No More Hustleporn: A Divorce Attorney's Thoughts On Love and Marriage
We pulled out the highlights from divorce attorney James Sexton's interview where he shares his thoughts on love and marriage. Transcription and light editing by Anthropic's Claude, curation by Yiren Lu :-)
Highlights
James Sexton: But tying that to the technology of marriage, to me, makes almost no sense whatsoever. And I actually think it's almost antagonistic to that connection with another person because there's so much expectation that comes with marriage. Culturally, we've created so much stuff around it. Like, when you marry someone, they're supposed to be, at least in the modern western model, your best friend, best roommate, best co-parent, best travel partner, best roommate, best everything, best activity partner. Like, how would one person be all of those things? That's insane.
James Sexton: If I was interviewing for a job and said, I want you to be the best typist, and I also want you to be best on the phone, and I also want you to be great at that. And I ran down a list of dissimilar things, like, or if I went to an amazing chef, and I said, I know you're a great chef, but can you farm? Like, that has to do with food, but they're not the same thing. Like, what are you talking? So I think, why do we put on people this idea? Like, whoever came up with the word soulmate, really, we should be paying, like, divorce lawyers should be paying that person dividends, because we've convinced people that if this person isn't meeting every one of your needs, checking all of these boxes, they're not your soulmate. Your soulmate would know exactly what to do, exactly what to say at exactly the right time. I can get, I go off on this stuff.
James Sexton: And this woman, we were sitting outside the courtroom waiting on a break in testimony, and she was a young woman in her probably, like, late thirties, you know, very attractive. And we were just chit chatting, and I said to her, you know, was there a moment when you realized the marriage is over? You know, like, was there a moment? And she said, yeah, yeah. And I said, when was it? And she said, there was this granola that I, like, she said, they only sold it at, like, this particular grocery store, and I like to put it in my yogurt. And she said, he used to always, whenever I'd be running low on it, I would just open the thing one day and a new bag would be there. She's like, and I just, she's like, it made me feel so loved. Like, he didn't, I didn't have to ask. He didn't want credit for it. Like, he didn't go, like, oh, did you see I got your granola that you wanted, you know, like, he just would do this thing, you know? And she said it was just something that, like, I just, it always made me smile. She said every time the granola was running low and there was a new bag of granola, I just felt very loved, you know?
James Sexton: And she said, one day, the granola ran out, and I thought, oh, that's weird. You know, maybe, maybe he didn't see it. She's like, so I left the bag in there because I thought, well, at some point he'll notice. And he didn't notice. She goes, so I took the bag out, and I waited, and he didn't get a new bag. And I thought, okay, this thing's going down. And I thought to myself, wow, that's like, you know, that's such a small thing. Like granola. Like, you just, but these are the things. Like, these are the little things that make us feel loved and that are gestures of love.
James Sexton: And I said to her, was there anything like that for you with him? And she said, yeah, blowjobs. And I almost spit out my coffee. And she goes, no. She goes, when we were first dating and even first married, she's like, I used to give blowjobs a lot. She's like, you know, she's like, do it in the morning. Took two minutes. And he was, like, super happy the rest of the day, you know? She's like, the rest of the day, he would, like, call me or text me and be like, oh, that was so good this morning. You know, I had such pep in my step now. And she was like, it was just like, what did it really take out of my life to do that, you know? And it made him feel good.
Speaker B: Is divorce harder on women or men?
James Sexton: That's a great question. I think it's equally hard on both, but I think that the world is more sympathetic to women when they get divorced. I think when a woman gets cheated on, the man's a piece of shit. And when a woman cheats on a man, she must have been forced into the arms of this other man, or she had to explore herself or she was being neglected in some fashion. So if a man cheats, he's a piece of garbage. And if a man's wife cheats, he mustn't have been meeting her needs. And she had every right in the world. So the world is very unsympathetic to men, right to men, when they get divorced.
Speaker B: That's been throughout hers.
James Sexton: Yeah, that's been for. I mean, there was a maternal presumption, a legal. Legal presumption, what was called the tender years doctrine, which was that if a child was under the age of seven, they were automatically presumed that they would be in the custody of the mother.
And men. So men get really beat up still in court. I mean, the law theoretically is gender blind right now, but I don't. I don't actually see that, because the law is people. The law is judges, and judges are human, and they have all the same biases. And it's just not a moment right now where men are particularly sympathetic characters.
I think that even young men, if at a school dance, they sing Beyonce's girls who runs the world. If there was a song called men who runs the world? Men. And it was a positive thing, you get pilloried for that. So I think that men have a very hard time right now in divorce. They see their children less, they get hit harder financially, they are the bad guy no matter what. If they cheat, they're the bad guy. If they get cheated on, they were the bad guy because they probably neglected her. There's a presumption that the man is to blame a lot of the time.
Now, again, marriage equality has been a thing for a while. There are tons of gay couples. So you have two men, two women divorcing each other, and that hasn't really shook out too much yet. In terms of how that plays out. I don't know if it's that gay and lesbian couples are better at it than heterosexual couples or if it's still, they're in the honeymoon period because marriage equality hasn't been around that long, but I think men find a less sympathetic world.
But in fairness, divorced men have it a little easier. I think divorced men meet a young woman and the woman's like, instant family. Just add me. That's great. You know, if he's got kids, it's like, oh, he's got kids. Look at how nurturing he is and how lovely. And women, you know, they get divorced, they've got kids. Guys are like, whoop, it's got baggage. I'm not going near that. You know? So I think. I think that men and women have different problems post divorce, and the world could be better to both of them.
I mean, you know, women. Can women marry the, like, handsome musician who's not successful or the artist? You know, there's a lot. Listen, it hasn't been, you know, there's been a significant effort in our culture in the last decade, if anyone didn't notice, to improve the situation of women. If you have an equally qualified man and an equally qualified woman, the woman's the diversity hire. The man's not. So I have a lot of women who get. When they get told, like, oh, yeah, no, you got to give him half your shit. Or, oh, no, you got to pay alimony because he makes 50 grand a year and you make 250, and they're like, you know, they could be the staunchest feminist in the world, and when you tell them they got to pay alimony, they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. He's a man. He's got a stranger, strong back. He can get out there and work. And then suddenly the whole, like, gender is a construct, and there's no such thing. That goes right out the window. And you got told, you got to pay alimony. That's like, nope, no, no, no. I believe in strict gender roles. Men should pay alimony. Women, even if you earn ten times, you should not have to pay alimony. I've had. I've had very, very staunchly feminist clients who changed their mind about how feminist they were when they got told that they were going to have to pay alimony.
Full Transcript
James Sexton: I had a period of time after my divorce where I was really ambitious when it came to women, but then it felt like a job. Like, it felt like a job after a while where I was like, "God, it's like, enough." It's kind of enough, you know? Like, it's like when you've eaten so much that you just go, "I got that way with pussy." Like, it really was. Like, I just had enough. Like, it was fine. I was like, "This is great, but."
Speaker B: When you're in your twenties or thirties, maybe your libido is a strong. It makes you insane.
James Sexton: Yeah. Yeah. I was not. I definitely was.
Speaker B: As we age, we mellow.
James Sexton: Yeah. Which I think is great. Although I have to tell you, one of the most depressing divorces I ever did was a guy who was, I think, 92.
Speaker B: Oh, jeez.
James Sexton: And what made it depressing is that he had left his wife of, I don't know, 50 something, 60 something years for a younger woman, a woman in her fifties. And I just remember what was sad about it to me was, this guy is still being led around by his dick. Like, I thought, "Oh, my God. Like, I'm gonna be chained to an idiot forever. Like, I'm gonna forever be led around by my dick."
And I remember thinking like, "No, I really thought that at, like, 90 something, I would just, like, a beautiful woman would walk by and I'd go, 'There's a human being.'" Like, there would be no, you could appreciate it without. Yeah. There would just be no sense of, like, yeah. You know, there would just. That would be gone from me and this guy's proof that 90 something years old and you're still thinking with your dick.
Speaker B: We're doomed.
James Sexton: That terrified me. It really did. It actually upset me because I thought, "Man, I thought at some point I'd get to experience what it's like to just be free."
Speaker B: You live in New York where there's a financial industry. There's. There's all kinds of industries here.
James Sexton: Oh, yeah.
Speaker B: But to me, sometimes I wonder if female attractiveness isn't the most. The highest valued commodity.
James Sexton: 100% it is. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker B: Of course, men are becoming rich and powerful in order to get a woman. Of course, the woman they want.
James Sexton: Of course. What an attractive woman. And when I say attractive, I don't just mean attractive. I mean, even just sexually confident. I mean, what an unbelievably lucrative career that is. Like, I do divorces for people that, you know, a woman walks out with $200, $300 million.
He was an analyst at Goldman Sachs who built a hedge fund and then sold it and then used his trading algorithm to build it up to $500 million. She was hot and slept with him for a while and then stopped and started sleeping with other people and playing tennis and having Botox, and she's going to get half. Like, that's fucking incredible.
Like, do you know what he had to do to get that? And what she had to. I'll fuck that guy for $200 million. Are you kidding me? Like, that's insane. That's incredible. Like, God bless. This is the rules of the game, you know, but you can't argue that that's not easier than going to Harvard.
James Sexton: Right. Any stock, if you hold it too long, it's going to go down. You know, like, so play the stock the right way. I mean, and that's what I think. If we were a little more honest about the nature of male female coupling. I mean, right now, we can't even. You know, we can't even establish what is gender. You know, we can't establish any of that anymore. So divorce has become incredibly hilarious and fraught to me.
Speaker B: What is, like, sometimes you have to stand back and look at things to get the real perspective on what it is, and sometimes you look back at marriage. So when was it invented? Like, 2000 BC, roughly. And the life expectancy of humans back then was 18 years old?
James Sexton: Yeah.
Speaker B: And marriage was created for land ownership. Land ownership and things like that. And if you're gonna die in your early twenties or whatever, then getting married at 1618 makes sense.
James Sexton: Well, I think there's a distinction that has to be made between pair bonds and marriage. Right. Marriage is a government concept. Marriage is a contract. Marriage is a legal status. Pair bonds. Right? Two people go in it together, you know, saying, hey, there's 7.3 billion people in the world, and the two of us, we're gonna gonna lock up together and we're gonna try to hold hands and get through this thing till we're 80 years old. Well, until whatever, you know.
I mean, what's interesting is, first of all, all marriages end. They end in death or divorce, but they all end like, every marriage ends. So it's one of the only things that you go, wow, I really hope this ends in us dying. You know, most things, that's not the desired outcome. But in marriage, you hope marriage will end in death, you hope that you will be together until one or both of you die. You know, but all marriages end.
Speaker B: But as a guy, as a provider, if you knew it was going to end and you were going to have to give away half your money, you might think twice about doing it.
James Sexton: Well, I think that's what makes being a divorce lawyer interesting, is that it's a lot of what a court has to do is disregard what happened in the marriage because a. The truth is at the bottom of a bottomless pit. Like, you're never gonna get there. Well, I was. He's fucking his secretary, right? Cause you are not sleeping with me anymore.
I have a client whose wife acknowledges she didn't sleep with him for six years. What did you think was going on if you didn't sleep with him for six years? So you. Okay, delegate. You've delegated that responsibility. If you don't want to have sex with him, that's okay. No one should force you to have sex with this person. Let him go have sex with someone else. You don't want to do the laundry, hire someone to do the laundry. If you don't want to mow your own lawn, hire someone to mow the lawn. Delegate that responsibility.
And this guy wasn't even sleeping around. He was going to those hand job places, you know, where you get a massage and you get a hand. The most pathetic thing in the world. The most innocuous thing in the world. He didn't have a girlfriend. There was no love involved. He was getting jacked off for $50. That's sad. First of all, handjobs, that's an outdated technology. That's like a betamax. You know, like, who even does that anymore?
But he was doing this, and he just thought, okay, that's fine. She had the indignation to say, he is not a. He shouldn't be a custodial parent. He's a terrible person because he's doing this. And it was like, wait, how is that that much different than going to a strip club? How is that much more different? Cause we just, you know, he was like, well, should I deny it? And I was like, is it true? And he's like, well, yeah. I said, no, we should own it.
Let's go in and say, yeah, you know what? Yeah, it's pathetic. It's really pathetic. My wife didn't sleep with me for six years, and I'm human, and I wanted to have sex still. I didn't want to blow up my life. I didn't want to screw up my kids and have my kids have divorced parents. So I thought, all right, she's clearly not interested in me anymore. I'm not going to have a girlfriend and get caught up in all the things where people could get hurt and there's feelings and fatal attraction and stuff. I'm just going to go, it'll be transactional, like going to a strip club or anything else.
And I'm. Yeah. Is it a little pathetic that I'm a guy who makes a million dollars a year in finance and I'm paying someone $50 to jack me off? Yeah, that's kind of pathetic. But you know what I figured out? But to suggest that that means I'm a bad parent, that has nothing to do with my parenting at all, period. You know, so. And thankfully, the judge agreed with me on that one.
But I really do think that the idea. I don't think. I mean, if you break it down, fundamentally, 56% of marriages end in divorce. Like, think about. That's the ones that end in divorce. So how many people, what percentage stay together for the kids or. Cause they don't wanna give away half their shit? Another 10%. That's conservative.
Speaker B: Conservative.
James Sexton: But let's say 20% then, okay.
Speaker B: That's at least, right.
James Sexton: You now have a technology that fails 76% of the time. That's insane. That's insane. That's more likely than not 76. If I told you there's a 76% chance when you walk out the door today, you're gonna get hit in the head with a bowling ball, you would not go out or you'd wear a helmet, for sure.
But people just continue to get married. Not only do they continue to get married, there's a presumption that you should get married. And if you don't get married, there's something wrong with you. So if you've got a girlfriend and you've been with her for five years, and you say to someone, we're getting married, they go, oh, that's great. They don't go, why? You're happy? Why would you get married? Like, everything's going fine, why would you put yourself through that? Why would you run that risk?
If you say to someone, we've been together five years and we've decided we're not going to get married, we're going to move in together, but we're not going to get married. Ooh, what's wrong? You have intimacy issues. What's your problem? Meanwhile, 56% end in divorce. It literally fits the legal definition of negligence, it's a negligent behavior.
The way you define negligence in law school is when what you lose by not doing something okay is lower than the risk of harm. It's what's called a BPL analysis. So the burden of not doing a thing is lower than the likelihood, the probability of harm. So BPL. So burden, probability and loss. Marriage is an inherently negligent activity. It's like owning a lion. The likelihood of someone getting hurt seriously by it is very, very high.
No one ever says it to you because why? Because. And I say something, I've been doing this for over 20 years, and I still get misty eyed at weddings. Like, I still really. There's something in me that goes, like, you know, maybe it'll work out for these two.
Speaker B: You still believe in love?
James Sexton: I absolutely believe in love. I think love is wonderful, but love and marriage have very little to do with each other. I don't think there's much of a correlation there, and I think that's where we got off track. I believe in pair bonds. I don't think I can learn everything I need to know about myself from myself. I think having someone around me who sees my blind spots and that doesn't have to be a romantic partner. That could be a friend, that could be any number of things.
James Sexton: But there is something wonderful about romantic connection. We know that. The other statistic is 56% of marriages end in divorce, but 84% of people who get divorced are remarried within five years of their divorce. Really think about that. So now you've done it and failed and felt the pain of the loss, and within five years, 84% are remarried.
Speaker B: So when you fall in love and you're with a partner who's in love with you, it's hard to put the brakes on and say, you know what? That's as far as I'm gonna go.
James Sexton: Well, I think we, you know, whoever discovered water, it wasn't a fish. And I think when we're in a thing, we don't see it. And so, I mean, and this is true of anything.
Speaker B: There must be some endorphins. Something's being released in our brains.
James Sexton: Listen, you want to test that theory the next time you're out with a couple who've been together for a while, and it seems like they maybe got in a fight or they're just kind of being impatient with each other at the table, you know, when you go, like, a group thing, just say to them, so tell me about how you met. Tell me the story of how you met and everything on them changes. Like, they go back to that place and there's this, like, oh, yeah. And she was this. Because for that second, you go back to that place, like, you can go someone with a horrible divorce, if you could get them to go to that place and talk to you about that time.
James Sexton: Like, I tell you something. When I was a kid, you know, like, every kid, you have the fantasy of, like, if you were invisible, what would you do? You need to go to the girls locker room, you know, whatever. I have this fantasy that if I could be invisible, I have about eight clients that I'd like to sneak into their house and find their wedding album. Like, I know it's in the attic somewhere or something. Cause I would love to see what it looked like when these people loved each other, because they are weaponized against each other now, and we are trying to kill each other, and we're taking every secret, every intimacy, everything at their ugliest, at their ugliest, at their worst.
James Sexton: And there's something in me that just the thought that, like, you guys, at some point, like, at some point, you were like, there's 7.3 billion people in the world, and you're the one. Like, you're the one I just want to be with and smell and touch and, like, that feeling. We all know that feeling of, like, just the electricity of another person, you know? And, I mean, I, you know, I think I'm a romantic at heart in the sense that I really get it. Like, I really get why we do this. I felt it. I know it. I understand it.
James Sexton: But tying that to the technology of marriage, to me, makes almost no sense whatsoever. And I actually think it's almost antagonistic to that connection with another person because there's so much expectation that comes with marriage. Culturally, we've created so much stuff around it. Like, when you marry someone, they're supposed to be, at least in the modern western model, your best friend, best roommate, best co-parent, best travel partner, best roommate, best everything, best activity partner. Like, how would one person be all of those things? That's insane.
James Sexton: If I was interviewing for a job and said, I want you to be the best typist, and I also want you to be best on the phone, and I also want you to be great at that. And I ran down a list of dissimilar things, like, or if I went to an amazing chef, and I said, I know you're a great chef, but can you farm? Like, that has to do with food, but they're not the same thing. Like, what are you talking? So I think, why do we put on people this idea? Like, whoever came up with the word soulmate, really, we should be paying, like, divorce lawyers should be paying that person dividends, because we've convinced people that if this person isn't meeting every one of your needs, checking all of these boxes, they're not your soulmate. Your soulmate would know exactly what to do, exactly what to say at exactly the right time. I can get, I go off on this stuff.
Speaker B: What do you think the secret is to keeping a marriage vital, keeping it alive?
James Sexton: You know, I think people get unhappy in marriages the way that people go bankrupt, which is very slowly, and then all at once, I think it's very slow, and then it just goes off a cliff. So everybody will say, well, we divorced because he was cheating, or she was cheating, or we divorced because he had an alcohol issue or a drug issue, which lately we're seeing more like alcohol and drugs is a big, big thing, especially post pandemic. There's a tremendous amount of substance abuse stuff that's causing a lot of issues in marriages.
James Sexton: And certainly, like, social media, has increased the accessibility of adultery and connections to other people and reconnections with people from your past who remind you of a version of yourself that you felt more excited because you were younger. So it's, you know, it used to be if you, like, ran into the girl you banged in high school, it was like once every ten years at reunion. Or if you lived in the same town as you grew up in, you might run into the person at the Walmart. But now it's like, on Facebook, you have all these excuses to be able to chit chat with someone and all these benign entry points of like, oh, I saw your pictures from vacation. Where did you stay in Miami? And then it becomes, oh, yeah, well, you looked great. I mean, boy, you look fantastic in a bikini. And all of a sudden we're off to the races and we're chatting with each other. So if we were gonna invent, like, an infidelity machine, you couldn't do better than Facebook and Instagram. I mean, that's about as good as it gets.
James Sexton: But I genuinely think that the secret to staying happy in a marriage is probably the same secret to maintaining a healthy weight. You know, don't wait till you get super fat and then try to lose the weight. Don't wait until you get really sick. Like, my sister's a dentist, and she always says, if you have a toothache, there's nothing I can do, really. Like, I can pull the tooth. I can give you a root canal. But, like, I can prevent you from getting a toothache. If you just come see me regularly and you just floss and you just brush your teeth, you'll never get a toothache. By the time your tooth hurts, something is already seriously wrong. By the time you're in a divorce lawyer's office, you're fucked. The whole thing's fucked at that point. Like, you'd be better off just figuring out the preventative maintenance, right? Like, change the oil in your car.
James Sexton: So I, what I try to, if you reverse engineer divorce, like most people, the marriage killer, you know, the cheating or the gambling or the whatever, that's the symptom. Like, the problem is these little disconnections. You know, one of the, one of the, one of the best stories I have is my, I had a client who, I did her divorce, and we'd spend a lot of time together, because you do, when you're a divorce lawyer, you spend a lot of time with people, and you get to know them very well. I mean, people will lie to their therapist. They won't lie to their divorce lawyer, because, a, there's no reason to, and b, I need to know everything, and it's all attorney client privilege.
James Sexton: And this woman, we were sitting outside the courtroom waiting on a break in testimony, and she was a young woman in her probably, like, late thirties, you know, very attractive. And we were just chit chatting, and I said to her, you know, was there a moment when you realized the marriage is over? You know, like, was there a moment? And she said, yeah, yeah. And I said, when was it? And she said, there was this granola that I, like, she said, they only sold it at, like, this particular grocery store, and I like to put it in my yogurt. And she said, he used to always, whenever I'd be running low on it, I would just open the thing one day and a new bag would be there. She's like, and I just, she's like, it made me feel so loved. Like, he didn't, I didn't have to ask. He didn't want credit for it. Like, he didn't go, like, oh, did you see I got your granola that you wanted, you know, like, he just would do this thing, you know? And she said it was just something that, like, I just, it always made me smile. She said every time the granola was running low and there was a new bag of granola, I just felt very loved, you know?
James Sexton: And she said, one day, the granola ran out, and I thought, oh, that's weird. You know, maybe, maybe he didn't see it. She's like, so I left the bag in there because I thought, well, at some point he'll notice. And he didn't notice. She goes, so I took the bag out, and I waited, and he didn't get a new bag. And I thought, okay, this thing's going down. And I thought to myself, wow, that's like, you know, that's such a small thing. Like granola. Like, you just, but these are the things. Like, these are the little things that make us feel loved and that are gestures of love.
James Sexton: And I said to her, was there anything like that for you with him? And she said, yeah, blowjobs. And I almost spit out my coffee. And she goes, no. She goes, when we were first dating and even first married, she's like, I used to give blowjobs a lot. She's like, you know, she's like, do it in the morning. Took two minutes. And he was, like, super happy the rest of the day, you know? She's like, the rest of the day, he would, like, call me or text me and be like, oh, that was so good this morning. You know, I had such pep in my step now. And she was like, it was just like, what did it really take out of my life to do that, you know? And it made him feel good.
James Sexton: She's like, and then I got to a point where I was like, well, you know what? No, I'll wait, and then tonight we can have sex and we'll both enjoy that. Like, what is, I owe him a blowjob? Like, no, you know? Like, I don't owe him that. You know? And then she said, I got to a point where it was like, I look back and I'm like, yeah, I guess I didn't do that as often. Hardly ever, really, which came first. You know, I said that to her, and she said, she said, I couldn't tell you. She said, but I think it's the same thing.
Speaker B: The same thing.
James Sexton: And I do think it's the same thing. And I'm not saying blowjobs and granola is all you need to know, but, and I'm not, by the way, I'm not saying that, that a blowjob is a small thing. I don't think I have any right to, I've never given one, but it seems like a phenomenal feat. And I'm grateful for everyone I've ever received, but I don't think it's a massive investment, right? Just like buying someone's granola is not a mess.
Speaker B: When you love somebody, you love doing things for them, right?
James Sexton: Their pleasure pleases you.
Speaker B: Love making your life better.
James Sexton: Their joy pleases you. Like, they're, you know, their happiness makes you happy.
Speaker B: Exactly.
James Sexton: And somewhere along the line, and it happens a lot in marriage, it becomes, well, I'm not happy. Why should you be happy? You know? And then that creates a spiral, and I really believe that you can, that spiral could go in the other direction. Like, if he did the granola, I think the blowjobs would have come. And if the blowjobs were there, I bet he'd have bought the granola. I can't prove that there's no control group. I can't run that research. But it feels to me like those little things, like leaving a note.
James Sexton: I've said to some of my friends, when they say to me, as a divorce lawyer, you see all this misery, how do I stay out of your office? I'll often say, I'm like, it's dumb little things, man. I'm like, just leave her a note. I'm like, leave her a note in the morning. Just leave a little note that says, hey, beautiful. You know, so it was so fun watching that movie with you last night. So glad we got to have a date. I'll be thinking to you today. Love you. Like, what does that take? That takes like, a minute, not even like, and look what it can do. Like, look at, look at how that makes this person feel.
James Sexton: And even if right away it doesn't work on that moment, it doesn't work. Okay, do it enough times, like, and then you're either going to figure out that this person's gone and then just fucking bail, you're done. Cause if you try for long enough and you give like that, but if you're not giving like that, and then you're not getting back either, well, I'm not surprised. You know, that's how you end up in my office. Is this death spiral of everyone, like, well, I'm not giving, buying the granola. She's not giving me blowjobs. Well, I'm not giving him blowjobs. He's mean to me. Okay, well, everybody's just gonna has an equal right to be fucking miserable then.
James Sexton: Yeah. But I would argue that as long as you're not happy with yourself, having someone happy with you is certainly not going to hurt your feeling of who you are, right? Like, I don't need someone to tell me I'm handsome for me to have a nice day, but I can't think of anybody telling me I was handsome, that it ruined my day. Most of the time you're like, oh, that's nice. You know, I got that going for me.
James Sexton: So, yeah, I think self love, of course, is the most important love. And to be secure in who you are and to not allow your self definition to be easily swayed or pulled. Like, if you believe the good reviews, you got to believe the bad ones, too. I get that. But I just don't think kindness, like, it's just such an easy, like, especially if it's easy, like, it's easy stuff, like just telling someone that they're beautiful or handsome or that you're cheering for them.
James Sexton: To me, with marriage or pair bonds, I shouldn't even say marriage. Like, the world is trying to kill you all the time. You know, like people are criticizing you all the time. You feel like a failure a lot of the time. If you compare yourself to other people, you'll constantly be comparisons of the thief of joy. So why not have, like, one person who's just cheering for you, you know, like, constructive criticism is criticism. It's still just criticism.
James Sexton: So if your spouse is just sitting around criticizing you and telling you all the things you could do to improve yourself instead of just being a fan and just saying, you know what? I know who you are and you're beautiful. I know who you are and your heart is good and betting on the best parts of a person, I think that there's no. There's very little downside to that. You know, I think it would put guys like me out of business if people really leverage that the right way.
Speaker B: I asked you earlier if you believe in love, which you said you do, do you believe in marriage?
James Sexton: I mean, I believe people believe in marriage.
Speaker B: No, but do you?
James Sexton: Yeah. Do I believe in marriage? I don't. I don't think it's a useful technology. I understand culturally why people do it, but I don't think people should need it. I know I certainly don't need marriage. I don't think marriage. I was married. I was married before I really ever thought about. What does that mean? I married my college sweetheart. I got married because that's what you do. You get married. But I hadn't thought about it as a technology and why it's there. I didn't understand it the way I do now.
James Sexton: There's a line from a Joseph Brodsky poem that he wrote when his wife died, where he says, I wish I knew no astronomy when stars appear. And I feel that way as a divorce lawyer. Like, I wish I knew no astronomy when stars appear. I wish I didn't know what the end of so many marriages looks like, because I think I would have a more optimistic and unrealistic view of it. I would.
Speaker B: Yeah, but you'd be divorced and giving away half your.
James Sexton: I'd be foolish. Yeah, I'd be foolish. I'd be as foolish. But I don't know that. It's always good to know, right? Sometimes there's tremendous joy to be had and, like, falling feels like flying for a little while, you know, so you hit the ground. It feels really good.
Speaker B: As I said earlier, you know, now that the life expectancy of man is around the eighties or something.
James Sexton: Yeah.
Speaker B: Then it's like, so you're gonna do this from your twenties or thirties until 80?
James Sexton: Well, marriage is a technology that was designed for when women died in childbirth and when men died in their forties, if they were lucky, you know, fifties, if they were super lucky. Like, if you were in your fifties, your sixties, you were an elder, you know, that was pretty amazing. And women, most women died in childbirth. Like, childbirth is traumatic. It's a traumatic thing. And before modern medicine and before we understood antibiotics.
James Sexton: So marriage is. I don't think anyone ever planned that it was going to be okay. We're going to do this forever. We're going to do this till we're 100. But I think that's part of a bigger problem. I don't remember who said it, but I remember someone saying, I can't remember who it was. But we are prehistoric creatures, right? Like, we are biological creatures living in medieval institutions like education, work with God, like technology. How do you think that ends? Like, you think that ends in happily ever after. That's insane.
James Sexton: Marriage was not. I mean, think about even the early days of marriage. Think about every Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. Think about Oklahoma, where you'd have, there's the three people in town that aren't married, and you sort of pick which of the three you were gonna go be with. And now you have access to just an endless supply of the opposite sex, or I shouldn't even say the opposite sex. You have an endless supply of romantic partners in a device in your hand. How does that possibly stand up how does marriage, the idea of monogamy, forced monogamy, or enforced monogamy, how does that ever survive in that environment? I don't think it can. I don't think it's realistic. The statistics prove me right. The statistics are absolutely in my favor.
James Sexton: Now, again, get married as many times as you want. If you have a prenup. If you have a prenup, go get married. Getting married is a blast. Being married is difficult. You know, someone once said that it's great to be married sometimes. The problem is you're married all the time.
Speaker B: So you're a fan of prenups?
James Sexton: I'm a huge fan of prenups. I mean, I shouldn't be because a prenup for a couple of $1,000 will save you hundreds of thousands of dollars, potentially in legal fees, if not millions. So there are clients I have that have spent over a million dollars just in their legal fees, that if they had spent $2,000 on a prenup, none of that, they'd still have that money in their pocket. And that's incredible to me.
James Sexton: Like, I have two sons who are adults that they are absolutely gonna have prenups. Like, they have to have prenups. They'd be fools to not have prenups. That's like jumping out of a plane with no parachute. Why would you do that? It's just. It's stupid.
James Sexton: Prenups are enforceable. They make sense. I actually think there's something very romantic about prenups because they're forcing you to have a conversation about this relationship. I genuinely believe that we are the most aware of our health just after we got sick, right? If you wake up and you have a toothache, all you can think about is the fact your tooth hurts, and then your toothache goes away. And for, like, a week, you're taking care of your teeth, you go, oh, my God, at least I don't have a toothache. You know? But then a month goes by, you don't wake up and go, at least I don't have a toothache. It's the furthest thing from your mind, but theoretically, you could wake up today and go, I don't have a toothache. I don't have a backache. I don't have a head cold. Like, this is a great day.
Speaker B: What does a typical prenup look like?
James Sexton: The easiest prenup in the world is "yours, mine, ours". If it's in your name, it's yours. If it's in my name, it's mine. If it's in our joint names, we split it 50/50. That's it.
James Sexton: You have to have ongoing conversations throughout the marriage about things like "I got this bonus at work. Do I put it in my account or in our joint account?" Isn't it better to have that conversation when you still like each other? Why would you learn how to fight in a fight?
James Sexton: Having a prenup conversation doesn't have to undermine the love you feel. If you can't have a conversation with your partner about the possibility that someday one or both of you might hurt each other, you should think twice about getting married.
James Sexton: When you get married, no one explains to you that you're opting out of the title system, that your retirement assets and debts become joint property. People don't find this out until they're in a lawyer's office or a courtroom getting divorced. That's insane. No other contract has that lack of disclosure.
James Sexton: While you still have an abundance of affection for each other, you should have the awkward conversations - how do you each like to fight? What are your financial expectations if you split up? The couples who can't have those hard discussions are the ones who end up getting divorced a few years later. If you can't talk about hard things, don't get married. You can stay together without getting married.
James Sexton: Well, I mean, it's getting smaller and smaller every time. But I said to him, "Why are you doing this again? You don't have to get married. You're clearly not great at it." And he was very funny. He said, "You know, Jim, you buy a car and you drive it for 200,000 miles, and eventually the engine craps out. So you go out and you buy a Ferrari or you buy some flashy sports car, and you drive it for a couple months, and you realize, this is not the car for me. So you get rid of it, then you get another car, and you think this one's going to be the one for you, but after you drive it for like a year, you realize, yeah, this is not the car for me."
Speaker B: You can lease them instead of buying them.
James Sexton: You're going to walk everywhere for the rest of your life. Yeah, well, that was my answer. You could lease them, or you could have some other alternate arrangement. I mean, here's the thing about marriage - it's a technology, so we made it up so we can change it.
Speaker B: You think marriage will change in the next 20 years?
James Sexton: No, I actually think it's going to have... I mean, I think we're leaning... I think the pendulum always swings hard in the other direction. We have a tendency as a culture to overcorrect. So I think we're heading into a spiral of traditional stuff. I think you're gonna see people getting super religious again, and people are gonna get super dogmatic. I think we're gonna see the trad wife thing. We're gonna see the hyper masculine.
We've gone so far in the direction of post modernism, where nothing means anything and everything's just... there is no definite. We've become like Sartre, we've become so postmodern that it's become almost a form of rugged individualism. I think we're gonna swing in the other direction now, and traditional institutions are gonna get married. It'd be fun to see.
I mean, from a marriage place, it's gonna be great, because I think people are gonna get married. And people were slowing down on getting married for a while. They were getting married later, and they were having kids later. We're declining to have kids. And I think as we... I think as a culture, we start resolidifying into gender roles or gender tropes, depending on how we look at it. I think you're going to see marriage resurge again, but I think that it's still going to be as flawed of a technology as it ever was.
And I think we have so much out there now to compare ourselves to. You used to compare yourself to the neighbors next door and what car they had in the driveway and what they were wearing when they left for church on Sunday. Now you're just looking at everyone's greatest hits while living your gag reel, and you're never looking at any of that stuff when you're having a peak experience. You're on the toilet or you're bored, and you're looking at everyone's hashtag blessed. And meanwhile, they're in my office... I can't tell you how many people do a consult with me and they're cheating and they haven't slept with their spouse in three years, and they're miserable. And you're looking at their Instagram and it's all like, "Best life ever, hashtag greatest hubby ever." And you're like, what is this? It's performance art. It's an advertisement of how happy you are.
But this is what people are comparing themselves to. They're looking at that and going, "Oh, my marriage isn't that good." That marriage isn't that good. Trust me, that marriage isn't that good. That marriage is in my... Look at celebrities. You don't even need to look at the people you know, look at celebrities before they do... "It is with great sadness that we advise that we're going to be moving in separate directions and consciously uncoupling" and like that right before that, it's like, "Oh, no, we're happy. We're great. We're phenomenal." We're constantly advertising how wonderful our relationships are while they're on fire, and then wondering why everyone's miserable in their relationship. Because they're comparing it to something fake. It's like comparing your body to a photoshopped body.
Speaker B: Other than social media, do you think there's something else in our society that made marriage more difficult to stay together now? Makes it more... and just like your parents stayed married.
James Sexton: Yeah, my parents stayed married until my mother passed away.
Speaker B: Same with me.
James Sexton: But they were mixed results. I think that my parents were not as caught up in their own happiness. I think we're very caught up in our own happiness.
Speaker B: We're all very self...
James Sexton: Yeah, we're all very sort of... I don't want to say narcissistic, but we're very much like we are the sun around which everything revolves.
Speaker B: What am I not getting?
James Sexton: Yeah. My father was a Vietnam veteran. He got out of the naval academy in '66 and went to Vietnam for three years. So he was alive. He was like, "Fuck, I'm ahead. I'm playing with the house's money. I'm alive." Everybody in their wedding party, all the men in their wedding party died in Vietnam. There were five guys in their wedding party, and they all died in Vietnam. My parents never looked at their wedding album because every single man in it was dead. They were all helicopter pilots in Vietnam who got killed in their twenties.
You know, they didn't really see marriage as... it was a partnership. It was like, "Yeah, we're gonna do this thing. We're gonna have kids. We're gonna raise the kids. We're gonna have a house. We're gonna have a car. We'll be successful. The lights are on." My father was dirt poor. He came from the Appalachian part of Virginia, a small town called Shawsville. He didn't have indoor plumbing until he left for the naval academy. And I think he saw marriage as, "Yeah, it's what you do."
He met my mom on fleet week. She was a nurse in the city, and he was on fleet week, and he had his uniform on, and he was in a bar, and he was drunk. And he went to her and he said, "You're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen, and I'm going to marry you," because he was drunk. And she said, "Are you in the military?" because he was wearing a uniform. And he said, "Yep." And she said, "What country?" And he said, "Whatever country you're from." And he invited her to visit him at the naval academy a couple of weeks later. And she came, but he'd invited three other women. He just didn't know if any of them would come, so he'd invited all of them. So my mom got there and she saw these other women, and she said, "Either I'm leaving, or they're all leaving." And he was like, "I kind of like her." So he made them all leave.
And they were married 50 plus years, but their marriage had challenges. He was an alcoholic. He's been in recovery for maybe seven, eight years since she passed. And he remarried, but he remarried within a year of my mom dying. He was the kind of... He's of a generation of men that he needed someone to take care of him. My mom died. He didn't even know how to scramble an egg. After she passed, I had him come to stay with me and my sons, and I was trying to teach him, "Okay, dad, here's how you make a batch of chili, and then you can eat it all week." I was like, "How's this guy gonna..." Because they had this very... But that's what... He met another older woman, and her husband had died. She needed someone to take care of. He needed someone to take care of him.
Speaker B: But that generation didn't have it as easy as we did.
James Sexton: That's what I'm saying. They were grateful for your basic needs, right?
Speaker B: They were grateful to be alive.
James Sexton: They were grateful to be alive because they'd either been through war.
Speaker B: We're not grateful unless we're driving a Mercedes. Or, uh...
James Sexton: And even then, we're not grateful because the truth is, okay, Mercedes. But what's a Mercedes? Who cares? When people have a Mercedes? My secretary has a Mercedes. She leases it. I drive a Jeep. So is she better than me? Is she more successful than me? She works for me. So I don't know that any of it's enough anymore. No matter what watch you have, somebody's got another one or a better one or five of them.
Speaker B: And all this comparison that we see, it's all...
James Sexton: And so I just think that's the thing that makes it impossible, right? If our parents' generation was struggling to just make it through, to meet your basic needs, to keep a roof over your head, to raise your children. And now, it's very much, "Are you self-actualized? Are you happy? Do you have an eight-pack?" It would never have occurred to my father, did he have an eight-pack? It would never have been something he thought of. It just wasn't on his radar. I don't think my mother would have ever been like, "Oh, he doesn't have an eight-pack," because again, it's not constantly being advertised to him.
You know, I think, how many women did he interact with in a day? How many women do I interact with in a day, visually or personally in some fashion or in a curated, mediated way? And again, those are curated women, by the way. So they're photoshopped, they're airbrushed. They've got filters on them. So, again, how does marriage survive in that setting? It had a hard enough time surviving without all of that. I mean, forget kids.
Speaker B: The divorce rate keeps increasing, right?
James Sexton: Yeah, it keeps going up. It keeps going up. It's been hanging around 53% to 56% for a while. We had a bump after Covid.
Speaker B: What are other countries like?
James Sexton: Countries that have a significant religious narrative have the lowest divorce rates. So the lowest divorce rates are in, like, Saudi Arabia.
Speaker B: Yeah. But they don't have a whole lot of choice, right.
James Sexton: You're not allowed to divorce. You just have your wife killed, you know, so that's. You don't have to divorce. So the countries where there is this very strict religious prohibition against marriage are against divorce.
Speaker B: But, I mean, the United States is probably the highest divorce rate.
James Sexton: We're among the highest. Yeah, yeah. I don't think we're the high. We might. We might be the highest now for a while. Germany had a very high divorce rate. France had a pretty high divorce rate.
What's interesting is the divorce rate and the marriage satisfaction rates, those are different. Cause most people. The goal is not can we stay married? The goal is, can we stay happily married? Cause if somebody said to me, like, yeah, I've been married 25 years, and I've been fucking miserable for 15 of them, I'm not gonna envy you. Kwee jabbed, really hung in there. That awful situation, you know, like, that's not impressive to me.
You know, I have a cousin who got married, and I was chatting with her. She's younger woman, and I. Her husband just joined the police force. And I said to him, so I was trying to make small talk, and I said, so, do you like it? And he's from a family of cops. And he said, nah, not really. But, you know, I'm gonna do, like, the 20 years, and then, you know, you get your pension. I thought, I'll just do my 20. That's 20 years. You're 25 years old. That's 25 to 45. Those are fucking incredible years. You'll never get those back. And your approach to life is, yeah, I mean, I don't like it, but I'll just kind of do it, you know, like, I want to tiptoe through life and arrive safely at death. Like that seems, you know, but I get that that's what we're. If that's what marriage is, if it's an endurance event where. No, no, you've got to stay married.
I mean, that's why I think religions have been very quick to. I mean, I always tell people I'm not religious. I was raised very catholic. But the reality is that, you know, I mean, if in fact, God talked to humanity with ten commandments, I think it's hilarious that the only thing he has to say twice is, don't fuck people you're not married to. Thou shall not kill once. Right. Honor the Sabbath once. Don't covet your neighbor's wife. Don't commit adultery. It's the only thing. It's the only thing that got two commandments. So, like, basically, don't kill, honor the Sabbath, don't fuck people you're not married to. Seriously, don't fuck people you're not married to. Like, there's no. He didn't. Thou shalt not steal one. You know, it's the only one that got double billing.
Speaker B: Well, religion's a big component.
James Sexton: It's a huge component. But why? Because how else are you gonna control people? How else are you gonna get people to sign on for this thing and not sleep with each other? I mean, I'm not saying Freud was right, but we do wanna sleep with people. We do wanna kill people that don't do what we want them to do. Like, we have these animal instincts. We have these impulses. And what do we do with them? Well, we have to live in a civilized society. So civilization, it's discontent. We have to marry certain things.
Speaker B: If marriage was outlawed or just abolished, it would just be a free for all.
James Sexton: I don't know that that's true. I mean, I think that. I think people would like us to believe that's true. You know, I don't believe that. Like, I don't believe that if. Probably a lot of hate, if murder wasn't illegal, that I would just go killing people. Like, I. Like, you know, like, I. I rape and murder as many people as I want to, which is none. Cause I'm not a monster. Like, I don't. I rape as many people as I want to. None. Because I don't want to. I wouldn't want to do that to another person.
Speaker B: I think society would be probably happier without marriage.
James Sexton: Well, I think we would have a lot less of the damage that comes. Right. I think we'd have to find new narratives to structure to define relationships. Right. I mean, I do think there is a part of us that wants to say because, you know, as a grown man who's divorced when you're 20 and you say, oh, that's my girlfriend, nobody thinks anything of it. When you're 50 and you say, oh, that's my girlfriend, people go, there's a story there. Because you're either divorced or commitment phobic or why do you have a girlfriend when you're 50? Why isn't that your wife? So they know there's a story there.
So we'd have to. And I get it. I get it. Because if someone says, oh, that's my boyfriend, it's like, all right, well, that could be for a week. That could have been nothing. That could be like, yeah, it's my boyfriend, my husband. It's like, oh, okay, wait, that's her husband. Like, she's got some authority there. So I get that there's this idea that we want to say, like, you know, it's like when you're a little kid, this is my friend, but this is my best friend, you know? This is my best friend. But, like, how many adults still need to say that? Like, how many adults still need to say, oh, my friend Todd and I, and my best friend Tom and I, like, okay, like, so the extra special friend. Like, what do they, like, do they get health insurance with that? Like, what is the deal with that?
So I think that's kind of what marriage has become, is. It's like, you know, well, the person I love. No, no, but, like, the person I love, like, there's a lot of people I love. I wouldn't want to be married to any of them, but there's a lot of people I love, you know? And I love my ex wife. I wouldn't want to be married to her. I think she loves me. She wouldn't want to be married to me. I don't blame her. I'm a great ex husband. I'm a terrible husband. I'm a great ex husband. Because the skillset for an ex husband is totally different than skillset for a husband. Skillset for a father is completely different than that of a husband.
That's the thing I have to tell people all the time. All the time. People say, well, he's a terrible husband, so he shouldn't have custody of the kids. I'm like, what the fuck? Where's the overlap between being a good husband and being a good father? Like, being a good father is a whole different skill. You could be a great husband and a shit father, and you could be an amazing father and terrible husband. Like, there's very little overlap in those skill sets. Maybe good listening skills would be helpful in both, or patients would be good in both. But that's true of almost anything. It's a doctor and a lawyer. Both be good if you had good listening skills. It doesn't mean they're the same profession.
Speaker B: Is divorce harder on women or men?
James Sexton: That's a great question. I think it's equally hard on both, but I think that the world is more sympathetic to women when they get divorced. I think when a woman gets cheated on, the man's a piece of shit. And when a woman cheats on a man, she must have been forced into the arms of this other man, or she had to explore herself or she was being neglected in some fashion. So if a man cheats, he's a piece of garbage. And if a man's wife cheats, he mustn't have been meeting her needs. And she had every right in the world. So the world is very unsympathetic to men, right to men, when they get divorced.
Speaker B: That's been throughout hers.
James Sexton: Yeah, that's been for. I mean, there was a maternal presumption, a legal. Legal presumption, what was called the tender years doctrine, which was that if a child was under the age of seven, they were automatically presumed that they would be in the custody of the mother.
And men. So men get really beat up still in court. I mean, the law theoretically is gender blind right now, but I don't. I don't actually see that, because the law is people. The law is judges, and judges are human, and they have all the same biases. And it's just not a moment right now where men are particularly sympathetic characters.
I think that even young men, if at a school dance, they sing Beyonce's girls who runs the world. If there was a song called men who runs the world? Men. And it was a positive thing, you get pilloried for that. So I think that men have a very hard time right now in divorce. They see their children less, they get hit harder financially, they are the bad guy no matter what. If they cheat, they're the bad guy. If they get cheated on, they were the bad guy because they probably neglected her. There's a presumption that the man is to blame a lot of the time.
Now, again, marriage equality has been a thing for a while. There are tons of gay couples. So you have two men, two women divorcing each other, and that hasn't really shook out too much yet. In terms of how that plays out. I don't know if it's that gay and lesbian couples are better at it than heterosexual couples or if it's still, they're in the honeymoon period because marriage equality hasn't been around that long, but I think men find a less sympathetic world.
But in fairness, divorced men have it a little easier. I think divorced men meet a young woman and the woman's like, instant family. Just add me. That's great. You know, if he's got kids, it's like, oh, he's got kids. Look at how nurturing he is and how lovely. And women, you know, they get divorced, they've got kids. Guys are like, whoop, it's got baggage. I'm not going near that. You know? So I think. I think that men and women have different problems post divorce, and the world could be better to both of them.
I think that I have some women who. I've done their divorce, and whatever guy is with them is going to be very lucky because they're beautiful, they're smart, they're good moms, but they're also vibrant, exciting women. Now, they're loaded, and they've got money now. Yeah, they've got money. They don't have as much financial insecurity, although I have to tell you that, you know, it's the last remaining feminist taboo. I got a lot of women paying alimony these days.
I mean, you know, women. Can women marry the, like, handsome musician who's not successful or the artist? You know, there's a lot. Listen, it hasn't been, you know, there's been a significant effort in our culture in the last decade, if anyone didn't notice, to improve the situation of women. If you have an equally qualified man and an equally qualified woman, the woman's the diversity hire. The man's not. So I have a lot of women who get. When they get told, like, oh, yeah, no, you got to give him half your shit. Or, oh, no, you got to pay alimony because he makes 50 grand a year and you make 250, and they're like, you know, they could be the staunchest feminist in the world, and when you tell them they got to pay alimony, they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. He's a man. He's got a stranger, strong back. He can get out there and work. And then suddenly the whole, like, gender is a construct, and there's no such thing. That goes right out the window. And you got told, you got to pay alimony. That's like, nope, no, no, no. I believe in strict gender roles. Men should pay alimony. Women, even if you earn ten times, you should not have to pay alimony. I've had. I've had very, very staunchly feminist clients who changed their mind about how feminist they were when they got told that they were going to have to pay alimony.
Speaker B: Interesting. Yeah.
James Sexton: I do have a lot of men who won't take alimony, even though they're entitled to it, because there's just some feeling of, like, yeah, no, I'm not doing that. It's emasculating. Like, if she tells people that we know that I took alimony from her, people will think I'm less than a man. So again, it's all gender stuff. It's still out there. It's still part of the zeitgeist. We're still trying to figure it all out.
Speaker B: How many marriages are genuinely happy, you think? How many married couples? Because I see married couples that have been married, it looks like they've been married a decade or two, and they're having dinner and they're having the same conversation they had yesterday or the day before, the day before that and the weeks and months before that.
James Sexton: You know, here's what I'll tell you. I have. I know a lot of people, and I think I know one couple that has, like, a genuinely happy marriage.
Speaker B: What do you think the secret is?
James Sexton: They really like each other. I don't know. They're really good to each other. I have to tell you, they make me very uncomfortable. My ex wife and I jokingly say that they were the reason we got divorced, because we've known them since we were in college and we went to Disney with them, with their kids and our kids, when all the kids were little and we were going to go on a ride with our kids and their kids, and they were gonna like, you know, oh, like, we'll take the kids on the ride and you guys can go. And my friend was like, oh, good, we're just gonna go walk and hold hands. And they walked away and, like, holding hands.
And we looked at them and we didn't say anything to each other. But, like, five years later, when we got divorced, I said, you know, when I saw the two of them together, I thought, I don't feel like that about her. Like, and she said, oh, my God, I remember that exact moment. I felt the same way. So I think they make people uncomfortable. Like, when you see someone who's got it right, like, this guy just loves her. He loves her. They've been married 25 years. And dude, he's like. It's like he's talking about a girl he met yesterday, and she's the same way about him.
Speaker B: It's a miracle when that happens.
James Sexton: Yeah, I just think it. Look, you know, man, I tell people, marriage is like the lottery. You are probably not gonna win, you know? But if you win, what you win is so good. Like, I don't know, maybe you buy a ticket, fuck it. Like, but buy it. Get a prenup. Like, do you. Do you take all your money and buy lottery tickets? No, but if you and I don't buy lottery tickets, like, I don't play the lottery. You're not gonna fucking win. Why? You know, set the money on fire. It'll be more fun.
But if somebody said to me, no, man, you know what? Once a week, I buy $20 worth of lottery tickets, all right, go for it. You know, somebody's got a winner. Maybe it'll be you. Like, same thing with marriage. Like, maybe somebody's got to win. Like, yeah, I've met hundreds, if not thousands of couples, and I know one, one that is legitimately happy and, like, really seem to just feed that happiness by that marriage that they have. And they both, as individuals, have become the best version of themselves by being, you know, what if that's. They won the lottery, so buy the ticket, I guess, you know? But, I mean, don't. Don't make that your retirement plan. Like, don't go, like, well, you know, don't worry, I'm not saving money for my kids college. Cause, you know, I'm buying lottery tickets. Like, that's. You're an idiot if you're doing that.
Speaker B: Excellent. Jim, thank you so much for sharing your story. Your thoughts on marriage and love and divorce. Fascinating topic, isn't it?
James Sexton: Yeah, it is. And I suspect it will continue to be. I don't know that we're going to culturally get any better at it, but the economy is good. We're busy. Economy's bad. We're busy. Like, we're a recession proof industry, so, you know, it's. Even Covid didn't slow us down. You know, it probably sped you up. Well, people said for better or for worse. They didn't say for lunch. You know? And when you're locked in the house together, that was not great for most marriages. Like, there was. No, it was not. Hey, we should all spend more time together. You know? There was a lot of difficult conversations that came out of that.
Barbers and divorce lawyers. When the pandemic ended, we were. The lines were out the door, you know? So whatever the next thing is, you know, we'll still be here.
Speaker B: All right. Thank you so much.
James Sexton: You got it, man.