know, every, every move you
make in jujitsu 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 in 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, you want
to, you want it to actually move along. Yeah. I mean, that's the way I see love and relationships
should take that leap of vulnerability. Give the other person the option to destroy you.
Well, you have to expose. And that's the, 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 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 jujitsu community, like I I'm around, you know, as you are like incredibly
tough people, like physically tough people, mentally tough people. But, you know, I've seen
some of those people taken down by 120 pound woman, you know, not, not, not from a grappling
perspective, but they are taken apart by a woman in their life 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 real. And no matter how it evolves, when it ends in tragedy or
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 to having experienced that kind of love.
I think when you look at people that are divorcing each other,
there's Edgar Allen 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've 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 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 them.
So you're an 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.
But 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 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 and 45 was
great, you know, but you walk out with this bad taste in your mouth. I'm genuinely in awe of how
easily people forget that they loved each other. And I'm amazed because by the time I meet them
and by the time 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, you know, I don't function that way. Like I, every woman I ever had a relationship with,
like I, when I think of them, 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 don't know why you 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 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 am making a choice as to how I will remember you.
And we do it in relationships. Like 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, it'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 the face softens, they both and the other person looking at them, telling the
story, gets that look you were talking about before. And cause 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 the, 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, she had a 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 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
to 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 I think
it's a deliberate choice to make your memory probably work that way.
You know, in relationships betrayal can do that, right? Sort of cheating and fidelity,
like one event can almost erase the entirety of your understanding of the past and all the
memories are sort of shrouded in this darkness of, okay, what I believed was true is totally
untrue and sort of 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 have clients who were four years, five years past when the divorce ended,
the cheating was discovered and they're as angry as they were the day they found out.
And I don't know what that's about 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 survivors. 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 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 rarely seen very happy content couples that cheat on each other.
And so 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 and I represent perpetrator of domestic violence.
I represent the person with the substance use disorder, the person married to the person.
So 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's 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 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 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 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,
that's just so absurd. Like it's so crazy. I mean, like I don't, I, you know, 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?
Now I got to wipe that, like, oh, 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 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. 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 a divorce lawyer's office, some of the most entertaining moments
is dramatic readings aloud of people's infidelity exchanges with their lovers.
The sex.
Yeah, the sex and 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 kind of 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 have a, I have a,
I remain 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. Cause I own one and I've never
thought, is this weird? But, but 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, 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 at the whole thing. I mean, I, I think what we don't often do
with ourselves is, uh, look back at texts or look back at emails or look back at Google search.
I did that recently, just looking at what I searched for like 10 years ago, 15. And 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 50 times? Right? Like why did, why did the karate
kid three poppin? Yeah, exactly. Why? And like, you're like, where's Ralph Macchio now? And where
did, who is he dating wise and then other, and then, and then you're like a restaurant nearby,
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.
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 other. Really? You think that's doable, but you've, so you've in, in the courtroom,
does that come up like text messages with that resulted in, uh, with whoever you're cheating
with? So 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. I mean, can you elaborate on 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 and marital assets, which means that you were spending
money that was marital money on a paramour. That's what the legal name for 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 the paramour 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
paramour, 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. 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 partners. 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,
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 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. And it was like, well now, you
know, took all the thunder out of that. What's the downside of doing that? It 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, he was naturally intelligent enough
to go, yeah, my credibility, like, I'm not going to 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 M&M 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, 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? A plaintiff. You sent it? Yeah. Read it out loud for the court.
Do I have to? I think you should. You're a piece of S. Does it say S? No.
What does it say? Well, it's a profanity. Say it, say it. You piece of shit, I hope that she die.
You sent that to her? Yes. Why? I was really mad. Do you think that was good?
No. Do you think it was helpful for 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 moment? 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 texts 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. 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, 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 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 involved in. And it's like you piece of shit, you never cared
about anything. And I'm going to tell you, you have no right to take the kids from here. And
then the next day, nothing in between the next day, Maddie got a good grade on her 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.
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.
I totally get it. But is there some, 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, is that not happened 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 texts. 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 think like a lawyer. I like you think 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? Cause like that's explained 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 a what's his name, Jake Paul or whatever, Paul and Dylan Danis right now that
guy's girlfriend, every picture has 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, putting out there on texts, putting out there on social media.
But is the reward of doing it via text worthwhile? I'm listening to 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 is a new way to communicate right in the scheme of things. And so sometimes
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 that purpose? I don't know
the answer to 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. I know when I read it, what it looks
like. And that's not always accurate. It's like when you watch a video of someone at just their
worst moment. And the person tries to say, but wait, that's not me. That was just me in that
moment. That was me at this incredible low point. And I think as a lawyer, my job is to weaponize
that and to try to say, okay, this low point is indicative of who they actually are. And when I'm
defending someone, I'm supposed to say, well, this is their low point. And 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 is missing your expression. Like my sense of humor
does not do well via text. Like I, cause 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 of hours. I mean, that's beautiful. I don't know.
That's a, that's like a, it's the, 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 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. Well, I 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, Amber Heard moment, we'll get Michael Malice.
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 can
speak to that. It's probably the first time I've seen that kind of 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 Johnny Depp. For me, yeah. There's no
amount of money. Because they both look awful. They both look awful. And I don't think, I don't
think I'm qualified to say if one 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, it was all it really is, is just another, it's just another couple. Like there's so, you
know how banal that is, you know, 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 two people with completely differing 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 of, 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're, you think these photos prove something like 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, they, 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, in the public testimony of that, you know, depth hurt 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 were moments where you listen to the testimony and go, Oh my God, she's awful. Like
what? That's just evil. And the same for him. So 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. But I think it, everyone was asking the question, whether you were team depth,
team herd or team, I could care less about either of these people. Everybody's looking at it going,
why like what? 8 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 actually
become friendly with Camila Vasquez. Who's the lawyer on the depth side. She's an incredible
woman and just a great human being. Just how passionate she's about her work. I mean,
you, you radiate this kind of same passion. Like she's just truly happy doing what she does.
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 it. I think that's a function of our
professions. We, we, we even after 20 plus years of doing this, like the night before a trial,
I can hardly sleep. And I excitement, fear. Yes. Yes. All of that, all of that. And, and I even
have moments as 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. And it's instantly like, I just,
I own it. I love it. And it's, yeah, it's the people that love this job. You know, being 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, I can't imagine spending five days a week looking forward to two,
you know, I, I love what I do. I don't know that I'll ever love anyone or anything more than I love
the work. So I saw you on a talk with Steve Harvey a bunch of times and it was, I always loved it.
One thing just sticks in my head from something he's said as a device 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 arm 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 sides against the family. Yeah. Yes. Make it all boils down to Godfather.
Everything boils down to Godfather references. It really does. 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 I, but I think what he's saying is don't project it out to the
world. Don't share that because 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
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, uh, 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. So 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. 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 got to really work at that. 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 got to work really hard to stay in
show. We got to work really hard to be able to do this. Like, yeah, I'm not good at memorizing that.
It takes time, but I've never heard him say like, Oh, marriage is a lot of work. Like,
and I think that stays 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,
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 and that's lovely, you know, and that's such
a good thing. And I like, we were 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 enjoy
listening to your work and your perspective has always been that 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 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, or is it not? I think 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 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 bear witness to this connection broken 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 what is sadness? What is tragic? And what is just
inevitable decay? What is pain and decay? We all die. 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, the money is going to go, everything's, your looks is going to go, your everything's going
to go, love's going to end one way, then what are we doing? And 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, 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% of marriages end in divorce, but 84% are remarried within five
years. Like we keep doing it over and over again. And 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
something, that's something beautiful about that. 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 going to 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 to, you know, and I went, yeah,
all right, I'll watch a dog for the night, you know, and this dog coming. They said,
Oh, he has mange. He's not going to fuck. I got another dog. He walked in and my heart
went, yeah, I got a 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 going to break my heart.
And I wouldn't change that for the world. I'm still there. I'm still struggling for the
second one. I've lost a dog and it broke my heart. 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 Cabba. 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 going to 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'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 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 going to do it again, I'm going to do it, but it must be a value. It must be of real value.
There's also a different perspective on it, that pain. So there's that, from Louis, the show of
this interaction with an old man, with Lucy Kay, and he says that, because Louis mourning the loss
of, got split up, he got dumped or whatever, and he's mourning the loss of that partner of love.
And the old man says that that is the best part. Like missing the love is still love. The bad,
the real bad part is when you forget it, when you forget, when the pain fades, it's all gone. But
the pain is actually a kind of celebration of the love you had.
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, hate is a passionate emotion. Love is a passionate emotion.
But, and there is a school of thought that says that only unfulfilled love can be truly romantic.
But I believe that, it's what I think I learned from hospice, is that I think for me,
knowing the impermanence is, is the thing, you know, it's the key.
Yeah. It's finite and 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 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 are so many people you could love. There's so many dogs
you could love. Like there's so much out there and it's, it requires a certain bravery and
tremendous amount of risk to do it, you know. And a commitment. Cause 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 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 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 worked on. Just something that stands
out to you. What's maybe 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.
Let's go craziest. Yeah. So craziest. Ah, gosh, that's a great question. So from a 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. I get so much craziness that you could fill 15 books.
In terms of complexity, you know, I mean, emotionally complex is any custody case is
emotionally complex because 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 a, just to linger 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 eighties,
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 how, 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,
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 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? Cause 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
the discussion, a negotiation between counsel about those issues. And they're not ugly and
they're not anything. They're just people, again, sometimes people have different 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. That's so boring. 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 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. There'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. It seems like a happy
ending for everyone but him, but it was his idea. Well, he's really going to 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 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, I, my words of wisdom is not don't get a nanny or, or make sure you get an ugly nanny.
My, 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,
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 a
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. Cause 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.
So again, I think the answer is connection. I think the answer is
affection, presence, you know, mindfulness and presence. 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 have 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
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
and 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 get small because we.
And if any of us dare is to ask, well, what about you? What about me? No, no, the we. What,
you don't like the we? You don't want to be with the we? Like, well, no, it's not that.
But the we only exists 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. And I really think that
there's something there we have to look at more honestly.
So the we should not consume everything, but at the same time, not be small.
Well, the we is the you and the me. And if you mix it so much that you and me loses its
components, that all that's left is we. I don't think that that's the way to do it. I just think
the world pulls us in that direction. We get told culturally that,
well, why aren't you going with this person to that? Why would you do that by yourself?
And why? Anyone knows that there's joy in being away from each other and there's joy being
reunited together. So why don't we speak very honestly about that? And I think some of that's
our own insecurity. Well, why don't you want to be with me 24 hours a day? Aren't I wonderful?
Aren't I delightful? It's like, well, wait, what? Well, but also probably people are either afraid
or lazy in developing their individual selves. I mean, 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 we with a full report.
Coming back and saying like, oh my God, guess what I saw? Guess what I did? Oh my God, we have to go
there together now because all I could think about was you. While I was there, I was like, oh my God,
she would love this. That's magical. That's amazing. Look what I brought you back.
I went into this and then I got you this present from there. There's something,
and we know this. I always thought it was like when you watch the old westerns or the
heroes leaving and he's walking away from the cabin because he's going to go fight the gunfight
and she runs up and she goes, please don't go. Don't go. Stay here with me. And he like kisses
her and then he goes, 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 then.
Yeah. Yeah. It's deep truth to that. And then probably like you mentioned sex.
Sexes?
Probably a big part of it. Friendship. That seems to me like a really important one.
Depends on how you define friend. Like I, you know, 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 got to hide a body. Like you get shoveled in a lime.
I like how you escalated from airport pickup to murder.
Yeah. I try to go the direction. I define, you know, the Ben Affleck movie, the town,
you know, that scene that's friendship to me. I mean, to me, the, 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. 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 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 bars reached with me with,
with a lot of people. Like if you called 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,
cause 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. Well, 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, you do feel all of it. And
then it's like, Oh my God, the weight of this is crying. I mean, 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, 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, the 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 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 gift. 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, a personally
fulfilling way. And ideally in a way that does, does good for other people.
You yourself are incredibly successful and 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.
Is it all the same stuff or there's something special when they're busier?
Well, you know, 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. You know, so that is
different than someone who is self-made who through discipline, focus, entrepreneurship,
you know, whatever it might be that, that they have found success. And there's also
a difference between financial success and fame because I've represented famous people that
actually did not have that much money in the scheme 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 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 your,
when your portfolios 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
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 a 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 are 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 of 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 two, how long is this going to take and how much is it going to
cost? And those are two questions I can't answer. 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, 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 going to 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,
I have a friend who went to a divorce and, um, 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, and also like he refused, like with every ounce 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 have a friendly
relationship with my ex-wife who's the mother of my sons who are adults and 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 I, or like seeing just an ugly custody case and like, I 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 of hours? She'd be like, yeah, sure. Come on by. You know, she was always
flexible like that. And I said to her like, well, 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, her conditioning kicked out and she needed it to replace it.
And she didn't have like liquidity at the time. 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, no. Cause 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 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 going to argue
with you. Like I'm going to absorb your aggression. I'm going to, 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 I'm just, people are so angry that they just are, they're relentless. 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
wants to 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 going to be a wedding
in like 20 something years, there's going to 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. Cause 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 longtime 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 and 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? Oh, 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, 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 is to
take each other's head off, but like, nobody knows what the two of you went through. Like the two of
you, 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. Cause I'm always like, like, yeah, cause
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 of 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 or four or five, 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. Cause I'm fucking five. Like I'm five. Like, like you can't go do
that. So wouldn't you want your child, not your co-parent who cares? 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 acknowledged 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 $3 boxes of chocolates they sell at the drug store. 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. If you apologize, there's not a lot I won't forgive.
Like I'm not saying 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 apology is, 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 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 have to tell you, 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, look, 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. Routinely. People weaponize children all the time and they do it with the
permission of their own conscience because they genuinely believe I'm going to 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 a 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 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 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 it'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, oh, I met mom's new boyfriend. And you go, oh yeah, that's nice.
Remember, he's not your dad. You know, like, well, 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 as 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 can 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. Cause 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,
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, I think my heart
enjoys peace. I mean, partly it's cause I fight for a living. You know, I, 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. But I think we were talking about the, the incredibly
wide range that a divorce can cost. Yeah. So, so the cheap, and you were saying the cheapest one
was a yellow, 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 complexity, the complexity of issues. Like I have clients who've paid two, three million
in council fees to me. So it's like custody or like what's the complexity? It can be complex
custody that requires a hearing that requires expert testimony, dueling mental health
professionals, opining on the parenting. 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. Yeah. We've done
some Hague cases. You know, there, there are cases where people have, have very different facts. Like
before I came here today, a client of mine's soon to be ex-husband who she's in the middle of a door,
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 got to get a motion filed. We got to suspend access. We got to protect the kids. We got to get
in front of a judge. We got to think about what are the implications of this? Cause 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 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 a prenup is a good idea.
Prenup is an excellent idea. 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, 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 that 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 prenup downloading
something from the internet. And because of some imperfection, you know, it doesn't have the right,
what's called acknowledgement, 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 acknowledged in their native language,
that there is some opportunity for this to be translated for them. Yeah, they're binding.
They're presumptively binding. You know, we live thankfully in a culture where people are allowed
to enter into contracts about money. What are some prenups that you've seen that can be
effective or what that people converge towards in terms of what does that agreement look like?
The popular conception is when there's no prenup, both sides get half.
And that's generally true that both sides get half. 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 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 it 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 sole 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 somehow people think there's something like it takes away from the
romance of a marriage. 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 predicting,
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 state agency. It's been created by the state. Like this is a legal status that most
people who are in it know nothing about. 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 that's
like four or five times a week probably, depending on the season, right before wedding season,
we get a lot. When's wedding season? Well, it used to just be the summer. You know, they say
when you marry in junior, you're a bride all your life. That's from some Rogers and Hammerstein
musical. Now the fall is very big too. People love fall content, fall weddings, pretty pictures
and things. It's good on the gram. That's a hashtag. Weddings is for the gram. I have to
tell you, weddings is performative, man. See, the problem is though it's curated. So here's us
picking the cake. It's not here's us doing the prenup. Do 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. They have prenups. But prenups are not published anyplace. 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 prenup. Yes, but there's a certain problem with
that insofar as 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, until some famous people say,
yeah, we have a prenup. We're crazy about each other. That's why we're getting married. But yeah,
look, we're getting, I don't want to get a car accident, but I got a seatbelt. Like you have it
just in case. And I mean, what do you do if you're running a company? What does that have to do with
the prenup? You know, you're running a hundred billion dollar or trillion dollar company,
Jeff Bezos. I suppose his marriage was before Amazon. But like, how does that work in a prenup?
Well, no, actually it's the same. I mean, what you're doing with a 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 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 I'd say, well,
that's not the main thing. And they'd say, well, you need, you know, technical language. I said,
nope. Main thing you need is a crystal ball. And 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 going to 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, by the way, and if you're going to
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 $10,000 a month in alimony if they divorced.
And there was, here's her baseline weight as of the time of execution of this agreement.
And I wondered if she was like, like did like what a wrestler does. Like, did she like, you know,
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? But, but the, and the appellate court
essentially said, 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, if I was fatter and cheaper,
if I was skinnier and that way I would have to weigh in at the motivation, like some motivation
on you. Yeah, exactly. That's that kind of prenup is motivating. Well, what's his date? I think Tim
Ferris 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,
I think he says that in one of his early books and try and 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 nut November, no shave November, you know, sober, like all this, it was a competition. When
people make a competition of something, they gamify something, you know, it makes it something
that people are more likely to stick with. So, I mean, I guess a prenup be interesting. There,
you know, the problem is there, there's also people put in prenups, what's called fidelity
clauses. Oh yeah. Yeah. Fidelity clauses. 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 and 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. Cause, uh, what, what, yeah,
what constitutes cheating also 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? 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
premarital 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 premarital assets and throw them
in the pot right now? Cause 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 a 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 five, 10 years. That'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 soulmate, 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. Cause I have found my true love.
That's one type. And it's an incredibly common type. And there's, 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, 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 an 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, cause 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 there. There you go. 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, the 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 practices,
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 went on vacation. Where did you stay? You know,
Oh, it was that good. Did you like that? Oh, that's nice. 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. Like it's much more, you know, it slowly happens. So
when I talk about types of infidelity, the soulmate, the unexpected soulmate,
you know, this connection that you didn't expect. I didn't expect to fall in love with this person,
but I did. And the heart wants what 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. There has been 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, 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 the 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. Um, and again, that's another kind of complicated dynamic because,
you know, I, I, I haven't had that happen to me where a woman left me for a woman,
where a woman left me for a woman, but I'd like to think it would be easier for me.
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. 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,
I get it. I mean, there's a betrayal, there's a sadness, whatever, but you know,
this is 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, they just, people do dumb shit when it
comes to sex. Like people just in a moment, you know, they, 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, well, if you spend enough
time in a room with people who've cheated in a relationship and are speaking candidly to you
about it, cause 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 a, is it a pair bond that's about building
a life together, you know, and where does monogamy fit into that? And people like Esther Perel and
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 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 cause their marriage is falling apart. 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.
Like I meet a lot of people that they tried that, but it, in retrospect, it was a Hail Mary pass.
It was like, look, we've just figured, let's try this. Like maybe it's, maybe this'll,
this'll keep the glue together on this thing, you know? And, and, 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. But together,
like we're going to be together with other people or with another person. And then the,
that connection of those two people, like, do you think it's a soulmate 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. I'll say this to you, this will never, but I, it's the reason I can't
go to strip clubs. I don't know where to look. Like if I go to strip club, you know, like you
go to strip club and there's, you know, the part where they, the woman's on the stage and she walks
past each person who does a little thing and then next person and then this 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 and she's 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
like, you should look at her face for God's sake. And then I look at your face 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 who 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 going to 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. 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 going to have to talk about it.
Right. And there's an easy way to misinterpret the data. So if I really like sleeping with my
partner, but I get one chance to sleep with this other person, well, of course I should indulge in
that because I can do this anytime. But this person, my partner might interpret that as,
oh, so you're more interested in her than me because that voice in my partner that would be
insecure might hear that. So why would you open yourself up to that level of chaos?
You seem to love chess in the courtroom. It's a kind of intimate human chess of sorts.
Yeah, no, that's too high risk.
How do we get on threesomes? Oh, open marriages.
Well, how do we get on threesomes? I don't know. I always wonder how people get on threesomes.
I think if one is fun, two must be better. If two is better, three must be better.
Yeah, I think the way 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 soulmates is great for your business. So like
a human being in a partnership can't be everything. Is that true?
I think it's unrealistic.
True romance, right? The document that we keep referencing here.
I think it's wonderful we do because sometimes now people don't get that reference anymore.
I talk to people and 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 them 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 he comes in...
I should just put the record.
Yeah. Gary Oldman plays a pimp and he owns, his girl is Patricia Arquette, right?
Christian Slater's character, the protagonist, is coming in to tell Gary Oldman that he no longer
owns this girl, Alabama. Alabama is gonna be with him now. And Gary Oldman is an 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 Gary
Oldman says, do you want some Chinese food? And Christian Slater is sort of taken aback by the
question. He says, no, I came to talk about Alabama. She's with me now. And he proceeds
to tell him what his offer essentially is. And Gary Oldman says, you fucked up, right?
In Sum and Substance, he says, 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 anytime I deal with another lawyer and they're like, well, we'll see you in court.
Okay. See you in court. Like empty barrels make the most noise. Like you and I, as people who've
been in the jujitsu community have 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. They, oh yeah, don't worry
about it. 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. Well, you're saying that this idea,
like 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 complimentary. Like I've always joked that like
finding someone with complimentary 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, no, come on, come back. We're going to 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. What do you mean? Like, that's a great restaurant. What are you talking about?
Like, of course there was 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 is I think crazy.
I mean, I, I find for myself when someone, for example, loses someone, when someone
loses a family member or a pet, 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 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 will, by my stupidity, say the wrong thing or,
or loose-lipped 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 like, you know, just like the
ten-course meal that over time, there's a kind of convergence towards perfection. And along the way,
there's the rose-colored glasses where you see the beauty and everything. So it just, it feels,
it's probably destructive just to really internalize the idea of soulmate because then
any imperfections can, can make you doubt, can make you step away, can make you lose the
connection. But it just feels like, I don't know. It's too heavy. It just feels, I feel like when
you see a couple that's 90 years old and they've been together for 60 years, 70 years, there is
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 lied to each other
a bunch. And yet, 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 have, even on my phone, I have
some recordings because now there's, you know, cameras everywhere. It's like nest cams and,
and, you know, ring cams. And so a lot of this gets recorded and, and people, you know, have
phones so readily available that they can record the other person to know it. And I listen to the
way people speak to their, first of all, I listen to 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. 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 don't, I, I'm shocked by it. I mean, I,
I listened to it and I think like, I, 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 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 such vicious insults to someone, you know, like I, but I, I understand
that's how some people communicate perhaps. I guess 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
in the relationship. 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. And she says, I mean, we have sex all the
time. We have sex like once a week. 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 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. He said that success is not where you are. Success is where
you are in relation to where you started. He says, cause if success is where you are,
Oprah's got us all beat or maybe Alon's got us all beat. I don't know. But if it's where you are
versus where you started, cause there's a lot of people that started on second and, you know,
started on third act, like they hit a double, you know, like, well, I was given 10 million,
but then I turned it into a hundred million. Well, the first million is the hardest. So,
you know, come on. But I think the question of like, how much sex were we having at the beginning
of the relationship that might be the wrong gauge. Cause 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. I find discussion more interesting. So interesting that you,
you just keep the battle to that particular, to your, your main profession and everything else.
Well, did you ever, you know, Bob, Bob Goldthwaite, Bobcat Goldthwaite, the comedian,
very, very funny. And he had a whole second chapter as 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. 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?
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 that may be a function of, you know, that it is enjoyable to be the other thing, you know,
one of the things I've always thought was very 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.
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? 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 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. It's like, are you kidding me? Like, like, I'm like, really?
Like, where's the suit? They wouldn't even notice. Sometimes the other thing. Well,
that's what it is. It's the novelty of the other thing. So I think that if you're Robin Williams
and you're like being shot out of a cannon in terms of their 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 dumb, 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 the 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 the distillation, like 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 jujitsu teacher that I think I've had is Paul Shriner and Paul doesn't teach,
just teach you techniques. He's teaching you ways of thinking about concepts in jujitsu.
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 soulmates in the jujitsu world. Yeah. And then there's
that element that you spoke to, which is maybe considering the other side. Well, always. Devil's
advocate 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. 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 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
an 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, Occam's razor.
I think like sextants, you know, would be never attribute to strategy that which could be
attributed to stupidity for laziness. 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 going to do? And what, what is that about? You know,
and I would go, well, if I didn't file it, why wouldn't I file? 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 reason there must be. So I think you have to
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. 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 a black robe. That's the only person I have
to convince. Does the person in the black robe, do they have emotions? Are they human or are they
very human? They are all too human. Do they impose that humanity on you? Like, do you feel it? Oh
yeah. Oh yeah. Oh no. They, do you feel it? Like they're human. They're working their shit out.
They're parents. They're husbands and wives. You're you're and you're talking about stuff
they deal with. I had a, I had a woman on the stand, 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 was 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 that that's abuse? She's like, well, I 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 the 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. She's like, right. But like, you know,
are you saying like everybody who spanks and I'm sitting here going, what is going on in your
house? What went on with your parents? Like, cause you're, you're, 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 that's a big, big deal.
Well, I've noticed that now 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 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, well, there's this and there's this.
It's, it's more like, like, go fuck yourself. Anything that fucks with, uh, kids can, can like
burn it to the ground. I don't care. I don't care what the nuance is of the little intellectual
thing. You want to learn about this represents someone is accused of child sexual abuse.
I've had about a dozen of those cases where I've represented someone
who is 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. The 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, um, 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 those two things aren't mutually
exclusive. It shouldn't be, 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 DA, 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've been 15 interviews. This person has 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 going to do this. We're going to do this. I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,
don't, we should both want this to be fair done properly. Like there's an expert,
a well-respected expert, who's a clinical psychologist who their job is, they're a
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. There are 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've won,
but you didn't win boxing. You won 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,
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
danger 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 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 to 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 detector. I'm
not saying they don't have a really hard job. They have a really hard job. They have a way
harder job than I have.
What's their source of ground truth? Like how do they sharpen the radar for bullshit?
I think that they're, they're assessing credibility, which is what you call it in the law
is something that, you know, 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,
they're just torpedo their entire case because they lied about some dumb shit, some dumb little
thing. And 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? And they're like, no, no, no, no, no.
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. It would have been good
for your case for you to say, yeah, I slept with her. Cause 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
cause 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'm no power. Yeah. I'm just watching
these two letters and I'm like, why did you ask that question that way? I would never have asked
it that way. Why would you object? Like 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, probably what it feels
like for like John Donahue 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 do? What are you thinking? Like, and
you know, 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. Is there a reason for this?
I mean, no one's ever happy to be spending time with a divorce 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 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
$15,000 I've ever spent. And I said, why? And he said, cause there's nothing different. Like I
spent $15,000 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 finished getting divorced. You don't really have
anything to show for it. Yeah. You know, at 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. I 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, we were never going to be
happily ever after. No, 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. It 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 beautiful.
The barn's 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 to
like, we get a reputation divorce lawyers as amping up a 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
gunfights, 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. 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 is what, let's skip it. We're going to end up here. You know, we got
judge blah, 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 X, Y, Z 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 a moyamata moshashi,
you know, it's like 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 and someone resigns and you go, wait, what happened? He didn't wait. And you go,
no, no, he, the other guy won. 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 is 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. He's Yellowstone or anything else. He's just
he's born for the role, frankly. But anyway, he'd be amazing in that. Yeah. Your conversation
with him was great. 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's port, 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 are behind
him. You know, how do you get better than dances with wolves and Robin hood and like all these big,
big, the bodyguard 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 is, 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
and 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 it's good lawyer advice probably. But he said it from the
heart, which I always like, I like seeing that like where he refuses even the drama,
even the public nature of it to throwing jabs or well, Laura, his lawyer is actually notorious for
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 publicly and I discourage my clients from doing
so. I can't always stop them, but, but I discourage them from doing so. 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.
I think there is a, to take it to the broader principle you just brought up. 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 out on a date with a young woman.
It's one of my first dates as a divorced man. And she was a divorced woman and 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. He's such a great guy. And 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 go Penelope, that's just, that's just a special lady. That's just a,
what a, what a special lady. She just a wonderful, what a wonderful woman. I just so blessed to have
the time with her. What a beautiful, wonderful woman. And I would think to myself, I'm like,
you're a genius. Like he's a genius because like it, he'd 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 in space, 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 interacted with him a 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 nonstop fighting, they got divorced and remarried and
just insane. They were volatile. Yeah. Very. He seems maybe you kind of, uh, it's a pendulum
swinging the other way. He just seems cool as a cucumber. Like always just lets it roll off.
But you know, even if it's internally 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 going to lie to my kids. Fuck you. Yes, you are. You lie to your kids all the time.
Mommy, are you going to die someday? Yes, babe. I'm going to die. And daddy's going to die. And
then someday the earth's going to hurl into the sun and we're all going to 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 going to 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. So, so to say, I'm not going to 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. Oh, that's yeah. And she helped me do my
hair and she did my makeup. Listen, I'm sure that's burning you inside. Yeah. But you go,
Oh, that's great. Cause why? You love your kids. Well, that's, I mean, again, McConaughey has a,
has a way bottom with that. He's like, he basically says never lie, but a little bullshit
is okay. Sure. Sure. I mean, I'm very, Tom Waits has that song lie to me. You got to 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.
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 going to 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
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. And I remember early, early days of Tool that he, like this, he could
not have been less interested in the spotlight 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 Maynard James Keenan or Tom Waits voice,
you know that that's them. Yeah. It's genius, genius highs from the spotlight,
but you know, it doesn't stop me from feeling sad about it. But anyway. Yeah, that does. I would
like to hear that. And she's the girl that got away. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just standing outside of
that girl's house with a sign. Yeah. Just playing in your eyes with Peter Gabriel. Yeah. Yeah.
Anyway. Uh, what does it lie to me? This, this, this whole idea of honesty in relationships is
interesting. I mean, clerks with a blow jobs. Uh, I, I don't know how to phrase it eloquently,
but like there's stuff you should be honest about.
And there's stuff maybe you don't need to be honest about. So in 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.
So, and that's the, that's the term that was used for it. Puffer. 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 $50 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 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,
does this, do I look fat in this? If you go, yes, that's indelicate. It's honest, but it's
indelicate and it's almost mean, right? But there is, 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 that. It's great.
That's not a good thing either. So what do you say? You know,
that blue dress you have really compliments your body. Like in a way that one doesn't,
you know, that the cut of that 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 going to 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 pretend you didn't hear them.
Yeah. I mean the, I guess all of it requires skill, just like you described. And 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 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 acts 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 their 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 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 audio book
where you talk about managing marital finances as like anal sex, which your, your, your mastery
of the metaphor touches one's heart and soul. You're 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 know, proceed carefully and have
discussion in advance and don't just spring it on someone and realize that this, if this goes wrong,
it will go catastrophically wrong. So good communication is important. And, you know,
yeah, I don't think it's something you should just 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 and relationships, which is tremendous because it's a, 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 the need to be a provider. There's gender stuff
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. Finance is tricky stuff and you could
probably be wonderful romantic and sexual partners and have very different styles 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. And there's interesting power dynamics in play. Tremendously,
yeah. And those are very tricky because the standard of living of a couple becomes important
in a divorce, but sometimes the 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 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 afternoon, I suppose. We had to negotiate, come to an agreement because I
went to bed at 4 a.m. And I was up at, I get up at four every day. So now I'm here,
well, 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, wow. That's fascinating.
And wakes up full on this speed. Like my most productive writing and speaking
is from 4 a.m. until noon or one.
So can you take me through a productive, like a perfectly productive day?
I wake up at 4 a.m. 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 as a divorce lawyer,
our definition of emergency can be very serious. It's people absconding with a child. It's a
police being involved in a 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 p.m.
latest. I don't think I've seen 9 p.m. even on New Year's Eve.
So I wake up 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 at 4 a.m. because most other normal people are asleep. I have espresso, black espresso,
which I enjoy very much. And then I work out. 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 don't hardly do deadlifts.
Well, you can still relive the past glory.
I do. I still have some pictures of it.
You have pictures.
I have videos. I have videos of me putting 485 for three.
You can, in stories, when you talk about it, you can exaggerate how much you've actually lifted.
That's true. But then you 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 puffing, mere puffery at that point. But I work out.
And then I try to work out for a good hour. And I do that partly because of stress. 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 5 a.m.
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 an open mat. And it was at 5 a.m. till 6.
And that was heaven. I love 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, a cold shower. And then I have breakfast.
And it's usually a very uncontroversial, simple breakfast. I like to eat slow carb,
Tim Ferriss-type style. And then I get right to work. I try to do my drafting early in the day,
prenups, motions, things like that from let's say 6 or 7 until 9, 930, 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 pretrial 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 refine them. And then court is usually from 9 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 is you go in, you make oral argument, but 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 pretrial. 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 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 counsel 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're gone. Your brain is jello. 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 a hundred percent of my focus on this other case again. So you find yourself in a place,
that's why I'm very disciplined is you find yourself in a place where I live my whole life
in six minute increments, tenths of an hour. Cause we bill in tenths of an hour. So everything I do,
it's like 0.2, 0.4, 0.6. 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 I'm very proud of
him. He gets to put bad guys in jail and he's very smart. He's doing a great job. He just
about a year ago. And when he graduated from law school, we were very close and we were talking
and he said, 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 going to go home. You'll never have that feeling ever again, ever. You're just going to
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 going to watch
the show for a half an hour. I'm going to 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, I, I finished my day
around five 30, six o'clock and I have something to eat and I try to wind down a little and I'm
usually in bed by seven 30 and asleep by eight. You mentioned jiu-jitsu. What,
your brown belt, what role has jiu-jitsu played in your life?
I, I love jiu-jitsu. I, I trained martial arts from the time I was a little kid,
I think I was seven or eight. I took a Pocono and 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, I thought, well, I can like, you know, grow a goatee and buy a convertible and
do like the thing you're supposed to do when you're a dude with kids and middle, close to
middle age. Or I can, I can try to do something more productive. And so I said, well, maybe I'll,
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 I stayed for
a jiu-jitsu class and I had 120 pound girl rag doll me, like, cause I just knew nothing about
grappling. And I remember just going, well, I got to learn what this is. And that was it. I just
dove into it. My first professor was Lou Ventolaro in New Jersey. He's a Hoyer 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 Marcelo's Academy. My core jiu-jitsu
was up to purple belt. It was Lou Ventolaro. And then it's been Marcelo and Marcelo Paul
Schreiner, who's really, you know, phenomenal at his Academy and all of the, all the people
at his Academy, I mean, are, are all phenomenal. I mean, Bernardo Ferreira was, was there for a
period of time that I was there. And before he went to Boston, Marcos Tinoco was like his
lasso guard stuff. He was at Marcelo's 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. 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. So apparently some close with Gordon and there's,
I'm sure, you know, in Austin, just this jiu-jitsu scene, this incredible.
It's like a jiu-jitsu mecca. I'm actually seeing John Donner her this evening.
So he's, I mean, yeah, this, this is like, yeah, this is amazing, truly special place. But anyway,
apparently long ago, you mentioned Jersey. There's, there's a bit of a conflict between
you and Gordon. And you mentioned to me offline, they, you love them. And like just how much
respect you have for him as an athlete and so on. But can you explain what, why the, 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 a very, I think a very young man still,
he's like probably in his twenties or early thirties. And it's hard to imagine that because
he's accomplished so much as an athlete and as a business person. 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. He's only, I think a couple of years older than my oldest son. And I, through a series
of circumstances, jujitsu 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 jujitsu
super fights being sponsored, Jersey and New York in particular. And I got involved in sponsoring
some jujitsu super fights. And I also got involved in sponsoring some jujitsu athletes.
And Gordon was a young part of the Donahue death squad. I was friends with Eddie Cummings. I'm
still friends with Eddie. I was friends with John, 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. I've been in 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 Marcelo's. But it involved Gordon. He was one of the people and I liked John very much.
And I liked everybody in the Donahue death squad. I like watching them compete. And I thought,
you know, I think John's just brilliant. I mean, everyone at Marcelo's has such respect for John
and for everyone and the stuff they were doing, like when they were the early days of that Donahue
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 in my early
fifties 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 Gordon just, you know, said some like nasty things about him, you know, some,
it's 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, but at the
time I just didn't see it as 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 ill of this person.
And I, I got upset and I reached out to John and to Tom DeBlass. And I said to them, Hey, like,
can 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 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 felt really like,
that's gross, you know? And, but I never really thought much about it again. You know, I watched
his star rise and I was very, I mean, who is 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, cause 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, but 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, I am profoundly sorry. And not, I don't
say that cause I'm trying to get in your good graces. I don't know that we'll ever meet each
other. But that was an unbelievably wrong, stupid thing to say to a young person.
Well, thank you for saying that. 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, you're romantic actually. What, what role you've seen love,
you've seen love break down completely. What role does love play in the human condition?
I mean, 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, 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 in 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 an 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. 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 like, it's such a great equalizer. I mean,
you're spending some time in the rarefied 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 the same 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 same, but it is, it's like, 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,
and it's all the same stuff. And, and, and just because you're really good at other things,
like I've represented professional athletes who are phenomenal world-class 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 spouse or partner. I'm sure there's some overlap, like patience is good
and thinking strategically is probably good, but I, I'm, I'm just humbled by how we're called to
it still. Like, 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 all 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 going to fall in love again. And then a few weeks later.
Yeah. I got job security, man. I got job security. People are not going to stop
walking down that aisle. They are not going to 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,
taking that leap of vulnerabilities of what this whole thing is about.
What a danger if we didn't, you know, like, like every, you know, you, 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. What a, 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's an alcoholic. My
father's been in recovery now for seven years, I think. Yeah. But he was bad alcoholic, Vietnam
veteran my whole life and only got sober, you know, when I was in my forties. 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, 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,
learned more, earned 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 kid's getting 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 is the same thing. Like 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 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 guide, right? And have them sort of do that inner
work and then have them do some kind of a session together after they've had that experience,
that psychedelic experience. I actually think you could do transformative divorce work
because 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? Or even like MDMA, you know, like MDMA, which is, you know, is an empathogen.
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 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 and 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
for radical reinvention. 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 met both of us, you'd go, well, no one could love
both of these guys. Cause like, if you like this flavor, you wouldn't like this flavor. Like I am
impatient, fast talking, like skip to the end. We got to 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, 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 there's someone in,
there's a lid for every pot, you know, like she found her lid. I want her to find her lid. That's
good. You know, and there's billions of pots out there and we just need to match them 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 over there.
Oh, that's 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
Rumi. 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.
Bye.