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Divorce Lawyer: “Give her a prenup on the 3rd date” - James Sexton

James Sexton is a New York-based divorce attorney and author, known for his expertise in family law and insights on marriage and divorce. What does it actually take to avoid divorce? In a world where most marriages don’t last, it’s easy to assume you’ll be the exception, until reality hits. So how do you prepare for a great marriage… and, if things don’t work out, make sure you’re equipped to handle a clean separation? Expect to learn what kind of marriages athletes and actors mostly have, the most difficult profession to navigate divorce with, the worst marriage advice to give someone, how prenups actually work, how to set your relationships up for success at the start, how to argue well as a couple, how to know when it's time to quit and much more… -- 0:00 Are Finance Bros the Worst Divorce Clients? 8:45 The Most Misunderstood Aspects of Prenups 16:46 Does Everyone Actually Need a Prenup? 25:43 Why Avoiding Open Conversations is Costing You 38:39 What Does Good Disagreement Look Like? 47:51 How to Set a Relationship Up for Success 53:55 Will Men Do Anything to Obtain Sex? 01:00:00 How to Help Your Partner Level Up 01:17:46 The Biggest Sign It’s Time to Walk Away 01:31:08 How Children Shape Your Relationship Decisions 01:40:13 The Right (and Wrong) Way to Get Over Someone 01:51:56 Why Real Love Goes Deeper Than Appearances 01:56:31 Where to Find James - Get 35% off your first subscription on the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom New pricing since recording: Function is now just $365, plus get $25 off at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Get a Free Sample Pack of LMNT’s most popular flavours with your first purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period from Shopify at https://shopify.com/modernwisdom - Get access to every episode 10 hours before YouTube by subscribing for free on Spotify - https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn or Apple Podcasts - https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - https://chriswillx.com/books/ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic here - https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

Chris WilliamsonhostJames Sextonguest
Feb 14, 20261h 58mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 8:45

    Are Finance Bros the Worst Divorce Clients?

    1. CW

      It's Valentine's Day!

    2. JS

      I mean, listen, this is a big day. People get all hopped up and make bad choices. It's technically, this is, like, the best holiday for my profession because-

    3. CW

      It's the biggest influx of future clients.

    4. JS

      Yeah, there's just a level of confidence out there today.

    5. CW

      Wonderful.

    6. JS

      You know what I mean? Like, everybody out there is just, like, hyper-confident. There's a lot of proposals happen on Valentine's Day, and the romantic in me kind of is like, "Oh, this is lovely." And then the, you know-

    7. CW

      Check the chatbot list

    8. JS

      ... the professional in me is like, "Statistically, the likelihood you're gonna cross paths with me- [laughing] ... is pretty good."

    9. CW

      Uh, for the people that are listening, if you haven't got your beloved a Valentine's gift yet, and you're shitting yourself, and you think, "Oh, crap, I haven't done anything!" Uh, or if you just want to connect more deeply with your partner or work out if you should leave them, I've put together a list of 50 of the internet's most viral questions to connect more deeply with your partner. Some of them are evidence-based, some of them are stuff that I've come up with, and then 25 to work out whether or not it's time to leave. And you can get that at chriswillax.com/valentines. That's chriswillax.com/valentines. We were just talking about famous people. What do you see in the marriages and divorces of pro- professional athletes?

    10. JS

      Well, professional athletes are a very particular breed because professional athletes have had a monastic discipline, most of them, to a very specific task. And, and so they have going for them, in the context of relationship, A, that they are used to putting all of their focus into one thing, right? How to catch and throw a football, how to shoot a three, whatever it might be. And so that, that becomes a useful skill in marriage, because in marriage, like, that one-pointedness can also be very useful, and it keeps you from being distracted by all the little, you know, shiny objects that happen. So that's helpful. It, i- it depends on the type of athlete, because I will tell you, like, NFL players, they get their contracts early. They usually have a girlfriend who they were with when they were kind of on the come-up, and then they get giant contracts very early on 'cause they have such short careers. So you're talking about getting a coup- you know, a couple hundred million dollars when you're in your early twenties. You usually have just married the girl you were dating in high school, you know, and, um, all of that money is now being acquired during the marriage. So it's all subject to, you know, division because you're one person in the eyes of the law on the day you get married. Most of these guys don't know that. Most of them aren't sophisticated enough that they would say, "Hey, you know, we should make sure I have a prenup." They don't always have the best people around them giving them advice when it comes to things like that. So, you know, I, I think professional athletes, depending on the longevity, like MLB players, NHL players, they have a longer career.

    11. CW

      Mm.

    12. JS

      So when I, you know, done-

    13. CW

      Golf, uh, tennis player.

    14. JS

      Yeah, any of the sports that don't have that massive physical injury likelihood. Like, even MMA fighters are more like NFL players, I mean, except without the amount of money behind it. Um, y- you, you really do see that this person, um, is just... Wh- when that person leaves their sport, there's a- they're really kind of unmoored. They're lost, a lot of them, because they're, they, they... Especially NFL players, it's such a short career, and there's only so many slots for people to become a commentator, and that's a very specific kind of field. So, like, if somebody was, like, a, you know, defensive lineman, like, he may not be the most articulate fellow in the world 'cause it wasn't required for his profession.

    15. CW

      Maybe a bit of CT.

    16. JS

      Yeah, and to have been so, like, focused on one thing your whole career, your whole life. I mean, these are people who started playing when they were five, six, seven years old, and they made it a monastic discipline. And now, you know, they made a lot of money on it. When they're playing, very easy to be married 'cause it's very structured. You know, you- pre-season, you're here, post-season, you're here. During the season, you're traveling, but they make lots of accommodations. All the leagues make lots of accommodations for family members so that people can travel with them. And they're busy, they're busy all the time. It's- being an athlete is a very- it's like b- representing professional musicians, like a rock musician who's a touring musician, they got a lot of free time. They got a lot of partying around them. But athletes, to perform at the level that most professional athletes have to perform, you kind of have to keep your shit together, so it's not as bad. What I will say is their divorce rate when they retire or get injured and have to leave and retire as a function of it, they have no idea what to do with themselves.

    17. CW

      I saw national divorce statistics are around about 50%.

    18. JS

      Yeah.

    19. CW

      For professional athletes, it's close to 70%.

    20. JS

      Yeah.

    21. CW

      So you're nearly 50% higher than the general public, and 50% of those divorces-

    22. JS

      Yeah

    23. CW

      ... will come within one year of your retirement from your sport.

    24. JS

      Yes, because, look, you said for better or for worse, you didn't say for lunch, you know? And this person went from being as busy as busy can be, meaning they are- from the minute they wake up until the minute they go to sleep, their day is accounted for. What they eat, the workouts they do, everything is tracked, every metric, like, everything is a- to nothing. Like, the silence is deafening when these people retire, and there's really no... You know, it's like when guys come back from war, the VA is like, "Okay, we gotta watch this guy. We gotta make sure we have support services for him. We gotta help with transitions back to employment. We gotta help make sure that the person's not dealing with post-traumatic stress in any way that could be dangerous to them or people around them." Athletes retire, there's very little support system put in place for them, and you assume, "Hey, guy's got, you know, $20 million, $50 million. He's gonna be just fine." It's actually like giving them a loaded gun, you know? Like, they, they have too much money, too many people around them, and now they feel like the thing they devoted their entire young, thriving life to is gone. And if you think that, you know, coaching a high school basketball team after you've played in the NBA is gonna be satisfying, you're kidding yourself.

    25. CW

      What's that got to do with divorce?

    26. JS

      Well, I think the dissatisfaction that you feel in your own... Look, I think most discord in relationships [chuckles] romantic relationships, is a function of your relationship with yourself and the fact that you are feeling restless, you are feeling unsatisfied, and it's incredibly easy to take that out on the people around you. I think we all know, you don't have to be a professional athlete to know that when you have a difficult day, your partner's right there. They're definitely doing something that could annoy you. It's probably something that when you were first dating, you thought was adorable, like they snort when they laugh or they, you know, chew with their mouth open. And when you were first dating, you were like, "Oh, my God, that's so cute she does that." And now you're like: Seriously, are you gonna breathe through your nose like that all day? Like, because you're i- you're angry, you hate yourself at that moment, you hate your choices at that moment.

    27. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    28. JS

      So I, I think that's what it's a function of, it's the proximity.

    29. CW

      ... on the other side of the fence, what is the most difficult profession to negotiate with on the other side? Who do you not want to see on the other side-

    30. JS

      Yeah

  2. 8:45 – 16:46

    The Most Misunderstood Aspects of Prenups

    1. CW

      Interesting. What do people not understand about how prenups work?

    2. JS

      I think the biggest thing people don't understand is that everyone has a prenup. E- everyone, every person who's married has a prenup. It's either one that was written by the government and can be changed by the government at any time without your notice, and that once the government changes it, you can't opt out of this anymore. So it's a contract that one person can change and you can't do anything about, or it's a contract written by the two people that claim to love each other more than the other eight billion options in the world. Because what is a prenup? A prenup is a contract. What is it a contract of? It's a contract of if this marriage ends, 'cause every marriage ends, it either ends in death or divorce. So technically, like, when someone gets married, really what you want to say is: "I hope this ends in death." It's weird like that. [laughing] But I really hope your marriage ends in death because every marriage ends, it ends in death or divorce. So if your marriage in some-- ends in something other than death, if you don't want to talk about divorce, great. If our marriage ends in something other than death, then what will be the rule set that governs how we divide our assets, what we owe each other? What will that be? So every marriage has that. It's either done by the government or it's done by the two people.

    3. CW

      What do you mean when you say done by the government?

    4. JS

      Well, the government creates laws, like the Domestic Relations Law, the Family Court Act. Like every state, every country has its own laws that govern the dissolution of a marriage, just like they have laws that govern intestacy if someone dies without a will, just like they have laws that govern criminal, like what is criminal conduct and what isn't. So you know, we don't realize or think about the fact that when you marry someone, you are doing the most legally significant thing you will ever do other than dying. It is the most legally significant. It has wide-range effects on your property ownership, your participation in the title system, your rights and obligations when it comes to spousal support or child support, your inheritance rights. I mean, it has massive repercussions. By the way, you don't even get a pamphlet when you get married. Like, they-- nothing, not even a brochure that says, "By the way, here's all of the things that just happened legally when you entered into this contract with us," meaning you and this person and the state, because it's really the state. Like, you're getting-- you're meeting someone and saying, fundamentally, "You're my favorite person. Out of eight billion people, you're my favorite person. You're the one I like the most. You're the one I want to be with and spend time with and hold hands with, and when the bad things are happening, we'll support each other, and when good things are there, we'll share it together, and, uh, you're my favorite person, and this is going so well, let's get the government involved." Which to me-

    5. CW

      The threesome with the government.

    6. JS

      Which, if you've ever been to the DMV, like, I, I've never gone into the DMV and gone like, "Oh, yeah, yeah, these people should be in charge of everything. This is fucking great."

    7. CW

      This, this should be the third party in the most-

    8. JS

      This is the best and brightest the world has to offer in this building. Like, so let's let them make the rule set.

    9. CW

      You mentioned states there. What's the weirdest state for divorce law?

    10. JS

      [sighs] I mean, every state has its own wacky proclivities, um, and each of them have their own... And see, the things that would be weird to me are evidentiary rules. Like, there's rules in New York State that if a person is a, a Department of Social Services or Child Protective Services worker, that, that the concept of hearsay doesn't apply to them. So hearsay meaning, hearsay is defined as a statement made by someone other than the declarant while testifying at trial, and it's offered into evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted. That's the Black's Law Dictionary definition. But basically, what it means is, you get on the stand and say what someone else said to you for the truth of it. So, like, if we're trying to prove that this can is white-... you, you know, uh, you get on the stand and say, "Well, I was talking to Brian, and he said that the can Jim was holding is white." Okay? So I can't now confront Brian, and, and so you're testifying to what someone else told you for the truth of the matter asserted. There's a reason why we call it the right for confrontation. In every jurisdiction, you're allowed to confront- uh, 'cause otherwise, trials would be like, "I talked to this guy who talked to this girl who once said Brian cheated on his wife," and that's suddenly evidence to prove that Brian cheated on his wife. So that is a really sacred rule in the legal system. But in New York, we have this rule that says that if a child protective services worker has done an investigation, anything they say, uh, uh, quoting people, is not hearsay. So they can come in and say, "Well, I talked to the teacher who said that she heard from someone that, you know, the children were being beaten," and that's evidence as if that person got in, and you can never cross-examine it [chuckles] because it's third party. Uh, so every jurisdiction has some weird-ass rule like that. There's plenty of states that have weird rules, like weird laws on the books. Like there's, there's, there's a plenty of jurisdictions in the United States where consensual sodomy remains a crime. So sodomy meaning like oral sex, like sex other than penetrative penile-vaginal sex, is a crime. So-

    11. CW

      Including gay sex.

    12. JS

      Including gay sex, but also heterosexual blowjobs are illegal in some jurisdictions. Now-

    13. CW

      Handjobs?

    14. JS

      Handjobs would be consensual sodomy, yes, 'cause it would be-

    15. CW

      Handjobs?

    16. JS

      ... A handjob. Well, first of all, handjobs, I mean, handjobs are outdated technology. It's like a Betamax. Like, who even does that anymore?

    17. CW

      I disagree. I think, I think that bringing back handjobs and fingering is a, a-

    18. JS

      Fingering, I think you could go, you could make a solid argument, but handjobs, really?

    19. CW

      I thi- I just-

    20. JS

      Why do you need a third party for that? It feels like you could do that yourself. What am I-

    21. CW

      Uh, calorie-

    22. JS

      If you're a grown-up, just use your mouth. What is that about?

    23. CW

      Calorie conservation. I didn't-- Look, I think-

    24. JS

      Wow!

    25. CW

      I just-

    26. JS

      This is a hot debate. I did not expect we were gonna have this one, [chuckles] but okay.

    27. CW

      I, I, I think, I think a great question that everybody should ask is: when was the last time you just got a handjob or just got fingered? Like, that is-

    28. JS

      Okay.

    29. CW

      That, I think, tells you a lot about what's going on in your life.

    30. JS

      You know what?

  3. 16:46 – 25:43

    Does Everyone Actually Need a Prenup?

    1. CW

      [whooshing sound] Going back to prenups. Do prenup... Uh, is, is there a correlation between prenups and divorce likelihood?

    2. JS

      So there's no way to track that because-

    3. CW

      Selection effect.

    4. JS

      Well, yeah, well, and also because prenups aren't filed anywhere. So prenup is a contract. It's usually you have a copy of it in your safe, uh, your spouse has it in their safe, and the two lawyers have it in their safe. And people lie all the time about having prenups, particularly celebrities, because I have seen celebrities being interviewed about their forthcoming wedding and asked explicitly, um, "Did, did you guys decide to do a prenup?" And they go, "No, absolutely not." And I'm like, "Uh, it's in my safe. They signed it at my conference room table. That's absolute bullshit." But attorney-client privilege protects it. It's only gonna be filed somewhere if you divorce, and matrimonial files are sealed files, so the public can't just view them. So if you've ever seen any people's divorce papers, it's 'cause somebody leaked them. So prenups, there are a lot-- what I will tell you is, I have a theory, and it's kind of unfalsifiable, but the theory is, 'cause I've been a divorce lawyer for twenty-five years, I've probably done... I've done hundreds, if not thousands now, of prenups. And usually, a prenup is a very friendly transaction because it's a negotiation, but it's not the kind of hardcore negotiation you have at the end of a marriage. It's much more, these are two people who like each other. They have an abundance of optimism. Theoretically, you're catching them in a moment where they like each other a whole lot 'cause they're about to get married. So at the end of the transaction, they still feel really good about you, and it's not an expensive thing. You don't burn a lot of money doing a prenup. Like, the most expensive prenup I think I've ever done was probably ten, fifteen thousand dollars, which the retainer to start a divorce is twenty-five to fifty thousand dollars. So, you know, it, it's not a big profit thing for lawyers. And what I will say is, very few, of the hundreds, if not thousands, of prenups I've done, I think I've only done three divorces for someone who I did a prenup for.

    5. CW

      Hmm.

    6. JS

      So-... that would beg the question, are they going to a different lawyer for the prenup divorce, right? They did their prenup with me, but they're gonna go to someone else for the divorce. If that was something people did, I would have people coming to me getting divorces who had prenups done by someone else.

    7. CW

      Yep. Yep.

    8. JS

      That doesn't happen. So this leads me to believe my theory, which is that people who get prenups usually don't get divorced. I think, and, and I actually think that makes sense to me because the level of, like, open, vulnerable, brave conversation you have to have-

    9. CW

      Mm.

    10. JS

      -to, to negotiate and discuss the terms of a prenup, if you have that, and you have that ability to, like, say to your partner something that might upset them in the short term but is important in the long term for both of you to feel safe, I think that that's a very useful skill and probably bodes well for the relationship. I see a lot of people that get di- that break up in the prenup process.

    11. CW

      That was what I wanted to ask.

    12. JS

      Yeah.

    13. CW

      So let's say that someone wants a prenup with their partner.

    14. JS

      Yeah.

    15. CW

      When do they broach it? Pre-engagement, straight after the bachelorette party-

    16. JS

      I, I think-

    17. CW

      How would you go about it?

    18. JS

      Personally, I think third date. Like, I think... I, I'm not kidding. I think that there's plenty of ways to safely enter that discussion. Talk about celebrity that's getting married and wonder if they have a prenup. "Oh, Travis and, uh, Taylor, I wonder if they're having a prenup." G- start getting the temperature of this person as to, "Well, I would never have a prenup," or saying, "Oh, I'm sure they do. It's a smart- I mean, they're both smart business people. Why wouldn't they have a prenup?" Like, start to get the feeling of what this person's, you know... Or are they just dead silent on it? Which tells you something, that silence.

    19. CW

      Mm.

    20. JS

      So that's phase one. Phase two is-

    21. CW

      [chuckles]

    22. JS

      -as soon as you start talk... Listen, what should you be talking about? Do you wanna have kids? Do you not wanna have kids? How do you feel? Are you a dog person, a cat person, or a I-don't-like-pets person?

    23. CW

      Mm.

    24. JS

      Um, where do you wanna live geographically? How important is your family to you? When your family, your parents, became elderly, would you want them to move in with us? These are the big life questions people should be asking when they're considering whether or not they wanna marry somebody. So I think a question like, "Hey, you know, how do you feel about things like a prenup? How do you feel about, you know, how the state handles when people end their marriages?" I think that's a useful dialogue to have. To me, you can't feel loved if you don't feel safe. I mean, genuinely loved if you don't feel safe, and I say that because I've represented countless victims of intimate partner abuse and domestic violence, and I say it because I've represented people who, in their relationship, felt like intimacy was gonna get weaponized against them, and in fact, did get weaponized against them. And, and to really love someone well, I think you have to be incredibly vulnerable. I think you have to give yourself... You have to show this person your soft spots. Like, there's no other way. I mean, it's part of what I think makes love so brave because it's, it's only brave if you're scared [chuckles] and you do it anyway, you know? And I think that to love anything is insane because to love anything is to basically open yourself to the inevitability of losing it, whether it's a pet or whether it's another human being. Like, you're, you're basically saying, "I'm gonna let you hurt me. I'm gonna lose you someday, but it's gonna be worth it because I'm gonna have this time with you. I'm gonna have this connection with you." But I think that part of feeling love is feeling safe, and I think a prenup is about, how do we both feel safe? If I'm wealthy and you're not, if I'm the Goldman Sachs partner and you're the beautiful yoga teacher who I've fallen for, there's a tremendous polarity there that's probably really beautiful. She's probably gonna help him calm down and breathe and live life a little bit, and he's gonna help her be a little more focused and help her be a little more serious, and maybe he has the resources to help her out. Like, this is the tale as old as time. Like, this is, you know, the nature of male and female couplings. So in that dynamic, I don't think there's anything wrong with him saying, "Hey, I wanna feel like if we split up, you're not gonna just literally come at me for every single thing you possibly can get."

    25. CW

      Mm.

    26. JS

      And she should be able to say, "Hey, if we split up, I, I wanna feel like I'm not gonna be so far behind in the race." Like, 'cause, you know, you can't be running a marathon and at mile 10, take a half-an-hour break, and then jump back in and ever catch up with the people ahead of you. Like, you've lost, and we call that in the law diminished lifetime earning capacity. So there's, you know, I'm making choices where I can keep being a yoga teacher and not worry about the fact that, okay, I've gotta, like, make money so I can buy a place someday or whatever it might be. So I'm gonna trust you. So again, does that mean you're entitled to half of every single thing I have? Most people, if they're being honest, would say, "Yeah, I don't know that I'm entitled to that, but I think I'm entitled to something. I... Or even if I'm not entitled to it, wouldn't you want me to feel, like, safe and loved?"

    27. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    28. JS

      You know, and that's the time to have that conversation. Like, the worst time to learn how to fight is in a fight. Like, the worst time to learn what happened legally when you got married and what your rights and obligations are in the event of a divorce is in a consultation in my office when you're getting divorced, but that's when most people learn it.

    29. CW

      What's the game plan for delivering a prenup proposal well?

    30. JS

      I think what I'm pushing, and if there's something that I can say at the end of my life I did, I hope it's that I normalized prenups, and I hope that the phrase that really entered the lexicon is, "Every marriage has a prenup." I think that is the best entry point, is to essentially say all a prenup is, is a rule set, and the rule set should be clear to anyone before they enter anything, right? Like, I want to understand the rules. Before I get on the road, I wanna know what's the speed limit, what side of the road do we drive on. You know, before there's anything I do, I like to have a little bit of information about what it is I'm about to do. I think h- the prenup conversation is a conversation about saying, "Hey, I trust you. You trust me. We have an abundance of goodwill towards each other. Let's, right now, while we're this crazy about each other, say, 'How can we make each other feel safe?'" 'Cause here's the thing. I, I have been in love-... And, and I think I have the, the, the self-awareness to say to a woman, "You know, I wanna protect you from people that hurt you, even if that someone's me. Like, there's a chance I'm gonna hurt you. Like, there's a chance I'm gonna make you sad. There's a chance I'm gonna disappoint you. There's a chance this isn't gonna work out. Like, I wish I knew no astronomy when stars appear, but like I, I've seen-- I've lived too much life and seen too many people have their hearts broken, and I've had my heart broken, and I've broken someone's heart, so I know that's a possibility. But I love you enough to know that if I'm in a relationship with you, there's an assumption of risk, and that is we might hurt each other. So if, if anyone would hurt you, I wanna protect you, including me. So what do you need to feel safe in this relationship?" That, that to me feels like

  4. 25:43 – 38:39

    Why Avoiding Open Conversations is Costing You

    1. JS

      the entry point.

    2. CW

      Are agreements for behaviors during the marriage becoming more common now?

    3. JS

      They are, but the question of enforceability is very challenging. I mean, look, I love it. I love when pe-... I think people should have more open conversations about the nature of the economy of marriage. Like, I get looked at funny when I refer to marriage as an economy, but-

    4. CW

      Sounds a bit sort of sterile and dispassionate.

    5. JS

      But it, it doesn't have to. Like, an economy is really any exchange of value. You know, it's, it's a system that has exch-- uh, an exchange of value within it. And so w- w- I think part of the reason why we've lost the plot a little bit in modern relationships is that we've stopped looking at them as an economy. Because to dare say: "Well, you bring warmth and comfort, and I bring resources," is, "Well, I could bring warmth and comfort. Well, I could bring resources." Okay, you're right. We can all be the exact same generic cog in the capitalist machine. We can all decide we wanna be girl bosses or boss bosses or whatever we wanna call it, or we can all stay home and change diapers. This is something we can all do. Great! Do... Is that what we want? Do we want a world where everyone's doing the same thing, even if they don't like... I love to cook, and if she loves to cook, great, maybe we'll take turns cooking. But if I love to cook, and she doesn't love to cook, why should it be, "Well, why should I do a hundred percent of the cook?" Because you like to fucking cook, so just cook. Like, what is that about? It shouldn't have to be that we both have to do the exact same thing, or else there's an inequality between us. I'm interested in equity in a relationship. Does either person feel they're being taken advantage of, giving way too much consistently, taking too little consistently? 'Cause again, there's gonna be times in any relationship where you're giving more or getting more. You know, you, you have family tragedies, you have things that happen, you have stress going on at work. You're, you're gonna be taking more in that moment.

    6. CW

      Is there a potential that if you litigate this in advance or put it down in black and white, that it reduces your ability to negotiate in the moment?

    7. JS

      I think so. Well, no. I, I... Here's what I'll say. I think that it is-

    8. CW

      You understand, you understand what I mean?

    9. JS

      I do understand the question. I think that establishing a baseline is really important, and so establishing a baseline of, "Look, here's what we're feeling and thinking right now."

    10. CW

      Throw a dart at the dartboard. That's clo- that's kind of in the region of what we're aiming for.

    11. JS

      I mean, because here's the... I think there are two fundamental and somewhat contradictory errors that people make when they're getting married or, or cohabitating for the first time, and they're gonna sound like a contradiction, but I don't think they are. They think that this is gonna change the person. "You know, he drinks too much now, but, like, once we get married, he'll settle-"

    12. CW

      You're in love with the potential.

    13. JS

      Or... Right, and, and, and that somehow marriage will change or cohabitation will change things. You know, "He's got a wandering eye now, but once we move in together, you know, the..." "You know, she runs around, she's a bit of a party girl, but you know what? Once we get married, she'll settle down." So thinking that marriage will change this person is a mistake. Similarly, thinking marriage will prevent this person from changing is also a mistake-

    14. CW

      Oh, yeah

    15. JS

      ... that marriage is gonna build walls around this thing, and it's gonna stay this wonderful. Because, like, think about it: there's you, there's me, and then there's we, right? And you were you, and I was me, and then we met each other, and all of a sudden we're like: "Man, we got this thing together." And then the we is, like, this warm, wonderful, lovely place. We've all been there. And it actually gets so big, it threatens to eat the you and the me completely, which is kind of a shame. Because now, like, the thing we fell in love with, the you and the me, like, it's been subsumed entirely by this, this creature of we. So I think that's an unfortunate thing we should probably be on the lookout to prevent happening. But, but if you think about, like, what brings people together, is once they're together, now they go, "Okay, well, this is so good. I have to, like, build something around it, and maybe if I wear this ring, you know, that'll be..." And it's like, okay, look, maybe if you, like, wear, you know, like, this crystal, it'll keep you protected. Like, w- it's not real. Like, when my kids were little, I would take, rather than explain to them at ten o'clock at night that monsters don't exist, I would go, "Okay, hold on," and I'd go get some powder from the thing, and I, "Okay, this is anti-monster powder, and now no monsters can enter your room." And they'd be like: "Oh, thank God," and they'd go to sleep.

    16. CW

      [laughing]

    17. JS

      And so, but again, like, that's a very human thing. Like, okay, this is all... What do you think a wedding ring is-

    18. CW

      Contrivation

    19. JS

      ... but anti-monster powder, that's all it is.

    20. CW

      Story, myth.

    21. JS

      Yeah.

    22. CW

      Yeah, that's, uh-

    23. JS

      So I think that we, we think that things, if we can bolster it the right way, that this thing will stay safe.

    24. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    25. JS

      And it won't. It'll change, but all I, all I'm suggesting is, if you talk about baselines, now you know, "Hey, we were having sex twice a day, six days a week." Early days, that's what you do. I get it, okay? You probably wouldn't get much done in life if that stayed the same ten years in, and it might be exhausting. Sounds like a lot of cardio. So what you might say-

    26. CW

      Hand job.

    27. JS

      Hand job could be the answer. God, Papa John's and a hand job. All right, I'm on it. Happy Valentine's Day.

    28. CW

      [chuckles]

    29. JS

      So I think when you think about it that way, and what you start to see is, okay, we've moved off the baseline. Now, the question is, that's not necessarily bad. It's just, we've noticed it. Did we notice this? Okay, good, we've noticed it. Great....Do we have to talk about it? Is there anything to talk about? No? Okay, great. Like, is it- 'cause maybe it's our hormones have shifted, or maybe, you know, we're just at a different place, or maybe we got a baby now, and it-- But if one of us feels like, "Yeah, I kinda miss that," or, "I feel things are a little different," great! Now we're having a conversation 'cause we've measured our baseline. Again, like, measure what matters. I think that that's a smart thing to do.

    30. CW

      We'll get back to talking in just one second, but first, if you have been feeling a bit sluggish, your testosterone levels might be the problem. They play a huge role in your energy, your focus, and your performance, but most people have no idea where theirs are or what to do if something's off. Which is why I partnered with Function, because I wanted a smarter and more comprehensive way to actually understand what's happening inside of my body. Twice a year, they run lab tests that monitor over a hundred biomarkers. They've got a team of expert physicians that analyze the data and give you actionable advice to improve your health and lifespan. And seeing your testosterone levels and tons of other biomarkers charted over the course of a year with actionable insights to actually improve them, gives you a clear path to making your life better. Getting your blood work drawn and analyzed like this would usually cost thousands, but with Function, it's just four hundred and ninety-nine dollars, and right now, you can get a hundred dollars off, bringing it down to three hundred and ninety-nine bucks. Get the exact same blood panels that I get and save that hundred dollars by going to the link in the description below or heading to functionhealth.com/modernwisdom. That's functionhealth.com/modernwisdom. More and more, I'm seeing people have open and transparent conversations at the beginning of a relationship about stuff like this.

  5. 38:39 – 47:51

    What Does Good Disagreement Look Like?

    1. CW

      How should people argue well, if the lows, not the highs, determine the success of a relationship?

    2. JS

      Yeah.

    3. CW

      What does, what does good disagreement and argument look like?

    4. JS

      I think good disagreement-- I, I argue for a living, so I would say that good disagreement is substantive. It gets to the merit of the position. It gets to the substance of what we're talking about. You know, it's not about the pasta. It's not about the dirty dish in the sink. It's about what the dirty dish in the sink represents, which is, "You're not really paying attention to my feelings. You know that I like things to be orderly, and you weren't willing to take a few minutes to do this thing." So I would like to get to the substance of the argument. I think the most important thing in romantic relationships and marriages is, um, do not ever weaponize intimacy. Like intimacy, i- not meaning sexual intimacy. Intimacy, by definition, is the ability to be completely yourself with another person. So it's what we were just talking about, the sense of, like, showing this person all your soft targets, you know? And if you then use those to hurt the other person when they've upset you, or as leverage when you want them to do something, that's a villainous thing to do because, A, you can't take that back, and B, that person has shown you that part of themself... Like, every single couple, any person who's listening to this, who's, who's in a couple, there is a sentence that you know you could say to your partner that would have them shriveled up in a ball crying. Like-

    5. CW

      Give me some examples of this weaponizing intimacy.

    6. JS

      That you know that a person's terrified of the fact that they're becoming like their mother or their father, or that they're-- I mean, the, you know, the film A Marriage Story, there's actually a great scene. It was, uh, Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson. It should have been called A Divorce Story. But there's an amazing Academy Award-level scene where they're having this awful fight, and they just do that. They just unload in, like, weaponized intimacy. He's like: "You're exactly like your mother. You claim you hate her, but you bring everyone down in all the same ways." And he-- And they just run d-- And they're saying things that you can never unsay, you know? But they're the things that, like, you only would know if this person opened themselves to you the way that you have to to have a deep connection to someone or if you just had a ringside seat to their most vulnerable, sad moments. And so that kind of, that kind of thing, I don't think you can ever really recover.

    7. CW

      So don't do that.

    8. JS

      Don't engage in weaponized intimacy. The other thing I would say is also, again, the worst time to learn how to fight is when you're in a fight. So just-- I think when you're in a relationship or starting a relationship or getting serious enough in a relationship that now you're saying you're boyfriend, girlfriend, or whatever it might be, I don't think there's anything wrong with saying: "Look, we're, we're definitely gonna get in an argument someday. Like, we're gonna get in a fight someday. It's probably gonna be my fault. I'm gonna say something dumb. I say dumb shit all the time, so I apologize in advance, but I'm gonna say something that's gonna upset you. We're gonna get in an argument. How do you like to argue? Like, do you need a minute?"

    9. CW

      Yeah.

    10. JS

      "Like, should I give you a minute-

    11. CW

      Down.

    12. JS

      -so you can calm down?"

    13. CW

      Do you want a hug?

    14. JS

      And then we... Right. "Can I-- Should I never say calm down? Should I change the subject and be silly and pick you up and hug you and spin you around? Should I say some-- Should we have a code word that it's like, 'Hey, let's take a break because this is going wrong, and then we'll meet back in ten minutes?' Or are you the, like, 'We've got to get this worked out tonight because I can't go to bed angry, and we have to figure this out because it's gonna ruminate and get really bad?'" Like, whatever it is, let's just talk about what that should look like, and let's have some way to step back from it.

    15. CW

      Can I give you a perspective from, uh, attachment theory and some evolutionary science that might be useful here? So there's a book called Your Brain on Love by Stan Tatkin. It's in my second reading list. And, uh, he explains how in couples that are having arguments, you want to deal with the argument as quickly as possible and ideally within three minutes. So you're sat at a dinner table, and your partner says something that's a bit dismissive or mocking, and you feel like, "Oh, th-that made me feel a bit put out. I mean, they're my friends. These are my friends."

    16. JS

      Right.

    17. CW

      "And you just said something..." You want as quickly as possible-

    18. JS

      Mm

    19. CW

      ... from that to say, "Honey, can we just have a quick, um..."

    20. JS

      Mm-hmm.

    21. CW

      And you need to agree this in advance. You don't need to fix the argument. You don't need to sort it, but you need to deal with it to bring the temperature down.

    22. JS

      Yeah, yeah.

    23. CW

      And the reason that he gives for this is that the way that the human attachment system creates memories-... if you don't deal with it sufficiently quickly, you risk moving it from short-term memory into long-term memory.

    24. JS

      Yeah.

    25. CW

      When it moves into long-term memory, he describes it as you begin to see your partner as a predator.

    26. JS

      Yeah.

    27. CW

      And it's the same-

    28. JS

      Yeah

    29. CW

      ... brain structures that are activated.

    30. JS

      Yeah.

  6. 47:51 – 53:55

    How to Set a Relationship Up for Success

    1. JS

      you know.

    2. CW

      Mm. What are the important things that you think people should do at the start of a relationship to set it up for success?

    3. JS

      [inhaling] I mean, my answer to almost everything is just talking. I just think, I think the more that you, um, can talk about... I think when you can talk about how you're talking about things, [chuckles] I think that when you can, like, almost have a meta commentary happening of like, "This is so weird, isn't it? It's scary. Oh, isn't this interesting what we're doing right now?" Like, really being able to talk about it almost in a detached fashion and narrative fashion, I think there's a lot of value in that. I think there's a lot of value in, um, in talking about, like, formative experiences that this person has had, and I think there are a lot of fun games that can be played around that. You know, there was an article some years ago, I forget who authored it, but it was about, like, 30 questions that can make two people fall in love.

    4. CW

      Yeah, and it gets progressively more intense over time.

    5. JS

      Yes, and it-

    6. CW

      Many of them are in the questions at chriswillekes.com/valentines.

    7. JS

      There you go.

    8. CW

      Yeah.

    9. JS

      So I, I would say that those kinds of entry points, there's a lot. There's a, a, a card game now called Tales, which is very interesting. Um, uh, Steve, uh, from Diary of a CEO has a great, you know, the Diary of a CEO questions. Like, there's a lot of really great ca- like, supplemental tools. That is a fun game. Like, that game of like, you're a mystery to me, I'm a mystery to you in some ways. We've just started this relationship. We know we like the look of each other, we know we like some things about each other. There's an energy and electricity between us, so let's start playing in the world of ideas a little bit. Let's start playing in progressively showing... 'Cause look, w- what is, what is dating?... but progressively showing more of yourself to another person. And what is- what have we lost in sort of hookup culture? We've lost that progressive revelation, that teasing, that sort of playing of like, "I'm gonna show you a little, and then I'll show you a little more, and I'm gonna give you a little, and then I'll give you a little more." And there's this feeling, okay, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna earn a little, and then I'm gonna earn a little more, and I'll be rewarded for my efforts by a little bit of sweetness from you. And they'll-- that, that's a fun dance that people have been doing for a really long time, and we gave it up in exchange for, I, I'm not sure what we got out of that.

    10. CW

      Roy Baumeister says, "Courtship is the period during which a woman works out if she can do better."

    11. JS

      Yeah. [laughing] Yeah.

    12. CW

      Which I think is-

    13. JS

      Yeah.

    14. CW

      Uh-

    15. JS

      But it also sparks something in men that I think we like, something-

    16. CW

      That drive, dude

    17. JS

      ... that the challenge and drive of-

    18. CW

      That drive, that drive to win, man.

    19. JS

      Yeah.

    20. CW

      Yeah.

    21. JS

      And I feel, and I feel like, you know, we've couched that now as like a toxic masculinity, but-

    22. CW

      Oh, go fuck-

    23. JS

      ... I don't know. I, I feel like that-

    24. CW

      Go fuck yourself, dude, and I can-

    25. JS

      Yeah

    26. CW

      ... tell you to go fuck yourself neurologically as well. Uh, the way that men bond is using something called vasopressin.

    27. JS

      Mm.

    28. CW

      You heard about this recently?

    29. JS

      Yeah.

    30. CW

      Vasopressin. Oh, okay, so-

  7. 53:55 – 1:00:00

    Will Men Do Anything to Obtain Sex?

    1. CW

      There's a fascinating series. So Roy Baumeister is now on Substack and is just so fascinating. He's writing a, a series on, uh, sexual novelty at the moment, and he's basically advocating that specifically for men, women need a different treatment, maybe he'll give that-

    2. JS

      Yeah

    3. CW

      ... at some point in future. Specifically for men, you need to titrate the dose of sexual novelty-

    4. JS

      Yeah

    5. CW

      ... over as m- long of a duration as possible.

    6. JS

      Yeah.

    7. CW

      And this is good for the men, too. It's the same as not-

    8. JS

      Yeah

    9. CW

      ... letting the kids have ice cream every night.

    10. JS

      Yeah.

    11. CW

      This is from his last book, which came out about five years ago: "Men will do what women demand of them in order to get laid."

    12. JS

      Yep.

    13. CW

      "Women set the standards for sex, and men meet them. Although this may be considered an unflattering characterization-

    14. JS

      Mm

    15. CW

      ... we have found no evidence to contradict the basic general principle that men will do whatever is required in order to obtain sex, and perhaps not a great deal more. One of us characterized this-

    16. JS

      Mm

    17. CW

      ... in previous work as, if women would stop sleeping with jerks, men would stop being jerks."

    18. JS

      Yeah.

    19. CW

      "If, in order to obtain sex, men must become pillars of the community, or lie, or amass riches by fair means or foul, or be romantic or funny, then men will do precisely that. Similarly, if men need to be broken, flaky, non-committal, and inconsistent, then they will meet these standards appropriately. Women's mate choices, modern romance culture, and girl magazines are not at fault for emotionally unavailable behavior in men, but they are not totally unrelated to it either."

    20. JS

      You know, I, I could not possibly agree with anything more. That approach would probably be very bad for my business model. And the truth is, I'm not a psychologist, I'm not a therapist, I'm not a researcher. I have facilitated the demise of thousands of unhappy marriages. People lie to their therapists, people lie on surveys, people lie in studies. They don't lie to their divorce lawyer.... they don't, because there's no reason to. You have attorney-client privilege attached, and I have to really know everything to do a good job.

    21. CW

      They know, no, on that, surely people want to put themselves across in the best light.

    22. JS

      Well, they lie to themselves, and then they lie to me because they're lying to themselves.

    23. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    24. JS

      But because I see so much data on this person, I see their credit card receipts, their text messages, like, I, I, I really go in there on people. Like, you have to. If someone's going through custody litigation or an ugly, contested divorce, you get to see everything, really. And so having now listened to thousands of people, men and women, the abuser and the abused, the substance use disorder, and the person married to the person with substance use disorder, I've seen- I've argued every side of every issue in a divorce. I've spent time with, you know, perpetrators of domestic violence and victims of domestic violence. I've spent time with every possible permutation, and I will tell you, if only there were good and bad people in the world, like, you know, if only we could just find the evil people and segregate-

    25. CW

      It's through the heart of every man.

    26. JS

      Right. Through the Solzhenitsyn, "Through the heart of every man is the line of good and evil." And so I genuinely believe that if we were to say, "Look, there have to now be standards, there has to be a code." Like, I was raised with the idea that men have to have a code, like that a man is supposed to have a code, and all of the men I aspired to be like, which were mostly from literature, they were always the samurai. They were always La Longue Carabine in, in Last of the Mohicans. You know, it was all this idea of, like, the man who was the protector, the provider, he had a code. He had the things he would do and the things he would not do, and nothing was going to pull him from that. And so I, I genuinely believe that there is a hunger right now in men for that, this sense of: what am I supposed to do? Tell me the mission. Like, tell me what is expected of me and what is not. And that women were the gatekeepers when it came to sex. They were gatekeepers. You had to earn this.

    27. CW

      Mm.

    28. JS

      You had to earn it, not by, you know, "Give me the money, and then I'll give it to you." It was really more about the characteristics that made you someone that had resources. That is, that you were disciplined, focused, that you were someone who was, who was-

    29. CW

      What?

    30. JS

      ... serious about things. Listen, par- I'm a fifty-three-year-old man, and if you read the comments on my videos, like, it's shocking to me how many women are like gaga over me, and trust me, it's not looks. It's the fact that I look like a serious person. Like, I wear a suit. Like, you know how many fifty-three-year-old men are running around in hoodies?

  8. 1:00:00 – 1:17:46

    How to Help Your Partner Level Up

    1. CW

      Yeah. Uh, I've had two conversations this week talking about the show and how it relates to men. I tended to not do press, but both of these, uh, the conversations were really interesting. There is a-

    2. JS

      You got Steve in so much trouble. [laughing]

    3. CW

      Oh, fucking hell, dude.

    4. JS

      I have to tell you, as someone who is friends with both of you and who has spent time with both of you, it... Talk about two people that should not be the targets [chuckles] and being called misogynist. Like, what fucking planet are we on when the two of you are... Steve, who just got engaged, by the way.

    5. CW

      We, I'm beyond the pale. We've got a-

    6. JS

      It's insane.

    7. CW

      We've got a Mexican Hitl- Hitler saluting Nazi as the current leader of the men's movement, but me and Steven are, are beyond the third rail.

    8. JS

      Yeah, you guys are the, you guys are the bad guys-

    9. CW

      Yeah, yeah, yeah

    10. JS

      ... because you dared have, like-

    11. CW

      Hilarious

    12. JS

      ... you know, difficult conversations. [chuckles]

    13. CW

      Yeah, yeah, yeah, unpopular. So it just goes to show how much of a third rail this stuff is. It's weird because a lot of these topics, to me, are almost, not what we're talking about today-

    14. JS

      Yeah

    15. CW

      ... but a lot of the other stuff, birth rate decline and things, it's like me being a comedian doing a trans joke. It feels so hacky.

    16. JS

      Yeah.

    17. CW

      And I've been talking about this for six years.

    18. JS

      Yeah.

    19. CW

      Is it not accepted that these are some of the contributing factors, and, and, and it's, it's a big problem, and nobody is laying it at the feet and blaming anyone?

    20. JS

      Yeah.

    21. CW

      But here are some of the... I, uh, you say that in a certain group, and people almost roll their eyes at how trite it is. It's like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, get onto the net. Like, what, what's the most interesting thing that's coming out?"

    22. JS

      Yeah.

    23. CW

      Whereas if you say, you realize how big the internet is, "Oh, I'm so far outside of the territory, I'm-- I've fucking leapfrogged the Overton window. I'm in a, a whole new universe here, motherfuckers."

    24. JS

      Yeah.

    25. CW

      It is crazy, but-

    26. JS

      But it's the same reason why you'll never sell a diet book that just says, you know, "Eat, um, less processed food, have more lean protein, and move your body."... because it's not that long of a book. It's like a pamphlet.

    27. CW

      Scott Galloway rang me, uh, a couple of weeks ago. He rings me on a Saturday morning, and, uh-

    28. JS

      Scott's like, Scott's like got, got such a crush on you. He loves you.

    29. CW

      Yeah. Yeah, well-

    30. JS

      He's always talking about how-

  9. 1:17:46 – 1:31:08

    The Biggest Sign It’s Time to Walk Away

    1. CW

      Uh, how do people know when it's time to quit? How do people know when it's time to leave a relationship?

    2. JS

      I mean, it's hard to say. It's like, how do you know when to leave a job? Um, you know, look, the, the, the humorous answer is, you know, winners never quit, and quitters never win, but if you never win and you never quit, you're a fucking idiot. So I think when you have done what you could do, and you are still in a place where I think the majority of the time you feel empty and unsatisfied and alone, I think there is a type of loneliness when you're with someone, and you feel very lonely, that that is a very unique kind of hell. Um, I, I had a friend who used to jokingly say that the way he knew he was in a relationship is when he was having sex, and he found himself thinking, "You know, one of these days, I've got to get laid." So I think that sometimes when you are with someone and feeling alone, when you are having a sexual relationship with your partner and you feel yourself wanting to sleep with other people, uh, in a consistent way. Um, but I also think that, that... And, and a lot of what I talk about in my book is the idea that sometimes that is a spiral that we didn't mean to create, and that sometimes we've even created with excellent intentions, and that there is a way to reverse that spiral. See, like, my, my penchant for manipulating people's emotional state in a courtroom, I think that power can be used for good. And one of the examples that I give is, is what I refer to as sexual monotony, which is that I think a lot of people with excellent intentions screw up their own sex lives in a monogamous relationship. Because we meet, we start dating. Maybe we're not virgins, we've had other relationships in varying degrees. Okay, so what do we do? We throw all the different techniques we've learned along the way from other partners, from porn, from the internet, whatever. We just throw that at each other. And what do we figure out pretty quickly? "Oh, she likes this. This, she really likes. This, not so good, it landed flat." Okay, and she figures out, "Oh, he likes this. This, he loves. This didn't do anything for him. This, he doesn't like at all." Okay, now, what do you do then?... play the hits, man, right? You play the hit. Like, I didn't go see Bruce Springsteen to hear the acoustic Ghost of Tom Joad. I want Born to Run. I want Thunder Road. Like, play the hits, right? We're on a tight schedule. Like, let's, let's play the hits. And with great intentions, you play the hits. She loves this, you love this, we do it, we do it in a certain order. D- what have we just done? We created a routine. And what starts to happen now, if we're not checking in and, and, and having this open conversation, now if one of us does something different, it's like, "Oh, that was weird. Why did we deviate from the routine? Is something going on? What's happening there?" And it's unspoken very often. So now we're in this routine, we're in this rut. We don't know how to get out of it, and then when we start to have conversation, "Well, why don't we do this anymore, and how come we haven't done that anymore?" Now everyone's defensive about it. So what I always talk about is, like, behavior modification or, like, behavior manipulation with good intentions. And, and one of the examples that I give is if, look, if you're tired, like in the bedroom, we're just doing the same things in the same order all the time, I, I don't think having a confrontational discussion with your partner is helpful in that. I have suggested to people, I think the best way to do it, and, and I- find me a woman who wouldn't want to have this conversation. If you went to a girlfriend and said, [sighs] "The dream I had about you last... I can't even look you in the eye. The dream I had about you last night, I, I don't even know where it came-" "Wait, what? What, what was it?" Like, she's gonna wanna know. "What, what, what was it?" "I can't even... I don't know what... I, I, it was, like, the dirtiest dream. What were we doing?" And then you describe what it is you've been thinking about doing, and either she goes, "Oh, well, that, is that something you'd wanna do?" And then you go, "I don't know, maybe, like, I guess. Something in my subconscious, like, I, it was hot in the dream. Maybe, you know, give it a shot," kind of a thing. Or if she goes, "Oh, I would never wanna do that," you go, "Yeah, I know. I don't know if I ate dairy before I go to bed or something-

    3. CW

      Fucking subconscious

    4. JS

      ... I don't know where that came from. It was subconscious." But at least now-

    5. CW

      That must be Steven Bartlett, yeah. [chuckles]

    6. JS

      At least now you've got that, you've got that dialogue happening. And again, this is in with a, a tremendous desire to deepen this connection. I think we screw up our relationships not because we don't care, not because we don't wanna be good at the job. I think it's just a matter of, you know, "Well, why should I do this when I could do that?" "Well, you didn't do this for me. Why should I do this for you?" You can reverse that flow just as easily-

    7. CW

      Mm

    8. JS

      ... by just starting to treat your partner with grace and giving them things that, leaving each other a note. Sending... What woman would not want to receive a text message in the middle of the day, "You know, a song just came up on my Spotify. I had it on shuffle, and it was making me think of you"? Or, "You know what I just thought of? I just, a woman just walked by, and she was wearing that perfume you were wearing when we first da, da, da, da, da." Who would- that's the fem-

    9. CW

      And then-

    10. JS

      ... That's the equivalent of sending nudes to me.

    11. CW

      And then, and then, "P.S. You're way hotter."

    12. JS

      Yeah, yeah.

    13. CW

      Uh-

    14. JS

      Perfect, perfect.

    15. CW

      Uh-

    16. JS

      Like, and what a, and by the way, what a gift that is. And, and what man has ever received a nude or a suggestive photo from a girl?

    17. CW

      Out of the blue?

    18. JS

      They didn't go-

    19. CW

      Dude, an out-of-the-blue nude?

    20. JS

      Who you're dating? Yeah.

    21. CW

      Yeah, that's-

    22. JS

      Yeah

    23. CW

      ... that's like triple nudes. That's th- that's worth three times the-

    24. JS

      That's-

    25. CW

      ... normal nude.

    26. JS

      That's, and that's-

    27. CW

      That's a gold star nude.

    28. JS

      That's three dozen roses you bought for her.

    29. CW

      Correct.

    30. JS

      That's what that is.

  10. 1:31:08 – 1:40:13

    How Children Shape Your Relationship Decisions

    1. CW

      like.

    2. JS

      Mm.

    3. CW

      Um, the question of how do you know whether it's time to end it or not? I'm gonna give you some samples from this list-

    4. JS

      Yeah

    5. CW

      ... that, that I put out. Number one, if you woke up tomorrow and the relationship had ended with no conversation, fallout, or drama, would you be disappointed or relieved?

    6. JS

      Yeah, that's a big one. It's a big one.

    7. CW

      Do you spend more time in the relationship or questioning the relationship?

    8. JS

      Another good one.

    9. CW

      What are the emotions you mostly feel in relation to your partner? What are the thoughts you have most frequently, and is this how you would be prepared to feel for the rest of your life?

    10. JS

      Mm-hmm.

    11. CW

      So not hoping that there's going to be change in future.

    12. JS

      Mm-hmm.

    13. CW

      Would you want your future imagined child to date someone like your partner?

    14. JS

      Ooh, that's a good one. See, and the reason that's a particularly good one, I will tell you, 'cause having represented people for several decades in custody cases, [lip smack] there's a lot we won't do for ourselves, but we'll do a lot for our children. And, and one of the most powerful tools I have, it works a lot in women, but it works in men too, is, is I've had women who have been the victims of domestic violence, intimate partner abuse, coercive control, and, and men-... and I'll say to them, "You know, look, you, you deserve to be in a different," that's doesn't really blip on their radar. When I say to them, "You do know that your children are watching this dynamic, and they will choose their partners potentially in a court. So your daughter is watching how your husband is treating you, and this is how she will believe. 'Cause whoever discovered water, it wasn't a fish. And believe me, your daughter is going to believe that this is how men should treat her." You have never seen someone say, "Okay, yeah, I have to make this change." Or, "This is how your son is watching and thinking this is how men are supposed to treat women." There are things we will do for our children and the people we-- and look, we know this. It doesn't even have to be a parent thing. Like, look, we're friends, you know? If there was someone talking to you out loud in my presence the way that I talk to myself in the morning-

    15. CW

      Mm.

    16. JS

      -I would step in between the two of you, and I would, I would be like, "Whoa, whoa, who the... Who are you to talk to him that way?"

    17. CW

      Yeah.

    18. JS

      "Like, you don't know what he's going through, what his life is. Who are you to judge him? Are you fucking perfect?" But we talk to ourselves terribly, constantly, right? So I genuinely believe that, like, the, the sense of that is a fantastic metric, which is if your, if your best friend, if your daughter, if your son, if your brother, your sister, if they were in this relationship, what would you tell them?

    19. CW

      There's two other elements there. The first one I learned from Adam Lane Smith, which I thought was so interesting. He explained why women, uh, uh, breakups often occur shortly after a child is born. Uh, and I'm presuming this includes divorces as well.

    20. JS

      Yeah.

    21. CW

      Pressure of having kids, less time having sex, et cetera, et cetera.

    22. JS

      Sex drive, like marital stress.

    23. CW

      Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, there's all of that stuff's in there. One of the elements, because he's attachment theorist, one of the elements that people don't see quite so much, but I think might contribute a lot, is women have been able to put up with mistreatment of themselves-

    24. JS

      Mm

    25. CW

      ... but they can't bear to see the potential mistreatment of their child.

    26. JS

      Yeah.

    27. CW

      This guy who does not have his shit together-

    28. JS

      Yeah

    29. CW

      ... and, uh, like I was, you know, in and out, and I loved him. I love him. I love him still, but he's, he's not that competent. He doesn't really have it together, and I, I, you know, we thought that the engagement was gonna fix it, and that kind of didn't. And we thought that moving in together was gonna fix it, and that kind of didn't. And then we thought the wedding was gonna fix it, and that kind of didn't. And now we've had the kid, and, and now it's not about me.

    30. JS

      Right.

  11. 1:40:13 – 1:51:56

    The Right (and Wrong) Way to Get Over Someone

    1. CW

      Um, give me the worst and best ways that people get over breakups.

    2. JS

      [inhales] I mean, the worst way is to just immediately dive into another relationship without any pause.

    3. CW

      You're an advocate of a breathing period?

    4. JS

      Yeah, or if you're going to, you know, if you're gonna do the, the best way to get over someone is to get under someone, if you're gonna do that, like s- say, see it for what it is, and say it. Like, really be candid that that's what you're doing. Like, like, don't lead people on, don't mislead, and certainly don't lie to yourself. The most dangerous lies are the ones we tell ourselves. So I think, you know, just jumping into another relationship very quickly, and a very serious relationship, I, I think is a, a terrible way to get over a breakup. Um-

    5. CW

      Why?

    6. JS

      Because I think you, you, A, you're still processing a tremendous amount of grief and trauma and loss. I, I think that you have to move through the stages of grief. I actually think, like, you could look at, like, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's stages of death and dying and grief, and you could apply those to- 'cause all that's happened is a marriage has ended, a relationship has died. So you have to treat it like a death. We have to have the bargaining, the sadness. We have to have the anger. We have to have each of those stages before we can reach acceptance. You don't just get to skip. So I think you have to process those emotions, and I think that takes a little bit of time. I also don't think your divorce s- you don't start to recover from your divorce until your divorce is done. So a lot of people are like, "Oh, we moved out months ago," or, "Oh, we've been going through this for ages, so now..." No, when it's actually done, and you get the piece of paper that says you're officially divorced, that's when it's done.

    7. CW

      The start line begins.

    8. JS

      That's when you buried the dead body. Like saying that, "Oh, no, this person died last week, and the funeral's next week, but I'm over it. Like, they're dead." No, okay, when you see them lowered into the ground, now we've started the grieving process.

    9. CW

      Wow.

    10. JS

      So I think that's a piece of it.

    11. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    12. JS

      I think the best way, I, I mean, I, I believe that the people that, that, A, have some body practice is really important. I know that's gonna sound really bro-ish, but I really do think that there is tremendous value in-

    13. CW

      And body practice can be yoga-

    14. JS

      I think it can be yoga-

    15. CW

      ... Pilates, running

    16. JS

      ... listen, I, I, I trained martial arts from the time I was seven until I was in my twenties. I trained Okinawan Goju-Ryu karate and Muay Thai kickboxing, and I gave it up. I stopped. I started running marathons. I focused on that. It was more friendly to the, you know, raising kids and things like that. When I got divorced, I went back to martial arts-

    17. CW

      Classic

    18. JS

      ... when I took up Brazilian jujitsu, eh, because I-

    19. CW

      The most classic pivot now

    20. JS

      ... I actually, I actually took up- well, you know, Craig Jones actually said in an interview recently, like he, he was sort of slagging on somebody, it might have been Gordon, and he said, like, uh, "Guys, like, come on, like, this is, this is like, you know, cardio for divorced dads."

    21. CW

      Divorced dads. Yeah.

    22. JS

      Like, and I, I thought, "You know what? Thank you for saying that out loud."

    23. CW

      It's true.

    24. JS

      It's exactly what it was for me.

    25. CW

      You're listening to Creed, you're drinking White Monster-

    26. JS

      Yeah

    27. CW

      ... and you're gonna go and try and do octopus.

    28. JS

      And you're gonna do struggle cuddles with a bunch of men-

    29. CW

      Right

    30. JS

      ... that is essentially, the minute you've spent a six-minute round with somebody, you're now sitting next to them with your arm around them, and you guys are best friends for life-

  12. 1:51:56 – 1:56:31

    Why Real Love Goes Deeper Than Appearances

    1. CW

      ... with that. I wanted to get you to react to an image that had been going very viral for a while.

    2. JS

      Okay.

    3. CW

      I'm not sure if you've seen this.

    4. JS

      Sure.

    5. CW

      You may have done already.

    6. JS

      Sure. Yeah.

    7. CW

      So it's a famous image.

    8. JS

      Yeah, yeah.

    9. CW

      Pierce Brosnan-

    10. JS

      Yeah, yeah

    11. CW

      ... and his wife, and I think it's maybe 20 years apart

    12. JS

      Yeah

    13. CW

      ... something like that.

    14. JS

      Yeah.

    15. CW

      And, uh, it's, it's him and her at the what looks like the height-

    16. JS

      Yeah

    17. CW

      ... of his W-007 fame.

    18. JS

      Yeah.

    19. CW

      And, uh, she's looking very young, and then it's him and her, and she's gained a lot in the chest-

    20. JS

      Yeah

    21. CW

      ... uh, and got a little bit older, but so has he. And the best response that I saw to that, "Dear men, this is your daily reminder to avoid marriage," the best response-

    22. JS

      [chuckles]

    23. CW

      ... that I saw to that was, "That man hasn't aged a day in three decades."

    24. JS

      Yeah.

    25. CW

      "Where do you think that regulation came from?" That is the single best advert-

    26. JS

      Yeah

    27. CW

      ... that you could see for marriage because-

    28. JS

      Sure

    29. CW

      ... look at what, look at how he is-

    30. JS

      Sure

  13. 1:56:31 – 1:58:33

    Where to Find James

    1. CW

      James Sexton, ladies and gentlemen. Dude, you absolutely rule.

    2. JS

      Thanks.

    3. CW

      I think you're fantastic. I love your work.

    4. JS

      Much admiration.

    5. CW

      I love the framing that you're placing around this-

    6. JS

      Mm

    7. CW

      ... the, the, the relatedness. Uh, it's, it's so good. Um-

    8. JS

      Thanks, man. No, it means a lot. I, I, I think these are important conversations. I think I didn't have a title for it until today, but yeah, I think that, I think we need to have the gentlemanosphere. Like, I think we have to have, you know, we have to have a dialogue again. One of the things I think is most important about stuff like Scott is talking about is, look, what, what is non-toxic masculinity? 'Cause if the answer is femininity, then that's not an answer.

    9. CW

      Absolutely.

    10. JS

      Like, I'd like to understand... And I think we have, there, there is a conversation out there. There is a large number of people, men and women, that are looking at the current state of things and going, "Yeah, this isn't working." And the fact that I'm so goddamn busy professionally, and all my colleagues are, too, is a testament to the fact- [laughing] ... is a testament to the fact that s- we're doing something wrong.

    11. CW

      We're tapping the well of it going wrong. Yeah, exactly.

    12. JS

      'Cause nobody meant to get divorced, and yet the divorce rate is up. And I, my prediction is it's only gonna keep going up.

    13. CW

      Mm.

    14. JS

      So I think we have to figure out how to fix the individual components, and then how to bring them back into some kind of serious, meaningful dialogue. So, but thanks for having me, man. This was a blast.

    15. CW

      You're amazing, man.

    16. JS

      Great to see you.

    17. CW

      We've, we've, we've talked loads, and it's so great to meet you.

    18. JS

      Yeah, yeah.

    19. CW

      Uh, book. Where should people go?

    20. JS

      Uh, you can get How to Stay in Love anywhere where fine books are sold. You can listen to it on Audible or download that. You can listen to me talk for eight and a half hours, if that's your thing. Uh, you can find me on, uh, Instagram at, @NYCDivorceLawyer. I post a lot there, and you can go to sextonshow.com. That's got a lot of my appearances, and it's got a lot of my, uh, my point of view on stuff.

    21. CW

      Okay.

    22. JS

      Perfect.

    23. CW

      Until next time, man. Appreciate you.

    24. JS

      You got it.

    25. CW

      [upbeat music] Thank you very much for tuning in. Congratulations for making it to the end of an entire episode. Uh, another one that I think you'll enjoy is right here.

Episode duration: 1:58:33

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