Divorce Lawyer Reveals Harsh Truths About Love & Marriage - James Sexton

1. 0:00 – 6:31

   Why Are So Many Marriages Failing?

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      Why are so many marriages failing today?

   2. JSJames Sexton0:03

      It's a, it's the, that's the billion-dollar question, I think, you know? And, and I think, I think there's a simple answer and then I think there's a complicated answer. I think the simple answer is people disconnect, and, and I think that's the simple answer. But drilling down into that, why do they disconnect, you know? That's the bigger thing. People say to me all the time, you know, like, "Oh, we're splitting up because he's sleeping with his secretary," or, "We're splitting up because she spends all my money and she's, you know, impossible and she's dishonest with me about things." And really, you know, that's the marriage killer, right? That final nail in the coffin. But when you sit down with people and you talk to them about how did they get to that point, you know, where sleeping with your secretary was anything but a remote thought that might cross your mind, you know, when you saw her by the copier, or, you know, when, when being dishonest about the finances in the family was just something that you, "Oh, I would never do that," like when did we get there that, that suddenly that was on the table? That's the more interesting question. And, and, and in my experience of 23 years of, of being on the end of it, you know, being in the... people are in my office, it's done now, the thing is dead, you know? It's like I'm the guy burying it. When, when you talk to those people, you hear about a lot of small disconnections that led them to the final disconnection. So I think the answer is disconnection, and the question of how do people disconnect is very slowly and then all at once.

   3. CWChris Williamson1:33

      It's interesting to think how important communication is, that if that begins to break down and if you start to have small secrets and, "Ah, god, if I say this to her, she's just gonna chew my ear off again. I don't wanna have a fight tonight," which causes you to hold things back, which causes her to feel disconnected, which causes her to hold things back, which da-da-da-da-da-da...

   4. JSJames Sexton1:52

      So, so many of your past guests, if you distill what they have to say about how to live your life to, like, the, the, the key concept, it's actually the same as what I would say, which is the hard thing to do and the right thing to do are almost always the same thing. Almost always. So David Goggins will tell you, you know, yeah, the hard thing to do is to go out and run a bunch and do a million push-ups. Or Jocko will tell you, you know, the hard thing to do is to just get up and get after it. But it's the right thing to do, you know, trading what you want now for what you want most. Look, none of us wants to have an uncomfortable conversation with our romantic partner. When we're with our romantic partner, we wanna have fun, we wanna have sex, we wanna have closeness and warmth and all the good stuff, right? But look, you know, you, you can't have chocolate cake all the time, you know? Like, it's... what makes chocolate cake so special is that you have it on special occasions. So you really have to, to treat your relationship with the kind of respect it deserves, and the respect it deserves is, is the respect to not always do what feels good in the relationship but sometimes do what's necessary in the relationship. You know, you wouldn't parent your children, you know, or, or if you did parent your children, irresponsibly. You know, Jordan Peterson would pummel you if you said, "Well, anytime my child's unhappy with something, I stop doing the thing." Okay, well, then you're a terrible parent. So, realistically, what you have to do is say, "Okay, I know we don't wanna do this right now, but we gotta do this right now." And sometimes having those challenging conversations with your partner early on, you know, early on in the problem when it's just still a little smoke and not a fire, that's really, I think, when we have to have the, the foresight and the strategy and the thoughtfulness to do it. And look, that's something that, you know, in, in traditional gender roles, you know, a man is a hero because he takes on the task that other people don't wanna do. He's selfless, you know, he's heroic, he steps up. He's scared, but he does it anyway, you know? It's... if, if you're not scared, it's not brave. It's only brave if you're scared. So yeah, I don't wanna ruin this lovely day I would like to have with my romantic partner. But you know what? I want a long-term, strong, happy relationship with this person, so I have to have the strength to say no or the strength to say, "Yeah, what you did was not okay," and we have to talk about why that's not okay and how we're not gonna do it again. And, and I'd like to think that our romantic partners will be intelligent enough to see our desire to walk into conflict of that kind as a sign of how seriously we take the relationship, and maybe we need to remind our partner of that. You know, maybe we need to remind the woman in our life that, "Hey, listen, I love you enough to disagree with you. I love you enough to tell you the truth." You know? I'd rather have an uncomfortable truth than a comfortable lie. And I think most women would too in their romantic relationship.

   5. CWChris Williamson4:44

      Well, it's a costly signal of truth and investment, right? To go and do something like that-

   6. JSJames Sexton4:50

      Mm-hmm.

   7. CWChris Williamson4:50

      ... you have to pay a price. But why am I paying the price? Well, presumably because I think that the thing that's on the other side of it is worth it.

   8. JSJames Sexton4:56

      Right, right. It's what you want most. You know, what you want most is to ma-... Look, it's, it's a whole lot easier to stay happy than to grow miserable and find your way back to happiness. By the ti- that's why my, my book was called If You're in My Office, It's Already Too Late. Like, if you're in a divorce lawyer's office, something has gone horribly wrong. So, so you really want to try, when this is just a small thing, that's when you want to, to take those steps. Now, again, I understand nobody wants to do that. Like, it's not... You know, look, I've trained Brazilian jiu-jitsu for, you know, 15 years, and i- the first few years you train jiu-jitsu, you're just... you're not the hammer, you're the nail. You know, you're just getting beat up. But you realize, "Listen, I have to get beat up. I have to be uncomfortable. I have to be..." And, and we all know the guys at jiu-jitsu who just have, like, three solid moves, they got a good guard, they got a good pass, they got a good submission, and they do them over and over and over again, they have tremendous holes in their game. You know, what you have to try to do is you have to try to train your weaknesses over and over, compete your strengths, train your weaknesses. I think it's the exact same thing in relationships. I think in relationships, you've gotta be prepared to work on the things that need work. And, and that's...... again, it's not always the fun thing to do. Look, we don't have a lot of free time with our spouse or partner. Like we don't have... You know, Saturday comes around, the last thing you wanna do is have a lot of heartfelt discussions, and a deep talk, and upset her rather than, you know, have her feel in the mood to, to be romantic with you. But you know what, man? Long term happiness is, is more important than that.

   9. CWChris Williamson6:30

      When people

2. 6:31 – 13:17

   Most Common Reasons for Divorce

   1. CWChris Williamson6:31

      do arrive in your office, even if it's not disconnection because that's not front of mind, that was what happened previously, not what has happened now, what are the most common reasons for divorce that you're finding?

   2. JSJames Sexton6:43

      You know, infidelity is huge. Infidelity is a giant sign that, that the relationship is really over, that you're no longer finding the connection that you once had or that you want with a romantic partner, with your primary romantic partner. So that's a huge, huge piece of it.

   3. CWChris Williamson6:59

      And who's that?

   4. JSJames Sexton7:00

      I do know-

   5. CWChris Williamson7:00

      Who's, who's the most common, uh, infidelity partner? Who are people cheating with?

   6. JSJames Sexton7:06

      Uh, coworkers. Uh, you... Well, let me say, it's changed in 23 years. So, so 23 years ago when I started doing this job, Facebook was really like kind of... It hadn't even started, I don't think, really. So, um... And, and there's a chapter in my book called If We Were Going to Invent an Infidelity Generating Machine, It Would Be Called Facebook. Um, I would change that now to say it would be called Instagram, but it's still a Meta company. So sorry, Mark. Um, the reality is... Or congratulations, Mark. I'm not sure which. Um, the truth is, we now have conversations with people we have absolutely no business having conversations with, you know? And we have entry points that are entirely benign, you know, that we have the permission of our own conscience to do. You know, like when you used to have to like go to a bar and pick up a woman, you know, if you wanted to cheat on your wife, or you had to like... You know, at the office, you had to risk the HR complaint that came with that. That's different. But now, you know, you're on Instagram, you know, nobody's looking at their phone in a high moment of their life, you know? It's always like you're on the toilet, you're on the couch, whatever. So you're not at your highest point. You're kind of living your gag reel, and you're looking at everyone else's greatest hits. And what do you see? You see the soccer mom on your son's team in a bikini. Oh, she's in Aruba, you know? Do you te- do you send her a message in her DMs and say, "Hey, you look hot in a bikini"? No, you say, "Wow, how was Aruba? Looks like a great time. Where'd you guys stay?"

   7. CWChris Williamson8:27

      (laughs)

   8. JSJames Sexton8:27

      Now, totally benign entry point. Nothing wrong with that, you know? But what happens? It starts a conversation, and that conversation suddenly you're, you're, you're, you're around another person that you're having some intimacies with, you know? Some secrets with, some laughs with, and it's not a long jump from that to infidelity, to actual infidelity. So, you know, fundamentally, I think we're cheating with the, the just massive number of people we're interacting with now. I mean, and, and online, you know, these devices, we all have a super computer in our pocket, guys. Like, come on. You think our biology was designed to have that many mating choices out there? You've talked about this a million times on this show. You know, the truth is, is that we have, we have created such simple conditions for infidelity. It used to take some effort. You know, there was a home phone bill you couldn't call from home. You had to use a payphone. You know, listen, li- you wanna get a laugh? Listen to Stevie Wonder's song Part Time Lover sometime. It was a song about a guy talking to his lover, and he was like, you know, "Call up, ring once, hang up the phone to let me know you made it home." Like all the weird hoops people had to jump through to cheat. Now you'd be like, "Yeah, send me a text when you get in so I know you got in safely." Like you can be sitting across from your spouse cheating, you know? "And what are you doing?" "Oh, I'm looking up that restaurant we're going to this weekend. I wanna see what's on the menu." Well, you know, you can come up with a million simple excuses that are in no way gonna create red flags. So I think fundamentally we, we're cheating with the people around us like we always did, except the number of people around us has exponentially grown. So that makes it, you know, far more appealing and far more challenging to, to, to infidelity-proof your marriage.

   9. CWChris Williamson10:14

      Yeah. Uh, although scrutinize the coworkers first or have them work somewhere with lots of ugly people, maybe.

   10. JSJames Sexton10:20

       It's entirely po- well, I, I do, I do say in, in one of my chapters that, um, a lot of people are sleeping with the nanny. And I say if you think hiring an unattractive nanny is gonna solve that problem, I would point you to Arnold Schwarzenegger's situation, because, you know, his, his then wife and the person who he was sleeping with, if you look at the two of them in terms of rankings of, of attractiveness, there's a disparity there, so...

   11. CWChris Williamson10:45

       Yeah. Yeah, well, I suppose getting an unattractive nanny, if nannies are ground zero for cheating, doesn't necessarily protect you from cheating. It just damages your self-esteem when you find out that it's happened.

   12. JSJames Sexton10:58

       Right. And I don't think anything 100% protects you from cheating. And, and I, I don't think that's a bad thing. I, I think that it's always good to have a little bit of that Sword of Damocles hanging over your head. It keeps you on your toes. I mean, you know, I, I, I've said before, like, you know, you're, you're a little kid and they tell you cross on the green and not in between and, you know, uh, look both ways before you cross the street, don't smoke cigarettes, try to exercise, don't eat too much sugar.

   13. CWChris Williamson11:30

       Don't fuck the nanny.

   14. JSJames Sexton11:31

       Yeah, don't fuck the nanny. And you think, "Okay, I've got some control over things." And then at some point, they tell you about aneurysms, you know, where like, "Wh- what is it?" "Well, you're just there and then you're dead." "Wait, what? Like, well, well, I'll see it coming." "No, no, you'll just die." "Well, okay, well, what can I do to prevent it?" "Nothing. Absolutely nothing." You know? "Well, is there anything I could do?" "Yeah, no, not really." You know, it's just eeny, meeny, miny, moe. Like that's it. And so you can respond to that by saying, "Well, if there's nothing I can do to 100% prevent myself from just spontaneously dying, then I might as well just smoke 'em if you got 'em," you know? Get out there and just do whatever the hell you want. But I think we all know that that's, that's not, that's not the way to do it....um, there is something to be said for the benefit that comes with being vibrantly healthy, even if it's not a guarantee that you're not gonna be, you know, perfectly healthy your entire life and that- and death is still inevitable. Look, all relationships, all marriages end. All of them. They end in death or divorce, but they all end. So, the question is... It's one of the only things in the world that you say, "I really hope this ends in death." You know? But- but it's true. Like, you really hope your marriage ends in death. But 56% of them end, currently, end in divorce. And that's not accounting for the percent of them that don't end in divorce, but end in misery, that end in staying together with someone who you're very unhappy with, who doesn't love you or make you feel like the best version of yourself, and you don't make them feel particularly good, but you're just staying together for the kids or 'cause you don't want to give half your shit away. And I don't know that that's... You know, I don't know if that's a win, you know? But even if that's 10%, and I think I'm being generous, 10%, now you got a technology that fails 66% of the time. That's insane. That's insane.

   15. CWChris Williamson13:16

       What

3. 13:17 – 21:44

   Should Couples Stay Together for the Kids?

   1. CWChris Williamson13:17

      is your position around kids? I've had Brad Wilcox on from the Institute for Family Studies recently. His new book, Get Married, uh, might be the antithesis to a lot of the- the insights that we get today. But one of his key insights... Same comes from Melissa Kearney as well, in her book The Two-Parent Advantage or Two-Parent Privilege, is that kids who grow up with loving mom and dad, or two parents in the household, ideally biological ones, because you've got a 50 times increase in childhood mortality, infant mortality risk if you've got a non-biological parent in the house-

   2. JSJames Sexton13:51

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson13:51

      ...et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. What do you think? Stay together for the kids? What's your belief there?

   4. JSJames Sexton13:56

      I- I don't believe that, um, because I believe... You know, having read, you know, The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce and some of the other books out there that talk about the impact of divorce in a long-term way on children 'cause there's a lot of data out there about outcomes for children of divorce. And what- what it basically distills down to is that parental conflict is bad for kids. Now, there happens to be a fairly strong correlation between parental conflict and divorce, but it does not have to be. You know, people can effectively co-parent and have a mother and a father who are devoted to their care, who are cooperative co-parents, who are good with each other, communicate with each other, work in a unified manner for the best interests of the children, but don't reside in the same household. And so I- I- I find it, um, very hard to believe that two genuinely unhappy people residing in the same home are going to do a better job raising children and modeling relationships to those children, who... Than- than a couple that has the insight to say, "Look, we're not meant... We don't love each other in the very particular way that married people are supposed to." That doesn't mean we don't love each other. It means we don't... There's a lot of people I love I wouldn't want to be married to. You know? So, what we're saying, and- and the way that I often tell my clients to explain their divorce to their children, no matter what their age, is to say, "We don't love each other in the way that married people are supposed to." Because I don't think it's healthy to tell children, "I don't love your mother," 'cause they love the mother, so why would you say that? "I don't love your mother the way married people... We don't love each other the way married people are supposed to, but we both love you, and you're always gonna have one mom and one dad, and we're always gonna be a family." And that's the truth. I tell my clients from day one, whether it's a knockdown, drag-out litigation or the friendliest divorce in the world. I tell them, "You're gonna have grandkids together if you have kids." You know? Like, a divorce with children is a knife fight in a closet, and if you just start stabbing 'cause you think you're gonna stab your ex, you're gonna stab your kids, you're gonna hurt yourself, you're gonna ruin everything in your life.

   5. CWChris Williamson16:05

      What does-

   6. JSJames Sexton16:06

      So it makes a lot of sense to just stand down, focus on the kids, get them out of the conflict as much as possible, and try to live the best life you can.

   7. CWChris Williamson16:15

      What does stabbing in the closet constitute when it comes to kids and separation?

   8. JSJames Sexton16:22

      Well, I think, you know, creating loyalty binds for children, you know, alienation. I mean, it- it's a spectrum, right? There's straight alienation, right? Where you say to a child, you know, "It's not okay to love Dad. He's a bad person." You know? Um, that's a special kind of psycho. There's a lot of them. There's a lot of... But it's more common that it's a little more subtle than that. So it takes a special kind of crazy person to say, "Your dad's a bad person," but a lot will do this. "Hello? Here, it's your dad." Okay, you just said dad's a bad person. You roll your eyes when you hand the kid the phone. You just said dad's a bad person. Same- same thing. Kid comes home from a visit with dad, and you say, "Oh, did you have a good time?" "Yeah." "What'd you guys do?" "Oh, we had so much fun. We went to the park." "Oh, that's great. All right, well, go upstairs and wash up. We're gonna have dinner shortly." Or, "Oh, you're back. Oh, I missed you so much. Did you miss me too?" "Yeah." "Where did you go? Oh, you went to the... You went to the park today? Dad took... It's so cold out. Dad took you to the park? That's... Well, I- I guess maybe he wasn't thinking about it. So, boy, I missed you so much. I'm so glad you're home. You must be so happy to be..." What are you doing? You're telling this kid, "It's not okay to be happy with dad." You're telling this kid, "Dad is something that I'm worried about you being with," but you're not explicitly saying it. If you ask that child... If a judge asks that child, "Does mom talk bad about dad?" The truthful answer is no, she doesn't. She didn't say one bad word, but she sent the message home clearly. It's just... Listen, we all know what this is like. I mean, you know, you say to your girlfriend, "H- how you doing?" "Fine." "Oh, okay. Cool. No. No, you're not fine. What- what's the matter?" "No, nothing. It's nothing. It's fine." Okay, so you're- you're getting it across. You're getting your point across, and that's what it- it looks like to harm your children. I'll take it a step further. Something that's really come into sort of the judicial and legal zeitgeist right now is this idea of what's called negative gatekeeping.... which is a much more common form of alienation, which really is you could have been helpful but you were so much more. You know, like you, you had an opportunity to build up or bolster your co-parent with the child, and you just let it fall flat instead. You know, you could have been helpful, but you choose not to be helpful.

   9. CWChris Williamson18:34

      What's an example of that?

   10. JSJames Sexton18:36

       Great example (coughs) is your partner, you know, your co-parent gets into a new relationship. Now look, none of us are gonna be thrilled when our ex gets involved with somebody new, but it's a reality of life. 86% of people are remarried within five years of their divorce, so the likelihood of people remarrying or getting into serious intimate relationships after they divorce, very, very high. So why, why, you know, when, when the child comes home and says, "Oh, I met, you know, Mommy's new friend Tom," you can say, "Oh, that's great. Was he nice? Oh, that's great. I'm so glad you liked him. That was... What'd you guys do? Oh, that's really good." Or even better, gold standard, the parents communicate with each other and say, "Hey, he's gonna meet my new boyfriend Tom. You know, Tom's a mechanic, uh, and, uh, you know, he, he's a really nice guy. You know, I thought maybe he could even help fix our kid's bike or whatever." And then when the kids says, "Oh, I met Tom," you go, "Oh, that's great, I heard you were gonna meet Tom. I heard he's so nice. I heard he knows how to fix bikes, that's awesome." You know... So you could be helpful. And instead, "I met, you know, Mom's friend Tom." "Okay." Nothing. You know, just nothing helpful, nothing to tell this child how you... 'Cause look, children look to us about how to feel about things. I mean, it's why it's like the classic joke when a little kid falls down, you know, they fall. If you go, "Oh my God, are you okay?" They in- instantly start crying. Whereas if they fall down and you go, "Oh, oopsie, you're okay, you're okay," they kinda go, "Mm, oh, I guess I'm okay." You know, 'cause they look to adults as to how, how am I feeling? So it's really the same thing as a co-parent. Look, you're supposed to love your kids more than you hate your ex, so really what, what... I always tell people, who you marry... I mean, if you have a prenup, marry whoever the hell you want, but if, if you don't have a prenup, who you marry, the worst they can really do is hurt you financially. If you have a kid with someone, they could torture you for 20-plus years easily, you know, and in real ways, like really profound ways, 'cause most people love their children more than themselves, you know? And, and thankfully most people love their children more than they hate their ex. But I will tell you, most of the people in my office who screw their kids up really badly in the divorce, they don't mean to. They don't mean to. You know, I don't believe that people are, you know, engage in evil behavior 'cause they're evil. I think they mistake it for happiness. I think they have the permission of their own conscience, and I think as a culture, we really do glorify, you know, that sense of like, "Oh, screw your ex, screw them, they're an idiot." You know, as opposed to looking at relationships like chapters in a long book. You know, and that, yeah, look, you know what? We, we loved each other for a time. We loved each other in the way we loved each other. We did our best. Maybe it wasn't the best we could do, but it was the best we could do at the time. And you know, we, we left the relationship hopefully better people for having had the relationship, and now we move on, move forward to the next thing and hopefully to, to more love or different love with someone who's well-suited to us or better suited to us.

4. 21:44 – 32:13

   Are Prenups Worth it?

   1. CWChris Williamson21:44

      What do you think about prenups? Are they actually protective?

   2. JSJames Sexton21:47

      Absolutely. Absolu- I can tell you for certain they are protective, because they, they cost a l- divorce lawyers a lot of money. They're not expensive to do. W- no, there is no divorce mor- lawyer saying, "Man, I'm crushing it on prenups financially." Like litigation, one day of litigation, I'm gonna make more money than I would in a month worth of doing prenups. Like prenups are a couple thousand dollars worth of work, even the most complicated ones. So... And if they're effective, and, and most of the time, they're effective. I mean, there are very specific and limited grounds on which a person can set aside a prenup, and any decent lawyer knows what those are and sees them coming and has a variety of ways to control for them. I mean, most good divorce lawyers were paid to be paranoid, so we wear suspenders and a belt when it comes to the prenup. Like I have, you know, all the vulnerabilities, duress, language problems, you know, we find in, in the document itself five different ways to solve for that issue, and we follow what goes on in the appellate division, the court of appeals, the higher courts, so that we control for, we look at how did a prenup get set aside and how can we bolster up that defense and shore up that hole that's created or that the higher court is telling us is a basis to set aside a prenup? And I have to tell you, I mean, I have seen some prenups upheld that I think fairness would have dictated that they not be upheld. Like more often, it is much more likely, if you ask a divorce lawyer, that they have seen cases where the prenup should have been set aside in fairness and it wasn't than cases where they've seen a prenup set aside. There are very few.

   3. CWChris Williamson23:25

      Where is... Where is this meme on the internet coming from that even a prenup doesn't protect either person's possessions and finances and all the rest of it, and if you marry him or you marry her, they're gonna take you with them for six months and they're gonna take half of everything for the rest of time and you're gonna be bankrupt with a gluten intolerance living under a bridge? Wh- where does that come from?

   4. JSJames Sexton23:45

      I, I, I think it comes from the same place that most extreme points of view come from, and that is a wildly defeatist attitude that doesn't wanna actually read or look anything up, or, or, or that creates like, treats Google the same as a law degree and 20 years of experience. You know, and that's un- unfortunately a widespread problem. Like I can't tell you how many people come in and say, "Well, I downloaded this off of the internet and that's what we did as a prenup," and you look at it and go, "Yeah, this isn't work of paper it's printed on, but..."

   5. CWChris Williamson24:14

      Don't get ChatGPT to write the prenup.

   6. JSJames Sexton24:15

      Yeah. "Congratulations, you saved a couple of hundred dollars and you've cost yourself hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of litigation now." So I, I do not know where that comes from except that I t-... I do think that people are quick, in all fields, to say, "Eh, there's nothing you can do about anything. Everything sucks no matter what." You know, "Oh yeah, you could quit smoking, but you know what, you'd get hit by a bus, so okay, you're right." So just do whatever, right? Like I don't-

   7. CWChris Williamson24:41

      That's if you just do heroin right now.

   8. JSJames Sexton24:41

      I just think it's a defeatist attitude, and it's just easier. It's easier to do nothing. It's easier not to get a prenup. By the way, it takes some courage to get a prenup. It takes some courage. I- you have to have a tough conversation with your partner.

   9. CWChris Williamson24:54

      How do you, uh, how do you suggest that a person who wants to get a prenup have that conversation?

   10. JSJames Sexton25:01

       I think it can be... My personal belief is that it, it can actually be, I think, a very romantic and connected conversation. I know that sounds crazy, but I genuinely think it is, because I think what it's about is saying to your soon-to-be spouse that, "We're gonna, we're gonna have to have hard conversations. I don't wanna just be with you when it's fun. I wanna be with you when it's hard too, and I wanna not quit when it's hard." Like, I want, I want, I want us to make each other a promise that we're with each other whatever life throws at us. And it's gonna throw a lot of stuff at us, but I think we both have the right to never feel afraid that we could weaponize against each other at a level where one of us walks out of this marriage and the other one crawls. And so I think it's about talking to your partner about, "I want this to be forever. If I didn't, I wouldn't marry you. But if it's not, what would we owe each other? What do we need? What would you need?" You know? "What would I need from you?" Like, "What, what would be fair? What's our sense of what would be fair?" And having the courage and, and having the love for your partner to be able to look at them and say, "Hey look, you know," like, "let's look at the what-ifs." You know? "Let's look at the..." And by the way, we do this in relationships. Come on, women love this, right? How many times have you been dating someone and they do the, like, "If I lost an arm, would you still love me? If I had a- had to have a double mastectomy 'cause I had breast cancer, would you still find me attractive?" You know, "Would you..." I mean, and look, you know, men make jokes about that. Th- like, it's, you know, Daniel Tosh has a great joke about how, like, you know, his girlfriend said to him at one point, like, you know, "If I lost a leg, would you still love me?" And he's like, "You break a nail, I'm outta here." Like, "A le- your whole leg?" "Yeah, no, forget it." You know?

   11. CWChris Williamson26:47

       (laughs)

   12. JSJames Sexton26:47

       But the, but the truth is, what, what a woman is saying when she says that to you, like, "If I lost my arm, would you love me? If I had breast cancer and, and my breasts were gone, would you still find me attractive?" is, is, is, "How deep is your love for me? And what would it endure?" You know? Well, I, I don't think it's an unreasonable or unromantic question to say, "If we hurt each other, we hurt each other, right? Are we gonna go nuclear on each other?" Like, 'cause I never understood, I never understood. I mean, you wanna talk, you know, reality TV, you know? Th- that, that's a great litmus test for this. Like, when people are on The Bachelor or Love Island or any of those things, right? And they go from, "Well, I really think I like him and he might be the one," and then when he goes, "Yeah, I'm sorry, I chose somebody," "Well, I never... He's a piece of garbage, and I n-" Wow. 'Cause like a minute ago you were saying if he proposed to you, you'd say yes. Like, so what... How did you go from there to there? Like, if that was true, your reaction would've been, "Well, my heart is broken because I really think you're the one, and now you've hurt me. But you know what? I love you and I want you to be happy and find joy and it makes me terribly sad that it's not with me. But, you know, I wish you well because when you love someone, you wish them well even if it's to your detriment." You know? And so, a, a prenup is saying, "Listen, I don't want you to be here. I want you to lay your head on the pillow next to me 'cause you love me and you wanna be here, not 'cause you're afraid you won't be able to survive financially without me, or because you're afraid I might weaponize against you in a court of law." Like, it really... There's something wonderful about saying, like, "No, no, if we split up, you'll get this, you'll get that, I'll get this, I'll get that, and we'll both be okay. But you know what? I won't be okay, 'cause I won't have you."

   13. CWChris Williamson28:35

       What is the best way to construct a prenup?

   14. JSJames Sexton28:38

       I think the simplest way is actually the best way, and that is, because you don't have a crystal ball, you don't know what the future holds, and if you wanna make God laugh, tell him your plans. So, I really think the way to, to structure a prenup is to just have like tranches, have buckets. And I call it, you know, yours, mine, and ours. Which is, if it's in my name, it's mine, whether it's an asset or a liability. If it's in your name, it's yours, whether it's an asset or a liability. And if it's in our joint names, we're gonna split it 50/50. So if it's an asset, we'll divide it 50/50, or if it's a liability, we'll each be responsible for half of it. And that gives you the ability, both of you, throughout the marriage, to have conversations, right? There's no prenup, there's no contract, that you can sign and set it and forget it. You never have to have a conversation about money or about anything tough in the marriage ever again. If there was, believe me, I'd, I'd make a lot of money selling that document. But the truth is, the best thing you can hope for is something that creates a structure that the two of you can then work together on and understand clearly-

   15. CWChris Williamson29:38

       Does that not then create-

   16. JSJames Sexton29:38

       ... and then work from.

   17. CWChris Williamson29:40

       Does that not then create another ground for, uh, a reminder of the lack of unity, potentially, or the future impending potential, uh, separation that if... Every time that a piece of money comes in, such and such has got to draw down his dividend for this year, "Well, is that going in the personal or is that going in the joint?"

   18. JSJames Sexton30:01

       Yes. Yes.

   19. CWChris Williamson30:01

       Well, it's a car, but I mean, he's, he should, he, he's working 'cause she's the stay-at-home mom, and then there's this sort of financial prisoner-type scenario.

   20. JSJames Sexton30:10

       But, but wait, you know, again, like, memento mori doesn't have to just exist as to the individual. It should exist as to the couple. Like, remember you're going... Remember that love is not permanently gifted, it's loaned. You know? Remember that, that, that... Look, I don't think there's anything bad...... about having to have ongoing conversations. Look, if she's a stay-at-home mom and he's the breadwinner, it is worth having conversations along the way about the value of those two roles. You're not doing yourselves any favors pretending that dynamic doesn't exist or forgetting, like most couples do, that those dynamics exist and just being resentful towards each other. "Well, all she does is stays home and does nothing. I have to go out to work every day." "Well, he's never here and helping with anything with the house. He's always just out and he gets to be in the world interacting with people." Instead of looking at, "Hey look, we each bring something to this relationship, and we're each losing something for the bringing of that something," right? Like, like, the, the, the, the tragedy of our current dating and marriage situation and the chaos that's come from comes from the fact that there is no longer clarity as to what anybody's supposed to be. You know, if a man's a breadwinner, but why aren't you home with your kids and taking more care of them? And if a woman wants to stay home with kids, "How dare you? Bella Abzug would be disgusted by you. Gloria Steinem would be disgusted by you." Which, by the way, isn't true. You know, feminism was not born of the idea that, you know, women should all be capitalist cogs in the workforce and that couples should both devote all of their energies to, to the bottom line financially rather than the devotion that they have to each other and to their children. You know, but yeah, a prenup is about having ongoing, having an original conversation, then having ongoing conversations about why we're doing what we're doing financially. You know, when you got that big bonus at work, why did you put it entirely in the account in your sole name? I'd like to have that conversation while we're still together rather than in a divorce lawyer's office in the proceedings of the divorce. Why not know where you stand with each other?

5. 32:13 – 39:35

   How People Have a More Difficult Divorce Than Needed

   1. CWChris Williamson32:13

      Yeah. What are some of the ways that people go about divorces in terms of behavior or structure or announcements-

   2. JSJames Sexton32:21

      Sure.

   3. CWChris Williamson32:22

      ... or whatever that cause everyone more financial, or emotional, or litigious pain than is needed?

   4. JSJames Sexton32:28

      Yeah, I think, I think you just tapped on it, which is going, going to litigation from minute one is really a bad idea. I mean, I jokingly tell people that, you know, if you, if you divide your assets with a mediator or with two lawyers negotiating on your behalf, you're doing it with a scalpel. If you do it in court, you're doing it with a chainsaw.

   5. CWChris Williamson32:47

      Hang on, hang on. Just explain to me, what's a mediator?

   6. JSJames Sexton32:50

      Sure. Sure.

   7. CWChris Williamson32:50

      What's a lawyer? What are you- how do you ??? those things?

   8. JSJames Sexton32:51

      So, so there's a lot of paths up the mountain of divorce, right? And, and, and so the, the, the, going from like, the friendliest to the most extreme, uh, and everything in between. The friendliest is two people sit down at their kitchen table, and they map out on a piece of paper, "Here's what I need. Here's what you need. Here's what you'll keep. Here's what I'll keep." And they go to one lawyer and say, "Can you write this up for us?" They both sign off on it, and it's an uncontested divorce. That's the simplest, okay?

   9. CWChris Williamson33:20

      You, could you do that with kids as well?

   10. JSJames Sexton33:22

       Of course. Yeah, of course.

   11. CWChris Williamson33:23

       All right.

   12. JSJames Sexton33:24

       Of course. Court system is not going to get in the way of what two people agree upon, you know, if, if what they agree upon is not unconscionable, meaning it is so patently unfair that no rational person would accept it and no rational person would offer it who was acting in good faith. So, as long as it's, you know, it's unique to your situation, it's totally fine. Courts aren't gonna second-guess things. The next stage from that more likely, 'cause a lot of these people don't know what questions to ask. They don't know, like, what issues, so they go to a mediator. A mediator is either an attorney, an accountant, a therapist, someone who's trained in conflict resolution who doesn't represent either person individually but instead represents the transaction, and they sit with the couple either in- together as a group or they do shuttle diplomacy, you know, where they kind of canvas back and forth between the two, and they try to reach resolution. They try to identify all the issues that have to be resolved, and then they try to resolve them, and then they can write that up and make it binding. That's a lovely thing when people can do it. I try to send people who come into my office who could potentially mediate, I try to send them out to a mediator, e- even though I- that's sending money right out the door, but my attitude is if you can go to a mediator, go to a mediator. Problem is, is mediation's somewhat self-selecting. Most, most people can't advocate for themselves. They don't feel comfortable having that discussion directly with their spouse even with a mediator in the room, so more commonly, the majority of cases resolve the next step in the kind of continuum, and that is where you have two people who each hire their own individual attorneys and the attorneys educate their individual clients as to their rights and obligations, their upside reward, their downside risk. You know, "Here's what you might get in court," because really it comes down to what do you need, what do you want, and what are you entitled to? What you need, you're gonna get what you need. You need food, shelter, to see your children. What do you want? There could be no limit to what people might want. So, what you want is informed by what you're entitled to. So, a lot of what a lawyer does is explains to someone better than Google could what it is that they are entitled to, and then the two lawyers work with their respective clients and with each other to try to reach a mutually acceptable resolution or one that everybody's equally unsatisfied with. The next stage in the continuum is if there's something we can't agree on. Who's the tiebreaker? The judge, right? So, one of us has to file, one of the lawyers files what's called an RJI, a Request for Judicial Intervention. A judge gets assigned to the case, and then that judge weighs in a little bit and says, "Well, here's what I would do with this issue," or, "With these facts presented, here's what I might be inclined to order if we had a hearing." And nine times out of ten, you know, actually 98% of the time is the last statistic I heard on this c- of divorce cases resolve before the entry of a final judgment. Now, that's a little misleading 'cause it gives people the, the mistaken impression that, like, people don't litigate divorces. They do, it's just what happens is you litigate for a little while and then everybody kinda gets the answers they wanted from the judge and now you know what the judge might do, so sometimes you gotta do three, four days of testimony and trial, and then you resolve the case 'cause the judge kinda waves everybody off and says, "All right, look, here's what I'm probably gonna do." Um, and then, of course, the furthest extreme is knock-down, drag-out litigation, which again, is kind of what I specialize in and it's what I do for a living is I'm, I'm something of a weapon. You know, you point me at the spouse and my job is to just go after them and sort of, you know-... take no prisoners, cross examine people. Um, and that's not, you know, if y- if you're in that position, it's unfortunate. It's unfortunate under all circumstances. Either if you're on the receiving end of it and you need me to be the, the person defending you, or if you're the person who needs to weaponize against another person, you've lost already to some degree. Um, because you're spending hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, depending on the scope of the issues presented. I mean, I've had cases where the legal fees go into the two and three millions.

   13. CWChris Williamson37:20

       Which do you prefer to do, defend or prosecute?

   14. JSJames Sexton37:23

       I like both the same. It's kind of the exact same skillset. That's like asking someone who does jujitsu, "Do you like, you know, top game, bottom game?" It's like kind of, eh, just two different paths of the same thing, and the goal ultimately, is to get to roughly the same place to get to the submission. So, it's really the, the, the same kind of thing. I personally, I, I kind of am like a legal version of Steve Prefontaine. Like, I, I think you set the pace, you control the race. So I like to be a frontrunner. Like, I like to be the one who's making everybody work real hard. But, you know, Prefontaine didn't win the Olympics for a reason, which is, you, you actually, if you're smart and scientific, you let people, you know, drag, and you let people create, you know, that thr- and, and, and, you know, from a physics standpoint, it's not the best way to do things. But I, you know, I l- I like litigating cases. I'm a trial lawyer at heart. I like cross examining people. I enjoy the sort of full contact storytelling that is a trial. Um, and it, and it's a, it's a very exciting type of thing. It's a very exciting line, or it's an intellectual... It's a chess match, in the same way that chess or jujitsu is. It's, it's really about feints. It's about, you know, uh, uh, uh, taking risks. It's about every time you give something, you give something up at the same time. So it's, it's a very, very exciting career. But again, I, I never want people to have to get to that place. I do everything I can to prevent it, and I think that's, you know, it's the ne- it's the nature of violence, for example. You know, like, uh, cops carry guns, so they don't have to use them. You know, if someone's a really good fighter, you're gonna be less likely to take a swing at them. So people hire trial lawyers because, you know, it's better to be a trial... have a trial lawyer and not need them than need a trial lawyer and not have them, and instead you have somebody who's not a litigator at heart. You know, it's better to be a, a warrior in a garden than a gardener in war. So, um, being a trial lawyer, it, it, it's a lot of fun. You don't always get to use that skillset. Um, but sometimes, you know, you get to the place in the career where I am, where people hire you 'cause they have a complicated case. If somebody calls me up and they have a very simple case, I'll say, "Listen, there's better choices than me for, for that type of case, because I'm more expensive, because I'm a more, um, I'm, I'm more of a weapon."

   15. CWChris Williamson39:34

       What

6. 39:35 – 47:21

   James’s Most Outrageous Cases

   1. CWChris Williamson39:35

      are some of the more complex or, uh, outrageous cases that you've had to go through?

   2. JSJames Sexton39:43

      You know, I've, I've seen every variety of, of human chaos and misery, I, I think in 23 years of doing this. I mean, I've, I've seen people just immolate themselves, you know? And, and it's everything from the, the humorously absurd, you know, uh-

   3. CWChris Williamson39:59

      Like a Faberge egg, or something like that.

   4. JSJames Sexton40:01

      Yeah, I mean, I once saw a multimillion dollar settlement break down over a toaster oven. A toaster oven. It was like, a $32 toaster oven. And I remember saying to my client, like, "I will log on Amazon right now and buy you three of that toaster oven if you just settle the case. Like, what are you guys doing? You're arguing over a toaster oven." And they just, you know, it's, it was just the hill they both wanted to die on, and it broke the whole settlement down, and they ended up litigating all the way through. But I mean, I've seen all manner of chaos. I've, I've... See, I talk about in the book, I, I, I tell a story about a trial that I once did where, um, this person had, had clearly married my client solely for their green card, and as soon as they got married, he vanished, and, uh, my client, who had married in good faith, um, was devastated by this and she wanted to annul the marriage, and he refused to grant the annulment, and he was pretending that they had been married, um, and that the marriage was a legitimate marriage. And (clears throat) she shared with me that they had not consummated the marriage, that they'd not had sex, and I said, "Well, you can't prove that you guys didn't have sex." You know, that's not... You know, there's no way to prove that. And she said, "Well, my, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm a virgin." So I said, "Well, you know, you're also a 30-something-year-old woman. Like, the chances of your hymen being intact are minimal." Like, if you ride a horse, if you, you know, fall

   5. NANarrator41:33

      (laughs)

   6. JSJames Sexton41:34

      ... down, like, there's a million things that, after a certain age, that that can happen. Um, so she went to her gynecologist, and, and came back about a week later, and my secretary said, "Oh, she's here. She's in the conference room." And I went in, and she was like, weepy, and I said, "Look, you know, it was unlikely that it would..." And she said, "No, no, it's, it's intact." You know? She was like, "I'm just crying 'cause it's, like, shocking to me that it's intact, and that..." So we went to trial, and, and the guy got on the witness stand, and, and I cross examined him, and I said, "And you, you know, you, you had sex with my client. Is that your testimony?" And he said, "Yes." And I said, "Now, sir, how, how large is your penis?" And of course, the other side objected, and I said, "Your Honor, I'm going somewhere with this, I promise." And she said, "All right, I'll give you a little leeway, Mr. Sexton, but not much. This is not gonna turn into Penthouse Forum." And he said, "It's normal size." I said, "You know, I'm fuzzy on what normal size means, sir. Do you mean it's five inches, six inches, seven inches? How big, roughly?" And he says, "Well, it's about six or seven inches when erect." I said, "Okay, and when you say you had sex with my client, you had, you had regular sex. You had, say, a vaginal intercourse." "Yes." "And you had no problems at all inserting your penis?" Again, opposing counsel objects. The judge says, "Mr. Sexton, where are you going with this?" And I said, "Just give me a little leeway, Your Honor." And he insisted that yes, they had sex. So, ended the cross examination, called her OB-GYN to the stand, and they testified to the fact that he would have to have a microphallus, meaning a penis of less than one inch-...in order for him to have not penetrated her hymen. So then he got back on the stand and suddenly he misremembered, and his penis is much smaller than he testified to. It's actually quite small. And before I could say, "Your Honor, I want an independent medical examination of this man's penis," the judge waved us both off and said, "All right, hang on. We're, we're, we're..." And she took us all, the two lawyers in the back, and she said, "You're settling this case. Give her the annulment or else I'm gonna sanction this guy. I might even put him in jail for perjury." And sure enough, we, we got her the annulment. But that was one of the craziest cases I... I mean, to have a man get on the stand and, and suddenly testify to the fact under oath that he had been lying about the size of his penis and it was actually only about an inch, um, I never thought that, that... You know, I did- did not go to law school with that in mind. Um, but yeah, I mean, I've, I've had so many bizarre cases and, and, and you know, some are tragic. Some are... You know, you see things in this line of work that you can't unsee. Um, you know, the way people treat children, the way people treat each other. Um, I had a case recently where I had, uh, uh, represented a woman who her husband was a perpetrator of domestic violence for many years, but he was incredibly charming and incredibly handsome, and he just... No one would have believed that this guy was violent or abusive. I, I kind of didn't believe her, I'll be candid. I mean, my job is to advocate for her and I advocated very well for her, but I, I remember meeting this guy and seeing this guy in court and sort of dealing with him and thinking like, "I don't know. I just can't picture it," you know? Like, it... He seems so lovely, seems so nice, you know? Um, and thank God they had a Ring doorbell because it captured, unbeknownst to him, um, him beating the shit out of a six-month Labra- Gold- uh, uh, black Lab puppy that they had, and just like kicking it and throw- whacking it against the wall. Which, I'm a dog lover, so having to watch that and listen to it was nauseating to me. You know, it's nauseating. It was horrifying to me. But it was the piece of evidence that we destroyed this guy with because w- you know, he got up there and he presented so well, and then you see this video of him just brutally beating an ani- a helpless, defenseless animal, and you realize, "Okay, this guy's like capable of atrocity." So, you know, I, I... My job is never boring, which is a wonderful thing. Um, but it is... Sometimes I, I bump into the absolute worst parts of humanity and the absolute just people at their absolute. You know, when love goes south, it, it brings out something really, really vicious in people. Um, and the way we treat each other is shocking to me sometimes. I, I'm, I'm, I'm very blessed. Like I... Every ex I've ever had, every ex-girlfriend, my ex-wife, like I- I have tremendous love in my heart for them. They're all friends still to this day. Like, I still stay in touch with them, you know? Um, I wish them every happiness. I know they, they would wish me happiness as well. Even when we hurt each other, even when we weren't right for each other, even when we failed by our own weakness and our own, you know, foolishness as humans, like we still, we still cared about each other, you know? And, and I don't understand the level of brutality that people unleash on each other and themselves when their hearts are broken. I mean, I get it. It's, it's very human, but it's, uh, it's shocking to me how people can lose their minds when they get their heart broken.

   7. CWChris Williamson46:21

      Have you struggled to protect your personal view of romance given the daily exposure that you deal with in your professional life?

   8. JSJames Sexton46:35

      You know, there's a great line in a Joseph... One of my favorite poems. Joseph Brodsky has a poem called The Song. He wrote it when his wife died. And, uh, the, the poem's very pretty. It's worth looking up. But, but the, the refrain of the poem is "I wish you were here, dear. I wish you were here. I wish we sat in the car and you sat near." It's about missing someone and longing for someone. And one of the lines in the poem is "I wish you were here, dear. I wish you were here. I wish I knew no astronomy when the stars appear." And I always loved that line because I, I wish I knew no astronomy when the stars appear. Like when, when you don't know astronomy, the stars are so beautiful. They're these little pinpoint lights in the sky, you know? And you can understand how all these ancient cultures like believed it to be that heaven was there and that

7. 47:21 – 50:55

   Protecting a Positive View on Romance

   1. JSJames Sexton47:21

      this was holes in the blanket that covered heaven or that the stars were the gods in some way, all the myriad of things we came up with to explain it. And when you know astronomy, you know that this is a ball of gas. You know what this is. So to me, you know, I, I wish I knew no astronomy sometimes when stars appear. I think I wish I- I wish I'd known... I shouldn't say I wish I'd known. I wish I could look at... I love going to weddings. I love weddings. Like, I still get teary-eyed at weddings. I'm still cheering for these people when I go to a wedding. But I kind of wish I didn't see what I see. It, it can't help but beat some of the romantic out of you doing this work, but it, it doesn't take away, you know, the beauty of it. I had a conversation with a gynecologist friend once and I said to him... He's a very happily married guy. And I said to him like, "Come on, man. Seriously, between you and me, do, do you like get home at night and like say to your wife like, 'Babe, if I see one more, I'm just... I can't.'" You know? And he said, "Yeah, it's not the same thing." He said, "It's not the same thing." He's like, "It's like, it's a totally..." You know, your brain just doesn't even process those the same way, you know? And I think it's the same thing. I, I, I, I definitely learn a lot of lessons about what not to do. Um, I think the divorce rate among divorce lawyers, I, I don't know if anyone's ever studied it, but I'd imagine it's lower. Even though the profession is a demanding profession and, and therefore it's a harsh mistress, I, I think divorce lawyers are very acutely aware of, of, uh, you know, just how hard it is and, and, and all the mistakes that people make unintentionally. So I don't... You know, I, I, I don't like ignorance.I, like an un- I would prefer an uncomfortable truth to a comfortable lie, so... I, I like going in knowing that, you know, yeah, we might, we might crawl out of this thing, we might hurt each other, but you know what? Like, it's, it's worth trying, you know? It's worth doing s- like, it's, you know, there's nothing great ever achieved without some enduring and without some risk. So, you know, I think love is one of those things, you just keep trying and you just keep going after it. And, you know, maybe you never find it, and that's what's meant to be, and that you just have a lot of really good scars to show for it. Like, there's a school of thought that would say that, you know, that only unfulfilled love can be truly romantic, you know? That... I love, I mean, I, listen, I've, I've been madly in love and I've had my heart broken, and I think both were beautiful. You know? Both were... Some of the greatest poetry, some of the greatest art came from heartbreak. Some of the greatest insight in life came from heartbreak, you know? Like from loo- from loss, from pain, you know? And, you know, when, when I sat down with, uh, Lex Fridman, you know, a couple months ago, Lex and I were talking about dogs. You know, we were talking about... We both have had and lost dogs who we loved very much. And I said, like, "You know, but, like, I, I, I don't know. It's a pain worth having." You know? Like, because the alternate is the pain of never having experienced the joy and the closeness of that. Like, and I don't, I don't know, I don't wanna die with any- without any scars. Like, I don't wanna tiptoe through life and arrive safely at death. Like, I wanna, I wanna, you know, give it, give it my all, and, and, and, and if I succeed or I fail, like, I felt big, you know? So, I think it's good to not be wildly reckless with your own heart or anybody else's heart, but I don't think that, you know, that... I think love is worth the risk. I believe that.

   2. CWChris Williamson50:54

      What about...

8. 50:55 – 56:37

   Defending Someone You Morally Disagree With

   1. CWChris Williamson50:55

      I've always wanted to ask someone that stands up and does cross-examinations or spends time working for people because they are the client, not because they have elected them as some paragon of virtue or whatever.

   2. JSJames Sexton51:06

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson51:07

      How morally conflicted do you get when you need to defend or work on behalf of somebody that you have doubts about their, their character or about how virtuous they are or, you know, you maybe don't even particularly like them or respect them as a, a person or a human being? Uh.

   4. JSJames Sexton51:25

      Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson51:25

      Or, or if you destroy or annihilate somebody in cross-examination. Like, is there a, is there a difficulty doing that?

   6. JSJames Sexton51:34

      Well, so those are two different questions. So the first one I would say is, what is it like to represent an asshole-

   7. CWChris Williamson51:40

      (laughs)

   8. JSJames Sexton51:40

      ... or someone you don't believe in, right? Or to weaponize against a nice person, right?

   9. CWChris Williamson51:46

      Yep.

   10. JSJames Sexton51:46

       So when you represent someone you know is guilty or you know is a jerk or you know probably doesn't deserve the relief, like someone who's just putting the kids right in the middle to gain tactical advantage or financial advantage, then... You know, I was once described, and I think the person meant it as a compliment, but they wrote in a review of me and it stuck, that I was the sociopath you want on your side. That's what someone described me as. And I don't think I'm a sociopath. But, um, I, I will tell you I believe in our system. I believe in democracy. I believe in our legal system. It's not perfect. But just like democracy, our version of democracy, you know, it's, it's awful except for all the other ones. You know? Um, I, I think it's a good example of how to do things right. It's not perfect, but it does things right a lot of the time. And a, and a, and a absolute key to it is vigorous advocacy. You know, that everyone is entitled to vigorous advocacy, whether it's, if it's a criminal proceeding, the state has the burden of proof and, and you have the right to vigorous representation to confront witnesses, to elicit testimony, you know, to a, to a vigorous defense. So, I believe in that and I, I lean on that. When I'm representing someone who I, I, you know, I look at them and I go, "Yeah, this is not a nice person or a good person," I will tell you, the truth has a way of coming out. Sometimes despite my best efforts, the truth has a way of coming out. Like, I can throw up a lot of smoke and mirrors, I can do a lot of real great show, I can put on a show. And you know, people buy the sizzle as much as they buy the steak, but at the end of the day, it's the steak, you know? And you can taste if it's garbage. You can taste if it's rotted. And so, the truth has a way of coming out. The truth fears no trial in my experience. Now, the, the other question that's an interesting question, I don't think I've been asked before is, what is it like to weaponize against a person who you know is probably a nice person and to eviscerate them on the stand? And, and that's... I will say, it's not, it's not pleasant to do from a interpersonal standpoint. But you get very... In my line of work, you get very interested in, like, the technique of argument. So you're really thinking more about how you're doing what you're doing than the morality of what you're doing. You know? And again, you know, I feel sort of like... There's a, there's a, in, uh, Grosse Pointe Blank, the John Cusack film about an assassin, he's, uh, you know, he's, breaks into the guy's hotel room to assassinate him and he's, like, over him with his bed and he's got the gun and the guy wakes up and he looks at him and he says, "Please, whatever it is," like, "I'm sorry, whatever it is, don't do this." And he says, "I'm not the one who has a problem with you, pal." And then he shoots the guy. You know? And it's, it's kind of the truth. Like, I'm not the one... You know, I didn't tell you, "Get in the ring," you know? Like, I, I, I would have told you, "Don't." You know? But, but you partly get very caught up in the technique of it, you know? I've, I've, I, I love trial work. It's just, like I said, it's, it's an intellectual kind of combat. It's like debate with higher stakes in some ways, and it's with... You know, it's real time. Like, it's, it's a, it's a really, it's a really, um... It's an art form. I mean, it's a, it's a blast to do. You know? So I, I, I really get caught more in the technique of it than the morality of it. But I have a chapter in the book where I talk about a case ... that I should have lost and I won. And that I felt quite badly about because the reason I won was that the lawyer I was against was very inexperienced and not very talented, and they couldn't get a piece of evidence in, and I won as a result of that and really I shouldn't have. And my client, who was a, a vicious human being who had brutally beaten this woman up, um, he walked out free, you know, and he, uh, he actually patted me on the back as we were walking out of court and he said, "You know, one good lawyer is better than 20 stick-up men." And I remember I kinda felt dirty at the end of that case and, curiously enough, like, I, I, I wrote about it in the book about, I don't know, 10 years later? Maybe more. And when I read my audio... You know when you're recording an audio book, you know, you sit in a booth and you have to read your book and, and you, you've never read your book out loud. Like, who the hell reads their book out loud, you know? I wrote it, but I'd never read it out loud. And you read the whole book out loud to yourself. And I, I got about halfway through that chapter and I got choked up, and I had to, like, take a break. And I remember thinking, "That's weird." You know? Like, "That's..." I did not see that coming. Like, I wrote that chapter and I didn't feel that way, I've read that chapter, I didn't feel that way. But something about reading that chapter out loud made it feel real to me that, like, I had been part of some... of justice not being done.

   11. CWChris Williamson56:35

       Mm-hmm.

   12. JSJames Sexton56:35

       And that felt ugly.

9. 56:37 – 1:03:03

   The Problems in American Divorce Law

   1. JSJames Sexton56:37

   2. CWChris Williamson56:37

      Yeah. What's the reality of the American divorce law, in your opinion? Just how good or bad is it? Because again, if you were to take the internet or YouTube comments section or a Reddit threads perspective, it would be completely biased, it would be totally un-gender blind, it would be very swayed in one direction or another. How-

   3. JSJames Sexton57:00

      That's not entirely inaccurate. I mean, it, it's, it's terribly flawed in a number of ways. I mean, one, it's flawed in, in a general way, the same way that a lot of other things in our society are flawed and that is that you get as much justice as you can afford, a lot of the time. Like, it's, it's not a fair fight. If someone can afford me or one of my colleagues who's experienced and knowledgeable and the other person can only afford, you know, a person who's, like, a real estate lawyer and also does divorce from time to time and will charge you $1,500 bucks to do your divorce, it's not gonna be a fair fight, you know? Um, and so that's not good. There, there needs to be some ways to control for that better. Um, and yeah, it's definitely not gender blind 'cause our society's not gender blind. I mean, it's just not. You know, I have clients who call the police when their spouse has violated a court order and if it's a male and the police come, they'll say, "Well, it sounds like a family court matter." And if it's a woman and the police come, nine times out of ten, they do something about it. They call the guy and they say, "You have to return the child," or, "Hey, if you don't," you know, "leave this room, we're gonna have you arrested." Like, it's... So it isn't gender blind. I think it's biased against men in, in fairly significant ways. I think anyone who's not being naive would admit that, but, but, you know, people don't wanna say that. I mean, it's... You know, I, I hate to say that, that, you know, heterosexual males, particularly white heterosexual males are, are not exactly a protected category anymore, um, and the system is, is very much designed against them to some degree because, you know, the, the, the financial promises that a man makes during a marriage if he's the breadwinner, which still the majority of breadwinners in households are men in, in a family where there is a breadwinner and a care provider for the family, for the children, it's typically a man by a fairly significant majority. Um, and those promises are enforceable at law. So if, if, if I marry a woman and what sh- what I bring to the table is I'll provide for you, I'll give you food, shelter and, and, and funds with which to care for the things that you need, and what you'll provide me is affection and love and... Okay. The law can enforce my end of that bargain, they can't enforce your end of that bargain. They can't force you to be nice to me, they can't force you to love me or sleep with me, but they can force me to pay you. And so, that creates a, a bias. It creates a problem. When only one side of a contract is enforceable by force of law, that's a problem. So I don't, um, I don't think the, the system... I think it's a very easy thing for people to say, "Oh, I didn't get custody of my kid because the system's biased." Okay. I, I don't think that's true. That's like a person who says, "Well, the reason I'm overweight is 'cause I have a slow metabolism." Okay. Well, that's easier than saying, "'Cause I'm lazy and I don't actually like to work out," or, "I don't wanna work out more 'cause I have to work out more 'cause I have a slow metabolism," or, "I have to watch what I eat more 'cause I have a slow metabolism." These are all... It's just a way to go, "Yeah. Well, it's not my fault." I, I don't believe that's true, but I do still think it's tilted in a different direction and there's things that people have to do to control for that. I think that, you know, you have to, as a father, as a parent, you have to, you know, make sure that you participate. Make sure that you go to the parent-teacher conferences, you go to the doctor's appointments. I know that's not easy necessarily if you're working and all those things, to take time for those things, but remember, if you end up in litigation, those are... It doesn't matter what you know. It matters what you can prove. And people don't live their lives that way. People don't conduct their marriages and their family life that way. They don't look at it and go, "How am I gonna prove I'm a good father?" You know? And that's a very scary thing to have to do. But look, we're... You know, we talk about downstream effects all the time. You know, all the people that are talking about institutional racism and reparations and concepts like that, well, what they're saying is, is that I appreciate that now we're running the race fair, but you gave this group a head start. You gave white heterosexual men a gigantic head start, so the rest of us are trying to catch up and although maybe the rules are fairere now for everybody and maybe it's... Okay. But they've still gotta catch up. Okay. So if you believe in that concept, in this idea of institutional racism or institutional sexism, patriarchy, all those kinds of concepts-

   4. CWChris Williamson1:01:30

      Yeah.

   5. JSJames Sexton1:01:31

      Up until the mid-1970s, we had what was called the maternal presumption in divorce. Which is that children would go to the mother automatically unless you could prove the mother was an unfit mother. We had something called the tender years doctrine, which meant that a mother would automatically get custody if the child was under seven, unless you could prove that the mother was like a- insane, suffered from serious mental illness, or had serious drug addiction issues. So, that wasn't that long ago, the 1970s. I was born in the 1970s. So to suggest that we're now 40 years, 50 years out from that and it's gone, there's no downstream effects, there's- it hasn't affected the judiciary at all, it hasn't affected the body of law, that's naive. And for the same people who would argue that patriarchy and sexism and institutional sexism and the fact that Harvard didn't let women in until a certain time, and Yale didn't let w- all of the... You can acknowledge that, but you can't acknowledge that a system that until almost 1980 said fathers were automatically second-class citizens, you can't acknowledge that it might take a little while to get that out of the system? That's dishonest. It's intellectually dishonest, and I have a problem with that. But again, we always, in this culture, we teach- treat dandruff with decapitation. You know, we have the tendency to just say, "Well, it's either the system is screwed and men are just screwed and don't bother," or, "There's nothing wrong with the system, it's totally gender-blind." And both of those are just totally naive and totally false.

10. 1:03:03 – 1:08:49

    Dramatised Court Scenarios Vs Reality

    1. JSJames Sexton1:03:03

    2. CWChris Williamson1:03:03

       Yeah, it's very interesting. I guess it's- it's- it's weird to think that the dramatized versions of some of the things that we see and some of the meta memes actually end up playing out in a courtroom. That you are, you know, if you've got this unbelievably ludicrous toaster oven scenario or people using private investigators, or-

    3. JSJames Sexton1:03:23

       Yeah.

    4. CWChris Williamson1:03:24

       ... people hiding money from their spouse by sending it to a grandmother in Switzerland or whatever it is.

    5. JSJames Sexton1:03:30

       Or they're selling their Ferrari to their brother for $20 or-

    6. CWChris Williamson1:03:33

       (laughs)

    7. JSJames Sexton1:03:34

       ... transferring money too. I mean, there's so many things you see, and what's interesting too, Chris, is you- you... I started out my career representing, you know, typical people, for lack of a better term. You know, a cop and a teacher, they got two kids, 401K and a little bit of equity in their house and some credit card debt. And now I represent ultra-high-net-worth clients, some of them. So I have clients with literally billions of dollars on the line, hundreds of millions of dollars, you know? 'Cause New York is the home to finance and that's, you know, listen to finance... L.A., you know, my- my colleague Laura Wasser is an L.A. phenomenal attorney, and she represents a huge number of people in- in- in Hollywood, you know, and celebrities. And so a lot of people know Laura's name, you know, because she's, like, representing Brad Pitt, representing, you know, she's represented some of the most amazing... Kevin Costner most recently. She's represented, you know, half of Hollywood. Her father as well has represented huge amounts of Hollywood stardom. In New York, we represent people that could buy those people 10 times over and you've never heard their name. You know? And they- they're happy that you've never heard their name. They don't want you to have heard their name, you know? Um, because that's, you know, that- they become that high blade of grass that gets chopped. But when they divorce, it is a really real... When you have a client whose portfolio fluctuates in the tens of millions every day, like, what day things get divided becomes really important, you know? Um, a difference of 3% or 4% is a giant difference when you're talking about a $7 billion marital estate. So, you know, it's a- it's a very... But- but what you come to learn is that people have, like, all the same problems. Like, it's... What's amazing to me, you know, I- I didn't set out to do all this media stuff, you know? I- I- I'm a divorce lawyer, I love being a divorce lawyer. I'd heard a podcast years ago, like 2017, with Stephen King where they said, you know, "How is it that you write, like, two books a year, three books a year?" And he said, "Well, if you wrote one page every day, in a year you have a book." And I thought, "Oh, let me test that theory." I get up early, I get up at 4:00 AM. So every day I wrote a page, and within a year I had a book. And then I sold the book, and then I started doing some of this media stuff as like a part-time thing, you know, just for fun, just to use a different muscle after 20 years of doing the same job. And I'm still sort of astounded how interesting people think it is, but I'm also astounded by the people I've come in contact with because I've- I've interacted with some of the, you know, incredible celebrities, people who I've admired intellectually, people whose work... I mean, you're an ex- I enjoy your work, I've watched it for ages, you know? And I mean when I sat down with Lex it was, like, a little surreal 'cause I've listened to so... I was actually on the subway listening to his conversation with Andrew Huberman on my way to a courthouse in Queens. I got off the subway, checked my email, and had a message from him saying, "Hi, I'm Lex Fridman, I have a podcast and I'd be interested in having you on." And I thought, "Yeah, I know who you are. I was just listening to you for an hour on my subway ride." Like, this is surreal. But- but the truth is, like, this is something that, you know, nobody's particularly great at it just 'cause they're great at other things. Like, you know, l- l- I don't know him personally but, like, look at Elon Musk, like he's had a number of relationships, he has children with a number of people but he's not, you know, necessarily settled into one person, and, you know, (clears throat) that's maybe per- may- maybe totally by choice or it may be that he's found challenging, you know, thi- this thing. This is a person who can do such amaz- the depth of that man's mind, you know the things he can understand that I couldn't even try to understand, and yet this is something he struggles with. I represent quant people in finance who can turn $10 million into $500 million in a couple of years with their trading algorithm that they came up with themselves, and they just suck...... at marriage-

    8. CWChris Williamson1:07:33

       (laughs)

    9. JSJames Sexton1:07:33

       ... or relationship and, and they're stepping on the exact same landmines as, like, the guy who digs ditches, you know? And, and to me, there's something so amazing and kind of beautiful about that. That, that those are the things that we all struggle with, and that we all wanna know more about or get some edge on. And yet, and yet, we have to, like, pretend we don't need help with it. Like, like my book, the audiobook outsold the book book by, like, 50 to one. And I said to my publisher, you know, "Why, why do you think that is?" And they said, "Nobody wants to see your book on their coffee table."

    10. CWChris Williamson1:08:16

        Yeah.

    11. JSJames Sexton1:08:16

        And I thought about it, and the truth is, if you came into my home and you saw The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People or you saw The Power of Habit by Duhigg, you'd go, "Look at Jim, man. He's successful, he's at the top of his game, but he still wants to sharpen the point of the sword. This guy, look at him, you know, he never, never satisfied." If you walked in and you saw How to Make Love Last, you'd be like, "Woof, what's going on with Jim? What's some trouble in paradise with the, uh, with the better half there? What's going on?" And I don't know why, like why is this a skill that there's any shame in talking about?

11. 1:08:49 – 1:13:17

    James’s Issue with the Manosphere

    1. JSJames Sexton1:08:49

       Like why... You know, e- even a- among like sort of the manosphere and the red pill, like they're very good problem identifiers. Not good problem solvers, great problem identifiers. Okay? So listen, guys, w- you wanna go fuck each other? Like, 'cause that's your option now. Like if you've decided women are irretrievably awful, you know, and that the system is rigged against us and... Okay, cool. Then either start sleeping with each other or don't sleep with anybody, become the, like, weird black pill people, or-

    2. CWChris Williamson1:09:17

       Well, that's the, that's the whole, that's the, the whole perspective of MGTOW, right? The only way to win the game is to stop playing. That's their, that's, that's, that's their worldview. But-

    3. JSJames Sexton1:09:25

       But really, like, what a defeatist way of viewing this.

    4. CWChris Williamson1:09:29

       I don't know, man. Like for me, I, I've railed against cynicism on the internet and then drilled down and railed specifically against cynicism in dating advice on the internet, uh, because I think that you... I, I think you're right. I, I don't understand how men are supposed to be both heroic and able to overcome anything but bow out because a girl at age 19 broke their heart and-

    5. JSJames Sexton1:09:54

       Right.

    6. CWChris Williamson1:09:55

       ... how men are supposed to be disciplined and able to overcome difficult things and go and do the Brazilian jiu-jitsu and lift their hard weights, but their discipline completely stops when it begins at the base of their penis.

    7. JSJames Sexton1:10:06

       Sure.

    8. CWChris Williamson1:10:06

       It's like-

    9. JSJames Sexton1:10:07

       Oh, well, and, and what I'll tell you is, one of the things I like about jiu-jitsu is that you have to suck at it for a long period of time. And even when you're great at it, there's still gonna be somebody who's better at all times maybe, unless you're Gordon Ryan. So, like, e- everybody is gonna be... find somebody better than them. And by the way, Gordon Ryan, jump ahead 30 years, there's gonna be a 20-year-old who's gonna tap that guy out because he's gonna age. It happens to all of us, you know? So the truth is, like, I, I have to believe that the solution to this starts with us being able to talk about it like we do anything else. Like we talk about how we exercise, we talk about what we eat, we talk about, you know, how do we get further in the workplace, but we don't have honest conversations among men, among men in conversation with women, among women in conversation with each other about what's going on in our relationships, and we all know this. Any single man in the dating world knows how many women on their Instagram are #girlboss, #IDontNeedAMan. And then when you get them alone, they want you to be a dominant man, they want you to be someone and they'll tell you, "Oh yeah, I would actually really love to, like, be home and have kids." And bu- and by the way, all the guys that on their Instagram they're hard as nails, they're tough as nails, their women in their lives will tell you behind closed doors they cry at things, they- they're sad, they're vulnerable. But we've created this game where, like, we all have to play these roles with each other, and we're never gonna get better at it. We're never gonna get better at it if we don't... And I'm, again, I'm not saying we have to walk around like an open wound, sharing our feelings all the... Like, come on, it's okay to just say, "Look, this is a skill. This is a skill, you can take pointers." Like my book was designed to say, "Here are some practical things you can do to stay connected to your partner. Here are some little things you can do, actually do, that have value." Because when... The, all of these platitudes people give out, "Well, you need to really, like, pay attention to your part-" What do you mean pay atten- what does that mean, pay attention? "You need to show them that they're loved." What does that mean? Do you want me to take them to the beach? Do you want me to buy them flowers? Like what am I supposed to do practically? Like if you tell me... I'm great like that. Tell me what to lift and how often to lift it and I'll do it. Tell me what to eat and what not to eat and I'll do that. You know? But with love, none of the... No one is allowed to give any rules. All anyone does when someone tries to offer a practical suggestion is shit on it and tell them how, "Oh, it's never, doesn't matter anyway 'cause the game is rigged and forget it, the only way..." And you're right. The, the MGTOW people, absolutely, best way to not get your heart broken is to never give it to anybody else, never expose it to anybody else. That's great, man. And you know what? Ships in the port, nothing bad ever happens to 'em. They never get lost, they never get stuck, they never sink. But that's not what ships are for, you know? And this is not what we're for, it's not what our lives are for. Our lives are for vibrant enjoyment of life, and, and that requires connection with another person. It does. We know it does.

Episode duration: 1:14:12