Divorce Lawyer: "90% Of People Cheat!" Here's What Actually Ends Marriages in 2026 │ Jack Neel

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plan that i've been enjoying it's not just for celebrities so do like i did and have one of your assistants assistants switch you to mint mobile today i'm told it's super easy to do at mintmobile.com slash switch upfront payment of 45 for three month plan equivalent to 15 required intro rate first three months only then full price plan options available taxes and fees extra fee full terms at mintmobile.com james sexton welcome back to the jack neil podcast jack neil nice to be back again we we went quite clippable last time we were all over the place a good place to start here james a few weeks ago you said something on a podcast that i never expected to hear this from the most famous divorce lawyer in the world oh boy you said quote of course i've cheated i'm an adult man what's something cheating teaches you that divorce doesn't oh that's a really interesting way to ask the question so i think more people cheat than anyone wants to admit out loud i think it's one of those things that like no one wants to admit that they eat at mcdonald's and yet they sell billions of hamburgers so someone's eating there right like so i think people cheat people have been cheating a really really long time that's why if you believe that god you know like spoke through a burning bush and gave us 10 rules two of them were don't cheat like thou shalt not kill got one but don't cheat got two don't commit adultery don't cover your neighbor's wife so this has been a problem a really long time like even if you don't believe god said any of that stuff someone said god said that stuff like 2 000 years ago so this has been a problem for a long time i think more people have to come out about the fact particularly i i'm reaching a stage in life as a man in his mid-50s where i feel like i have an obligation to be a little more honest with myself and with the world so that young people particularly for me young men can learn from the times i've stepped on the rake and got something wrong maybe they can learn to love themselves a little more because they realize like the temptations that they feel and the dumb decisions they might have made doesn't mean that they're beyond redemption like i think most people know i believe very deeply in love and i believe very deeply in how important love is um but i've made mistakes in relationship and i don't think that that means i'm beyond redemption i think it means i'm human so i'm a big believer in coming out as human like coming out as flawed coming out as someone who's made mistakes and so i've cheated in relationships for different reasons i think sometimes it was because i wasn't being honest with myself about what i wanted or needed in the relationship i think sometimes it was easier to just get something outside the relationship than do the difficult thing of telling your partner what it is that they're not giving you that you're looking for i think sometimes it was just short-sightedness like why'd you eat the chocolate cake because chocolate cake tastes freaking good like that's why like why would you hook up with that woman because she's stunning like why wouldn't you want to hook up with now again there's an answer like why did you eat that chocolate cake it's chocolate cake it tastes great you know why cake because i want vibrant good health more than i want the flavor of chocolate cake in my mouth like it's more important and that's not something i knew as a 22 year old or even a 25 year old like i wasn't mature enough to trade what i want right now for what i want most like what i want most is deep connection to another person i don't want variety i want depth right but when you're 20 something years old or when you're emotionally 20 something years old because you've never done the work and really like looked at yourself i think it's okay to make that mistake like i believe in redemption i believe that sometimes we learn by making mistakes and i will tell you what i learned from cheating was how much it hurt me how much it hurt the person i cheated on and how much it hurt the person i cheated with like there was nothing but victims all the way through like and i think that's what i learned from cheating and i think that's what i learned and so that's a powerful lesson for a person to learn and and by the way like once you learn that lesson the hard way like that either by someone cheating on you and you feel what that feels like when someone does it to you or by cheating on someone and realizing how much harm you caused to to people who didn't deserve it and to yourself i think that's a very powerful way of learning a lesson you know i know for me as a human being in my journey i've had to i've had to burn my hand on a fire sometimes to figure out oh yeah that's hot don't touch it right on the topic of infidelity when asked how many people cheat you said quote a colossal number yes i would say in the 90 plus percentile in your experience do nine out of 10 people really cheat on their partner well what i'll say is a few things one if you're an oncologist and you come home and say man everybody has cancer like everybody i met today has cancer right because you're an oncologist like if you were a cab driver you'd meet a lot of people who didn't have cancer you'd meet much fewer people who have cancer than an oncologist you'd still meet people who have cancer but it wouldn't be like most of the people you meet so i'm a divorce lawyer so i tend to meet a lot of people who have cancer and i'm a divorce lawyer a lot of people who cheat or have been cheated on right because i'm working in the clay of failed relationships so i understand that there's a self-selecting sample size there but it depends on how you define cheating so if you define cheating as engaging in behavior outside the presence of your partner that you would not be engaging in if they were there then i think 90 plus percent of people cheat yes like if showing up authentically in relationship and again i'm not suggesting that you know speaking about women in the presence of your wife and speaking differently when you're just with your guy friends is the same as if you had sex with another woman like that not all cheating is created equal i think we can agree like if your girlfriend or your wife is like you know dancing seductively with a guy at the club when she's out with her friends that might be upsetting to you but it wouldn't be as upsetting as if she was in a relationship and you're just with your guy friends and you're just with your she slept with someone or kissed someone right there's lines that you go but there is still a betrayal happening there right would you be speaking this way would you be sending this message if your partner was reading it i define cheating as behavior you engage in that you wouldn't engage in if your partner was right there so by that definition i think people cheat quite a bit because people have a very performative self in relationships a lot of the time rather than being authentically themselves in relationship which is why i think we're so bad at relationship because i think our fail rate is so high because we in the effort to minimize temporary conflict that like we might disappoint our partner if we showed up as our authentic self and told them something they don't want to hear about something we want that they might not want to us to want in that moment i i think we would just do better to just be honest because i think otherwise what we start to see is that we're not going to be able to do what we want to do what we start to do is build distance between us and our partner like look no one ever woke up in the morning and went you know what i'm going to do today saying, I'm going to screw up my relationship. I'm just going to really just throw it right in the garbage pile. No, like make a little choice. Oh, I'm just chatting with this girl. It's nothing, you know? And then it's like, oh, well, we're just hanging out. We're not like doing anything. And it's like, all right, well, we like flirted with each other. We didn't do any. All right, well, we kissed, but it's not like I'm sleeping with her. Like it's a series of line crossings that often happens. It's not that you woke up one day and were like, I'm going to screw up my relationship. What would you say is the most common way people get caught cheating? Now it's devices. I mean, now it's the integration of our devices. It's usually like a text message that was sent to the wrong person or that pops up on the iPad that was meant to pop up on your phone and your partner happens to be looking over your shoulder. Like most people get caught because of the messaging aspects of things. It used to be that people would like someone would see someone with someone and then say, oh, I saw him out at this place. Like he was with somebody else. But now we live mostly digital footprints and digital lives. I think that's pretty common. But yeah, a spending to receipts. People find receipts, but texts, texts, emails, things popping up on the wrong device. The integration of Apple devices. I laugh all the time is I feel like we owe these rest in peace. We owe Steve Jobs a tremendous debt of gratitude as divorce lawyers, because the number of cases I have where the husband or the wife is upstairs in the bathroom texting with their secret boyfriend or girlfriend and the kid, their iPad that they're watching something on or playing a game on, all of a sudden the message pops up. And then the other parent, the kid's like, why is my iPad working? And then the other parent comes over and they're watching in real time. The text messages between the paramour. That's what we call them in court, the paramour and the spouse. You'd said something interesting about private investigators and that there's a common way they catch people. Like how do private investigators test if your wife or husband is cheating on you? Well, it's usually. It's usually observation. I mean, most PIs just sort of aren't good at surveillance. So they just like follow where someone's going to be and where they put themselves. So that's the most common way that they catch people. Because usually if someone's like spidey senses tingling, you know, it's usually like they suspect something. And then all it is is someone's just the PI is there to confirm it. Like they just, oh, they're not at the gym. They went here where they're in the parking lot of the gym with this person who they met at the gym, you know, like there's, there's usually some truth to the lie. You know, like if you read the Bible, I'm not a big Bible person, but if you read the Bible, the devil never lies in the Bible ever. He just tells part of the truth. So it's like, oh, I'm going to the gym. It's like, right. You didn't tell the person that now you have like a person you see at the gym and that you regularly hang out. And then afterwards you guys have a smoothie and then you end up in the parking lot. And next thing you know, you're having a full blown affair, but you tell your partner, oh, I'm at the gym. And you are at the gym. Technically. You'd said something too, about how they would have one partner get like a weekly class and they would, uh, catch them at the weekly class. Do you know what I'm talking about? I don't, I don't, I don't remember which conversation it was. Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of times people have to create routines around their infidelity because otherwise like you have to, you know, there's an old joke. It's about how busy lawyers are, but the joke is that there's an architect, an artist and a lawyer, and they're all talking about who do they like to be with their wife or their mistress. And the architect says, oh, I like to be with my wife because we're building something in it as a strong foundation. And the artist says, oh, I like to be with my mistress because it's wild and creative and it's always something different. And the lawyer says, oh, I like when my wife thinks I'm with my mistress, my mistress thinks I'm with my wife and I can get some work done. And it's funny joke because lawyers work too much. Um, but the truth is, is I, when people are having affairs, it requires a tremendous amount of engineering. It requires a tremendous amount of like, where are you? You know? And so, especially in this modern world where people are tracking each other's location and, you know, it's like, you know, there's just this sense of where people are. People are very, they live a digital footprint of where they are. So I think, um, there are a lot of people that build their infidelity around, oh, I go to yoga class every Wednesday night. And it turns out they don't, that they just meet their boyfriend that night. Yeah. Finding a doctor is hard enough. Finding the right doctor, even harder. Someone who takes your insurance has an available appointment. When you need one and feels like someone you can actually open up to. That's where ZocDoc comes in. Download the ZocDoc app to search and compare doctors by specialty insurance and availability. Read real patient reviews, find the right fit for you and book instantly because getting seen by the right doctor matters. ZocDoc ready to be seen. Download the ZocDoc app today. Hey, it's Kelly Rowland. You may not know this, but I have eczema. So I get how it can steal. I get how it can take your time, but why let eczema take over when you can talk to your doctor about ebglis. 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Oh, yes. Now I know what we're talking about. Yeah. So that was, I was talking about sort of how do you set a trap for a cheater. What I was talking about primarily there was that one of the ways that you can. Suss out if your partner is cheating is by having a specific obligation that routinely occupies some of your time. And therefore, it creates an opportunity for your partner to do whatever they might want to do. So like if you have a concern that your partner is cheating, one of the things you can do is like take a trip out of town. And instead of being like, well, where are you going? Why are you going? They're thrilled because they're like, oh my God, I'm going to have plenty of time. I'm going to have plenty of time to run around with my boyfriend or girlfriend. So they go, oh, yeah, of course. And then, you know, oh, yeah, I'm going to be gone from this day to this day, you know, and you book it out in advance. Now, again, I've even had people who do that and then they cancel right before just to see how their partner will react. And if their partner reacts like, oh, wait, but I thought you were going, like, you know, and is sort of discombobulated. Oh, well, now I'm working late this weekend because I knew you were going to be away or whatever. Like suddenly you start to see that there's an engineering happening to the management of time that's discordant from what you're doing. From what their actual day to day is. That's fascinating. Yeah. Just the emotional reaction itself will tell you that. Yeah. I mean, how someone responds to changes in routine. Because having an affair requires like time, like to talk to this person, to be with this person, like it requires that. So there's like a jumping from one foot to the other that has to happen. Like there's an engineering to it, like an architecture to it that requires planning. You know, and then you have the difficulty of like, okay, now it's Valentine's Day. So it's like, okay, like you have a romantic connection to this person and a romantic connection to your admitted partner, your open. And now it's like, okay, what do I do here? You know, so it's again, and by the way, that's assuming that everyone in this situation other than your spouse knows you're cheating. Like there are situations where the girlfriend doesn't know about the wife and the wife doesn't know about the girlfriend. Like, and nobody knows about anybody. And so that's one of those situations. that you're like, or this guy's got multiple. girlfriends or this woman has multiple boyfriends. Like, and that, that becomes tricky too, because then each of them has to have like, where are, I mean, what are we doing all day? We're people doing things. We go places, we do things like we're awake a certain amount of time, we're asleep a certain amount of time. We have to sleep somewhere, you know? So where are you, you know? And how do you explain where you are in any particular moment when it's built? Like my mother used to say to me all the time, don't lie. Not just out of morality, but just because it's exhausting. Like you have to remember what you told everybody. Like if you tell the truth, you don't really have to worry about remembering what you told people because you just tell them the truth and it's going to be consistent. Whereas if you change your story for different audiences, then you, you're kind of stuck. Like you have to remember who did I tell what to and who's going to talk to who, and you know, you have to do a whole lot of anything. Right. Most people assume based on like pop culture and social media that if one of the partners is cheating, that it goes well if you got cheated on for you in a divorce court. You said, quote, whether they left the cap off the toothpaste or slept with all the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders, everybody gets the same amount. Do cheaters actually get punished in court? Hey, really quick. Do you ever feel like you can't remember important things because managing this podcast means dealing with a ton of small tasks every single day? Things like following up with guests, booking podcast studios, or keeping track of deadlines with sponsorships. Stuff like this used to slip by all the time because keeping track of everything just felt impossible. And honestly, that all changed when my team started using Victor to help us manage our daily tasks. He shows us today's deadlines, who needs a follow up and what needs to be posted and when. Quick disclosure, Victor is sponsoring this podcast. If you're new to this podcast, please subscribe to if you haven't heard of him, he's basically an AI employee that lives right inside Slack or Microsoft Teams. He connects to over 3200 tools and actually completes the work. We don't have to handhold him or prompt him 100 times to get things right. And my favorite part is the whole team shares him so everyone gets the same update every morning. So if you want to hire Victor for your team, just head over to jackneel.com slash Victor or you can hit the first link in the description. You get $100 of his work for free. There's no credit card required and you can get him running in minutes. But anyway, guys, back to the podcast. Generally, no. No, I often have to tell people there is no good spouse bonus and there is no bad spouse penalty in divorce court. In real life, maybe being a good spouse or being a bad spouse is its own reward or punishment. But in divorce court, yeah, you generally don't. I mean, there is something called wasteful dissipation of marital assets where you can spend money that was spent on a paramour. So like if I bought a mistress a Cartier watch, my wife could get one half the value of the Cartier watch that I gave to this other person because theoretically I took money out of the marital estate improperly. It's hardly a sufficient financial penalty for the frustration people feel. I mean, people come into my office all the time and they got like a bag of evidence. They got receipts. They got text messages. They got photos. They got their Perry Mason about it. You know, they're really like excited that they've got this smoking gun. And then I have to explain to them like, yeah, it's just going to divide what you guys have and figure it out. And you're each going to spend time with the kids. And it's got nothing to really do with that because you could be a bad spouse and still be a good father or mother. Like you could, it doesn't have much to do with that. You know, it's not, if only it was like, oh, this is proof you're a bad person. Like, but that's not how it works. Good people cheat all the time. Awful people can be fidelitous. Like there was a vegetarian. Doesn't make him a nice guy or compassionate. You know, it's not like, oh, this is proof you're a bad person. Like, so I think you have to recognize that as much as it has value in a relationship, like you have a right to be hurt when someone has cheated on you, you have a right to be offended by that. You have a right to, but does it have a substantive legal effect? Not really. And I'm glad for that. Really? Well, because I just wish it was so reductive that it's like, oh, you cheated. That means you're a bad person. It's like, okay, but what if your spouse hasn't slept with you in three years? Like, what did they expect? You're going to be celibate, but you're saying, oh, no, they should divorce. Really? But what if they don't? What if you have young kids and they're like, okay, look, I'm, I'm just going to step out of the marriage for sex, but I'm not gonna, you know, I'm not going to leave my family. I'm not going to divide half our things. I'm not going to leave our children during a time where they're quite young and vulnerable. Like, again, is it the best choice? No, but it's a terrible situation for someone to be in. In your experience, do people often cheat because of sexless marriages? Yeah, that's a big piece. That's a big piece of it. Is it significant enough that, like, the whole thing should be not penalized in court? Because the way I think about it is, imagine you and I went into business together. We had a podcast company and you had a podcast company on the side, right? And our business obligation was only, we're working on this one. Yeah. Like, it kind of feels like that in a way. Yeah. But I'll push back on that. Jason Newstead was the bassist for Metallica, you know, huge band. He had, like, a little tiny side project, like, that, where he, like, wrote his own music and he'd play little clubs. Like, it had nothing to do with the giant machine that is Metallica. And apparently James Hetfield and those guys said, like, no, you have to be either in Metallica or you can have this side project. And he was like, my side project doesn't take anything away from Metallica. Like, it's, we're not taking any food off anybody's plate. He talked about this in a documentary. Truth is, like, I see that point of view. I don't know that it took anything away from that situation. Like, I like the idea of loyalty. Like, if your spouse wants something and you're giving it to someone else, that's quite unfair. But, because your first loyalty should be to your spouse. But if your spouse is not interested in sleeping with you, does that mean your spouse is useless and that you should just leave them? Like, I don't know that that's true. There's lots of reasons people stay in marriages, some of which have nothing to do with sex. I like this person's companionship. I like raising children with them. I like being their roommate. I like their family. They like my family. Like, there's so many reasons to be in relationship. And maybe the sexual relationship has cooled for this person. Okay, what are you going to do? Force yourself on them? I mean, if you said to your wife, you owe me sex, you owe it to me. I'm sorry that you're not interested in sex anymore, but you owe me sex. That would not be a particularly polite thought, right? I think you'd get pilloried for saying that. So, what are you going to do? She's decided you're celibate now? You made a promise that I'm the only person you're allowed to have sex with, and now you're not having sex with me? How's that fair? How's that fair? Like, and the answer is, okay, so now I've got to give away half my stuff and be with my children fully one half less of the time? Wow. Feels like a hell of a penalty because you decided you want to give up sex. Like, that you decided I want to give up sex. Like, I get it. Like, I get the cheater. I get it. I'm not excusing it. It explains it. It doesn't excuse it, but it explains it. So, I don't know. I think that it's a fairly, and again, is it a good solution to that problem? Probably not. But I don't know that that problem has a good solution. It's a terrible situation to be in. Best way to not be in that situation is to not get into that situation by allowing this connection to happen in your marriage. If you don't want to have sex with this person, don't marry them. If you've stopped wanting to have sex with them, then don't be married to them anymore. Get divorced. That seems more sensible. There's 8 billion people in the world. Like, if this isn't working, then end it. Like, I think happily ever after sometimes means happily ever after separately. And I think as a culture, we could start looking at his chapters in a long book as opposed to like success or failure, you know? But again, is cheating the problem? I don't think cheating's the problem. I think disconnection is the problem. Cheating is a symptom of that. Cheating is loneliness. It's a very normal thing to want connection. You exist because a man and a woman had sex with each other. You do. Every single person listening to this exists because a man and a woman had sex with each other. That's the nature of our existence. We wouldn't, there's no one in the world who exists outside of that context. So why is it wrong for us to say, yeah, sex is important. It's like a need that we have. And it's something that one, might expect from one spouse. Right. By the way, the, the other thing I think bears saying about monogamy is for, for me, the only model of monogamy that makes sense is that I have sex with as many people as I want to. And that's one. Hmm. I just want one. Cause when I'm full, I stop eating. Like, if your wife said to you, you know, I really want to have sex with lots of men, but I know we promised we're not going to do that. So I'm going to follow the rules. Do you feel good about that? Like, I would feel terrible about that. Like, I would be like, don't do me any favors. Like I, what do you mean you want to have sex with a bunch of guys? Like, well, like if you said to a woman in your life, like, oh yeah, I want to have sex with tons of women, but I'm going to honor our contract with each other. Like, don't do me any favors. Like what you want to hear is I don't have sex with other women because you've satisfy me. Like, I don't have sex with other men because I don't even look at other men because you're my guy and you make me happy and I'm satisfied. Like, I feel good. Like, that makes sense. But so we're going to say there's a penalty? Like, that's why? There's a punishment. You're going to pay a fine if you have sex with other people. Okay. Don't you think then isn't there some part of you that goes, is this person not having sex with other people because they're worried about paying the penalty? Because that doesn't make me feel any better. Brother, if the reason you don't murder and rape people is you'd go to jail, you're a bad person. Like, you could make rape and murder legal tomorrow and I'm going to rape and murder as many people as I currently do, which is none. Because I don't not rape and murder people because it's illegal. I don't murder people because I believe sentient beings have the right to exist and have autonomy and agency and I wouldn't want anyone to murder anyone I love, so why would I murder anybody who anybody else might love? Like, it's not because it's illegal. Like, and if that's the only thing stopping you, or if the only thing stopping you is like a great guy in the sky who's watching and he's going to punish you, if you do it, like, that's not a great reason not to do that. Like, it's the same thing. If the only reason you're not cheating, if I could tell you, you can cheat and she'll never find out. I can guarantee it. I have a crystal ball. She'll never find out. And you can cheat with the most magnificent woman, like the most gorgeous celebrity, star, you could, any object of your desire, your hall pass, that person, and no one would ever find out. If your answer is, oh yeah, I'd do it then, that has something to do with your morality and how satisfied you actually are in your relationship. Because again, I genuinely believe if you're genuinely happy in a relationship, you have no desire to cheat. That's an interesting take. And I've, I'm married now. And that was something we'd had conversations about because it seems like there's common sentiment online. That men, for whatever reason, have a higher natural desire, uh, than women to like, you know, look at the waitress and like, think she's hot. And like, women don't do that. And this is like only a men thing and that men are supposed to have a bunch of girlfriends, et cetera. You're Andrew Tate is showing, I was going to say. It's really, it's not just his sentiment. No, Mike Sartain, I think Rolo Tomasi, I think a lot of, um, guys in the, in the Manosphere red who, who know about evolutionary biology would say that's true. And I think they're saying it because it is in fact true. I think men are watch pornography at like, I forget what the exponential number rate is. It's way more, way more like just look at like sexual activity in relationship. Like gay men have the most sex out of anybody. Why? Cause it's two men, you know, then heterosexual couples, then lesbians. Like that's statistical, like that's math. Like pornography viewing. Again, if we were all equal, we'd all be looking at, it's not, it's we're, we're visual. Like men are hyper. And by the way, it makes sense from a biological standpoint. It absolutely makes sense for a biological standpoint. If you put 50 men on an Island and one woman, and you come back in six months, you're going to have 49 dead men, one man and one pregnant woman. If you put 50 women on, an Island with one man, you can come back in six months and you're going to have a bunch of pregnant women. Like women, a man can impregnate in one day, dozens of women. If he wants to, depending on how much time he has and how long his refractory period is. Woman can get pregnant once every nine months, even more so than that, but that's it. That's it. So women have to be pickier. Like women have to be choosier about their mates. They have to be, they're investing a tremendous amount biologically in this person and their quality. They can only, whereas a man, at the moment of orgasm, technically, we're done with the biological imperative. Like the minute you ejaculate, you've done your part in creating the next generation. Theoretically, would it be good if you're around to help and be there in present? Of course. Fatherhood's an incredibly important role, but is it biologically necessary? No. You don't think the sociological effects of like modern contraception has, has equalized that dynamic at all? Equalized the nature of pregnancy? Like, uh, it didn't, it didn't change our wiring. Right. I mean, we're running the same biological program. Like our bodies don't know that it's 2026. Like our bodies, like, why do you like sugar? Like, why does your body crave sugar more than it does broccoli? Because it's more calorie dense, right? Because if you were in primal time, and you find something sweet, it's got a lot of calories. And you're like, oh my God, I don't know what I'm going to eat again. Let me eat this. Like, it's sweet. You know, nature evolved in such a way as to be like, hey, crave sweet things. Cause it means that you're going to like, your body puts on fat, not because like, God doesn't want you to have an eight pack. Like it's, it's because your body is like, oh, I have to store it. Why do women have more subcutaneous fat than men? Because women are designed to get pregnant. Their bodies are designed to get pregnant. Can we change that with science? Of course. Like we can change all kinds of things with science. Like theoretically I should be dead. Like in primal society, a 54 year old man, you're an elder of the tribe. Like there's so many things would have killed me by now. But the truth, and most women would have died in childbirth, but we created a society that's very unnatural and that's okay. But for us to then look at society and go, wow, things are so unnatural. No shit. Of course it's incredibly unnatural. And because of that, we're going to be at odds with our biological drives from time to time. I think contraception of course separated the act of sex from the act of reproduction, particularly for women in real ways. It gave women tremendous control over the connection between sex and reproduction. And so that's a tremendous power to give to a woman. But does any power not have a cost? Every power has a cost. With great power comes great responsibility, right? Like there's a tremendous cost that comes with that. It would still be your take though, that the biology doesn't excuse the infidelity, like for both men and women. No, I don't. Well, first of all, I don't know that it's anyone's infidelity in a vacuum. Like I don't think any of us have a right to judge someone's behavior in a vacuum. Like the only two people that know what's going on in a marriage are the two people in it. And they only know about like 50% of it. You're like, so I've worked in enough marriages now. I've represented the cheater and the cheated on, the person with substance abuse disorder, the person whose spouse has substance abuse disorder. Like I've represented both sides of every single argument. I think it's hilarious when I like say something in an interview about, you know, how many women have become billionaires as a function of divorce. And people are like, oh, well, those women worked very hard to help their husband with the business. I'm like, no, who do you think makes that argument in court? Me. I represent those women. And I represent those men against those women. Like, I represent both sides of this argument. I argue for a living. So like, you're not telling me something I don't know. I got those women that money. And I prevented sometimes those women from getting that money. Like depending on who hires me, I'm going to make this argument or that argument. So you don't have to explain to me the counter argument. I know the counter argument better than my own argument most of the time. Like that's my job is to know both sides of this argument so I can get ahead of the argument the other side's going to make. But, you know, do I our biological differences in our drives and in our levels of sexual attraction or our desire for novelty and how that breaks down by gender and how it's, you know, how it's bolstered or enhanced by advertising and by like the ecosystem. I mean, we're shoving sex down everybody's throats 24-7. We're shoving sex down men's throats and we're shoving romance porn down women's throats all the time. And by the way, like we're, you know, men dress the way they dress to impress women. Women dress the way they dress to impress women most of the time or to attract male attention. Why? So they can impress other women with the fact that they, like women are very caught up in the opinions of women and men are very caught up in the opinions of women in my experience. And again, this is from where I'm sitting as a divorce lawyer. So everybody's going to have a slightly different perspective on this. And my lived experience, of course, is as a, this gender heterosexual male. So, you know, I approach this from the place I approach it from. I've only been me. But I think that anything that's so reductive that it goes like, oh yeah, that explains this and therefore it excuses it. Like those are two different things. Explaining something and excusing something are two different things. My job sometimes in court is to explain something so it can be more excused. But sometimes my job is just to explain something because the alternate theory is that you're just a bad person. Which, by the way, what a convenient and childish theory that is. Like, what is this, pro wrestling? Like there's good guys and there's bad guys. And that's how it works. Like women are either amazing, wonderful creatures that are perfect and they're girl boss, or they're just gold digging, awful, terrible. Like really? Is this pro wrestling? Like men are the worst and they're scum and they're useless. Or, oh my God, men are going to save society. And they're the only thing that's going to save the world. And they're like, hey guys, really? Like, is this, what is this? Like, come on. Like, what are you, John Cena and the Undertaker? Like, knock it off. Like. the line of good and evil runs through the human heart like you have evil in you and you have good in you you have base drives in you and you have kindness and compassion and empathy in you and if you hang out enough with the cheater and the cheated on you figure out it's just human emotional complexity and my job is to put myself in the head of my client and tell their story and what that has created in me is a tremendous amount of empathy because i understand why people get cheated on i understand why people cheat i understand how bad it hurts to be cheated on and i understand how you didn't mean to hurt anybody when you cheated on somebody maybe like i get it i get it if you look deep enough in most people's hearts like they're not all bad and they're not all good they're just human they're just trying to figure it out this is my personal opinion i think you're probably one of the people that has the experience to know that better than most probably it might be why people are interested in what i have to say i don't know i mean i think i've i've had enough time in the trenches putting myself in the head of these people and making the argument on their behalf to make an argument convincingly on someone's behalf you have to convince yourself of the veracity of their position so i think i've i've not unintentionally become a sociopath but i think i just see human emotional complexity you know like i said i wish sometimes that people were just all good or all bad we could just pick out who was who like it doesn't really work that way like i think most people have love in their hearts and then i think most people have been hurt and i think hurt people hurt people right and i think if we could give each other a little more grace and empathy i think we'd be a lot softer with each other like i and i'm human i do the same thing like when a woman says to me do you know how hard it is to be a woman my first thought is do you know how hard it is to be a man do you know how easy it seems to me to be a woman from where i'm sitting like and you know how hard it is to be a man but but why because it's unfair if i said to a woman do you know how hard it is to be a man and her response was do you know how hard it is to be a woman from where i'm sitting you know how easy it looks to be what if we just said to each other like you know how hard it is to be a man no i don't because i'm a woman i don't know tell me what's hard about it like what's hard about it like because i have to tell you something when i tell you something i'm not going to tell you say to a woman like what a woman says to me when i can get over myself and a woman says to me you know how hard it is to be a woman and i don't go you know oh you think it's easy being a man like which again is my gut instinct because i'm human and i live in here you know and i i live in my experience but when i stop and i go no i don't like tell me and they tell me i go oh shit yeah that's that's got to be really hard like yeah i feel like i have to be perfect all the time i feel like i when i'm with my family i feel like you know people are judging me that i should be at work when i'm at work i feel like people are judging me they should be with my family every 28 days my hormones go completely out of control and i hate myself for like four days like and then i just want to have sex with everybody five days later like all the things women will tell me about the experience of being a woman i'm like oh yeah that sounds really tough like i don't know what that's like i don't know what that's like but i also feel like if i had the chance to explain to a woman like yeah here's the parts of being a man that feel really challenging for me and they could listen with empathy i think we would all understand each other a little better the algorithm doesn't want us to do that the algorithm wants us to blame each other and hate each other and engage with each other because why because the fight is so much more interesting than empathy like an active listening you know there's nothing you can't weaponize that quite as well you can't sell as much stuff do you see algorithms leading to more divorces hey quick question do you ever feel like keeping up with politics has become toxic like everyone online seems to have an opinion but they're never held accountable if they're actually wrong and if you're like me and want to know the truth about what's actually going on you try to find the opinions that people are actually putting money behind and that's where today's sponsor calchi comes in calchi is a cftc regulated u.s exchange where you can trade real world events straight from your phone who will be named in the epstein files this year will the democrats or the republicans win the midterms and the one i'm personally most excited about will the u.s confirm that aliens exist now as i'm recording this people believe that aliens exist there is a 19 chance aliens get confirmed by the year 2029 and honestly i don't think aliens are real and if they were how on earth would they be able to keep that a secret and if they were able to keep that a secret then why would they tell us now so if you want to check out this market or see what else people are trading on just use my link in the description or pinned comma trade 25 and get 55 using my link or using the code jack but anyway guys back to the podcast do you see algorithms leading to more divorces i think so yeah i think people are i think people are divorced from themselves and i think people are divorced from logic and i think that people are divorced from the reality of being human and therefore they're going to get divorced from each other because we're just stoking conflict all day long like and we're also creating like impossible ideals out there that we can't possibly live up to like your spouse is supposed to be your best friend best lover best vacation partner best roommate best co-parent but really it's a hell of a job description like chances are they're gonna not do a great job at one of those you know or from time to time they might not do and by the way you got married recently okay so you're gonna have to make some compromises from time to time what what why shouldn't i have to be why can't i show up and be my authentic self oh you're saying i have to change for you yeah yeah you have to change for each other like you have to accommodate it you can phrase it as you have to change for each other or you could phrase it as like do we want to accommodate each other a little bit do we want to give each other some grace are my needs so important that i can't put yours above mine sometimes and are mine so unimportant that you can't do the same for me sometimes like you don't have to be married you chose to be married so you made a choice you took the job do the job do the job and expect the other person to do the job like why else would you sign up for it if you didn't want to do it like getting married's fun being married it's what you make of it but you have to make it into what you're going to make it that's going to require you to change some aspects of how you do things in the world and how you see things and how you communicate your needs like and that's the part that we're creating a society where everyone's like you know the self-esteem curriculum has gone so far that what do we esteem other than the self like what's important other than you like what what if anything like ask most people like what's more important than you they very often don't have an answer there was a time where like god country that was more important society was more important than you now people say my children my children are more important than me okay that's about it like by the way i'm not impressed i care about my children so do squirrels squirrels care about their children like that's not impressive that's biology that's basic biology like cockroaches care about their children like you're not special because you care about your children that's not impressive to me is it impressive that you take care of your children of course it's nice that you take care of your children that's good there's a lot of people that don't take care of their children good job not being crap like that's not impressive to me that's not impressive to me that's like but again that's a natural thing you're supposed to want to take care of your children if you don't you're doing something wrong but it's not impressive to me what's impressive to me is that i want to take care of someone else's children why because that could be my children like that's more impressive to me i see a little if i see my daughter crying by the side of the road of course i'm going to stop but if i see a little girl crying by the side of the road will i stop and hey are you okay because that's someone's daughter if it was my daughter and i wasn't there i'd want someone to stop for her so am i brave enough to do that am i brave enough to treat people the way that i'd want to be treated the way i'd want people i love to be treated that's more impressive to me when jewish friends of mine talk about how important israel is to them i'm not impressed oh you're jewish and you believe the jewish homeland should be preserved there's a shocker gosh i think um guys over six foot two with pointy noses should be given as much money as they'd like there's no self-interest in that whatsoever it's just how i feel about you know white guys with pointy noses who were over six feet tall like it's not impressive to me what you know what i'm impressed by when ellie was sell a holocaust survivor came out when bosnia and herzegovina was happening when there was a genocide in bosnia herzegovina and ellie was sell said hey jews of the world we should be doing something about this this is what was done to us to some degree this is how it starts this is how this started we of all people should get involved right now like that's to me impressive like when i have a friend who says hey you know i don't like what's happening to african-american uh people in this particular town and they're not african-american but they're gay or lesbian they're like hey i know what it's like to be part of a group of people who are part of a group that's been prejudiced against i know what it's like to be part of a traditionally disenfranchised group and i'm gonna stand up for this other group that I don't belong to. Like, the civil rights movement moved forward partly because Black preachers like Martin Luther King inspired white people to stand up and go, hey, you're right. That's not okay. It's not happening to me, but it's not okay. Like, and that's what we, as a society, we have to start getting back to some kind of radical empathy. And again, all marriage is a microcosm of society. Like, marriage is, like, there's the world, there's the country, there's the society, there's the family. It starts with the family. It starts with you and me and our offspring, and then our town, our street. Like, but again, like, ask yourself, is it just, are you just dialed in for your people, your family, your thing? Or are you, how far out are you willing to let this go? Because I don't want to live in this. It's like, my children are grown. I live in New York City. I pay a lot. I pay a lot of school taxes. I don't have any children in the school system. I am happy to pay that tax. You know why? Because I live in a representative democracy. Like, I want educated children. I want to live in a society where children are well-educated, respective of what their parents do for a living. Like, I want to live in a society where a poor kid who can get a good education for free and maybe someday cure cancer. Like, I don't want to live in a society like that. Like, I know, I understand, like, Alexander Hamilton was an orphan, you know? And thank God people took up a collection to send them to school. Because look at how much better our society is a function of the fact that there was this radical empathy that happened in the world. So we have to get back to that. What do you esteem other than the self? I'm not impressed when someone is like, I'm really fired up about this issue because it affects me. Great. So you're what? You're a squirrel. Like, great job. You're protecting, yourself. And again, I'm not suggesting you shouldn't protect yourself and your own interests. But if the only thing that matters to you is protecting your interests, I'm not impressed. Big or small, we're here for all of it. Celebrating 125 years with new moments still had. Discover it all in Nordstrom stores and at Nordstrom.com. Football is back and PrizePix is bringing out their best offer yet. On PrizePix, you can make all the picks you want all in the same app. And now PrizePix is available nationwide. Lock in for kickoff because everyone and everything is on PrizePix. What you want? Download the PrizePix app today and get your prize picks. Use code SPOTIFY to get $150 instantly in lineups if you win your first $5 lineup. PrizePix. Run your game. Must be present in certain states. Visit PrizePix.com for restrictions and details. Someone who takes your insurance, has an available appointment when you need one, and feels like someone you can actually open up to. Download the ZocDoc app to search and compare doctors by specialty, insurance, and availability. 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Medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema. Eblis can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you are allergic to Eblis. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with Eblis. Before starting Eblis, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic, infection. Paid partnership with Lili. Respect your time. Ask your doctor about Eblis and visit eblis.com or call 1-800-LILI-RX or 1-800-545-5979. Right. I biasedly will argue that that's the biggest thing causing so many personal issues between people right now is this almost algorithmic driving of people toward the self and caring about their self. And they become so echo chambered with ideas from a series of bots and influencers that they've never met. And it's just not how reality is actually represented. It's not how reality is structured. Like, I think David Foster Wallace is the one who said it, that I'm not in traffic. I am traffic. Like, you know, you're sitting in traffic for you from LA. You're sitting in traffic, right? Or is it the I-495 or the I-95? There's that road I'm constantly in traffic on. Which one? There's whichever one. I don't know. Maybe you guys don't drive. So traffic in LA, I always say you guys have the weather, but you have the traffic. It's the worst offset ever. But when you're sitting in traffic, you're annoyed at the car in front of you. You're like, come on, man, just go, just go. Okay. There's a car behind you saying the same thing about you. Like, so you're not in traffic. You are traffic. Like we've seen the enemy and they is us. Like we're the enemy. Like all the pettiness in you is the same pettiness in me. Like all the selfishness in you and fear in you is the same selfishness and fear in me. Like we're, we're all just, but, but again, we're just, all you see is through those two eyes of yours. Like you're the center of your universe and that's okay. I'm the center of my universe. I only get to see out of these two eyes. I don't get to see into them only out. So it's okay to experience the world that way, but amplifying it the way that our current society is, which is again, what do you esteem other than the self? Because there were so many years where we taught everybody that the only thing that mattered was the group. It didn't matter. Like, and we don't want to be communist China. We don't want to be communist Russia. We don't want to be the only thing that matters is the state and this, you know, we don't want to believe that we don't, we capitalism in a functional form is about achieving and striving and, and, you know, uh, self-worth, but it doesn't have to be like every man for themselves and profit above all else. Like I often talk about it in the context of modern air travel. Like I can now afford to fly first class. It's one of the greatest things about having money was that I'm never going to fly economy ever again. It doesn't have to be so nice. Like it's not, oh, well the whole plane has to be the same or what it currently is, which is unlimited caviar, unlimited drinks, gigantic seats, and everybody else. The majority of the plane is packed in like cattle and miserable. Like, couldn't we just go, Hey, let's make first class nice, but like not ridiculous. It's nice. And let's make this a little better. Like why, when you say to people, well, our health insurance system's like really broken, you know, like do they go, oh, so you want socialized medicine where everybody has the same? No, no. What if, what if we made it so that like healthcare executives don't make a billion dollars? Like what if they just made a hundred million dollars? Like, do you think they'd quit? Do you think they'd quit in mass? Like, do you think if he wasn't a, a billionaire that Elon Musk would quit? Like, I don't think so. Now again, am I saying we should have a forced redistribution of wealth? No, but we should change the incentives a little bit. Shouldn't we? Like I have clients who go to the Met Gala and all I can ever think is like, how, how dare anybody who goes to that spectacle of opulence have like a, like a political slogan on their butt? Like, shut the fuck up. You don't care about anything, but your image. You wouldn't be wearing a shirt. You wouldn't be $10 million worth of jewelry while most of the world's trying to get enough rice to live through the day. 4,000 children die from starvation per hour. And you're going to sit there and talk about like, you know, we really need to cut our carbon footprint while you're wearing $10 million. We're like, come on, knock it off. And you took a private jet to get there. Like, right. Like, just knock it off. Just knock it. It's fine. Just be like, yeah, I'm a selfish piece of shit. That's okay. That's okay. Like, it's okay. You have a right to be if you want to be like, there's things I do that are completely selfish. I get it. But I don't delude myself into thinking I'm some kind of saint or savior. Like, I don't hold myself as a paragon of virtue. You know, like, I think we just have to be as a society, like a little bit more honest about it. Cause again, I think it feels great to be like, Oh, there's bad people out there, you know, like the cheaters and the people who, but come on, like we're all prone to weakness. We're all prone to selfishness. Like these are things we can transcend, but not if we don't talk about them. And not if the only thing that we feed people all day long is how special and wonderful and self-righteous they are. You know, everybody's talking about this woman who killed her children and now it's turned into a referendum on like postpartum depression. Like guys, are you serious right now? Like you're, no one should be safe. Like this is not, this is a murder trial. Like you're, and you're, you're turning this into teams now where it's like, Oh, you either care about women's issues and therefore applauding this person who committed murder admittedly, or you don't care about, and you don't care about women's health issues and postpartum. Like really, is it that extreme of a, those are my two choices? Cause both of those choices are insane. On the Lindsay Clancy thing. Uh, I'm curious if there's any truth, uh, to postpartum depression in, in the world of marriage. I mean, postpartum depression is a real thing. It's a massive real thing. I've represented women who, who, who suffered tremendously from postpartum depression. I think, I mean, every woman who has a baby has some significant fluctuation of hormones in their body as a function of having given birth. I mean, that's the nature of the organism, but there are a tremendous number of women who experienced some degree of postpartum depression or postpartum, even psychosis add to it. The exacerbating factors of, you know, a baby is exhausting. Hmm. Babies are stressful for a little while. Like I don't, the fact that birth rates have dropped so low and so many young women are saying, I don't ever want to have a baby. I'm not surprised because all anybody ever does on the internet is talk about how awful it is to have a baby. And by the way, it's awful. Like it's awful for a little while, but just for a little while, like that's like saying like puppies, they're cute, but they're like a pain. They're like little gremlins that try to eat everything in the house. And then they become your dog that you love and you have for a while. Like I have two sons, they're 27 and 29 years old. They were really, they're awful when they're infants. Like they're loud screaming. They don't sleep with any real rhythm. Like they can't express themselves in any way. Like it's really hard. It's really hard having a baby, but it's like one of the most rewarding things in the world. Once you get through that really hard part, like having a six month old baby or having a two year old and having a 20 year old, they're completely different. Like anybody who says to you like, Oh, being a parent's the hardest job in the world. Like for, I mean, you know, that was the hot take that we got that, you know, caused such drama is that I said, I don't think being a stay at home mom's the hardest job in the world because primarily because it gets easier with time. Like they're like, Oh, well, I guess you never stayed up with a screaming infant. And you're like, I'm sorry, you have a 19 year old that's still screaming all night because you take them to a doctor. Like that's not supposed to happen. Like, like a five-year-old, a three-year-old, it's not the same as parenting a six month old infant. So if your answer to why motherhood or fatherhood is the hardest job in the world is describing to me the most difficult temporary state. Okay. That's like saying the hardest job in the world is being a taxi driver. Why? Oh, cause I was a taxi driver downtown during nine 11. Okay. Well that's at that moment, that was a really horrifying, terrifying, terribly dangerous job. But like right now it's not quite as bad. Right. Like, so I have here, uh, one in seven mothers experience postpartum depression. I know you, I agree with you that it's degrees of it, but from this definition, it's like extreme episodes of, uh, like almost mania or depression. I think it puts tremendous strain on a marriage when you have a baby. But I also think it binds you in other ways. Like I, I think thankfully, I think it's a good thing that we have a baby. I think it's a good thing that we have a baby. I think the question of like, what strain does that put on a relationship? Like, yeah, it puts tremendous strain. I mean, I think, I don't think it's a coincidence that babies are born after we do the most fun thing you can do. Like something we're pulled to doing all the time. Like sex is such an important drive. Like, I don't think it's a coincidence. It's like, Hey, do this really fun thing so that we'll continue to exist. Like, that kind of makes sense. Cause if you were like, Hey, do you want to have like a screaming creature that needs you all the time? And it's going to like deprive you of sleep. It is going to take most of your resources and require a ton of your attention and take your partner's attention away from you. Doesn't that sound great? You'd be like, that sounds awful. I would never sign up for that. Okay. Cause it's an oversimplification to say that that's what it is. Like, like having a connection and like depth of joy and connection and connecting you to something like eternal and like something so beautiful and incredible. Like it's, it's both of those things. Algorithm doesn't know what to do with stuff like that. It doesn't know what to do with something that's amazing and horrible. It's good at amazing and it's good at horrible. Right. Would you say that's the most common time period that people get divorced is like right after having a kid? No, no, no. Um, actually I think it's a low rate. It's a lower rate for divorce because there nothing unites people like a common enemy, you know, like if you're like suffering similarly, the same reason why when the economy takes a turn, like a really sharp negative turn for a little while, the divorce rate goes down and then it spikes because economic stress will lead to a spike in the divorce rate. But initially like the common enemy of, Oh my God, we're going to lose the house. Like focuses people up. Like, you know, like th th th common stressor together that we have to like, holy shit, we got to get through this is a good way of uniting people. I mean, that's, you know, it's been posited that all politics is, is the systematic organization of human hatred. Like you're just organizing what people hate and figuring out a way to weaponize that as best you can and use it for your own ends. So I think fundamentally babies, bond people for a period of time because you're suffering the same way. And you're also elated in a similar way, but then they also create a certain long-term economic stress. They create a certain interpersonal stress between two people. They also create a lot of excuses, like convenient excuses. So it's like, you know, if I'm just not having sex with my husband, just because I'm not having sex with my husband, it's like, well, what's wrong? Why aren't you having sex with your husband? Whereas it's like, well, I've got a baby. It's like, oh, you know, yeah. Like I know women are, you know, they have an eight-year-old and they're like, oh, I haven't lost the weight from the pregnancy. It's like the pregnancy was nine years ago. Like, what are you talking about? Like, but it's a good excuse. You know, it's a good excuse. I'm really stressed about kids. You know, I'm really stressed about my kids. Like I get it. Anything that gives you an excuse to do something you wanted to do anyway, you know, like if you didn't want to sleep with your spouse anymore, cause you're just not attracted to them anymore. Like you can easily go, oh yeah, I'm stressed about work or I'm stressed about the baby or whatever. Like there's, it's, you're going to have to a person with a hammer. Everything looks like a nail, you know, to a person who wants to get drunk. Everything seems like a good reason to have a drink. I'm in a good mood. I want to have a drink. I'm having a bad day. Like you can, okay. So good things is a good reason to drink. Bad things is a good reason to drink. Like so that you just can drink. Like, that's just what you're saying. Like I'm bored. So I'm going to drink. I'm not bored. I'm excited. I'm celebrating. Like if you want to drink, you'll find a reason to have a drink. Same thing. You want to think motherhood sucks. Fatherhood sucks. You'll find a reason. There's plenty of them. You think marriage sucks. You'll find plenty of reasons why marriage sucks. You'll also find plenty of reasons why marriage is amazing. So again, I don't like to enter with my worldview, like enter with my preferences. I like to enter a little more open than that and hear both sides of the argument and see which one resonates with me, which resonates with my head, which resonates with my heart, which resonates with my gut, and then make some decisions about what I feel. That's why like people who have just too much continuity to their beliefs and the people that they choose to spend their time with. Like they just spend time with a bunch of people that agree with them. Okay. Well, am I supposed to be impressed by that? And I'm supposed to then like credit your testimony as to, well, everyone around me says A, B, and C. Right. Because you've selected a bunch of people around you who share your worldview. Like why don't you put yourself around a bunch of other people that have different worldviews and different lived experience and you might see the world a little bit differently. On AI. uh i've had a lot of conversations with people i thought you're gonna say with ai but i've had a lot of conversations with claude as well i think your view on it will be one of the most important because i will get to see if it actually is affecting marriages and wars but i think one in seven people in committed relationships regularly chat with an ai romantic companion and there's a phenomenon of young people young men and women talking to ai as a friend as a romantic partner but have you seen an ai girlfriend ruin a marriage yet i haven't um i haven't seen that i've seen ai put tremendous strain on marriages really but it's not as a function of the romantic chatbot aspect of it it's more that people are developing a hubris a a sense that they know a bunch of things they don't know like that they they feel incredibly it's kind of like when wikipedia first came out and suddenly everyone was an expert in everything because you'd be in an argument with someone and they would just pull up statistics that you're like you know you don't know those statistics you're just reading them off the thing like i can read two you know so like now everyone's just like in the law there's everyone's filing legal papers that claude or the chat gpt made for them and they're predictably wrong in predictably wrong ways because what people don't realize is that there are certain systems like the law that there's a human output so you'll actually impair yourself by trying to apply perfect logic because the law itself is written by legislatures right which is humans that won a popularity contest and then it's enforced and interpreted by judges who were elected so they're humans who won a popularity contest like this is the qualifications of the deciding factor and you're going to try to apply perfect mathematical logic and you think you're going to be able to predict the outcome based on that like that's cute i want to tussle your hair when you say shit like that like but it's not true because there's a there's a human in this system like multiple humans in this system so it's good for certain things like don't get me wrong i use ai in my practice constantly now it's great at interpreting large data sets like it used to take seven paralegals in my office two weeks to go through 13 days worth of trial transcripts and find every bit of testimony on a particular topic now you dump those pdfs into claude and say to it show me the date of testimony and who the witness was make it stylized and it spits it out in 15 minutes and it's perfect i mean it's great at that but if you say make the legal arguments for abc it's not there yet i don't know that it'll ever be there because being persuasive isn't mathematical it's a very complicated multivariate equation that has a lot to do with like a very human experience now again i don't know if romantic love will ever be threatened by that because we don't just want partners to agree with us we don't just want a partner to be perfect there's something actually weird about perfect like we kind of want cracks and things you don't think people will crave that because i mean i think people always crave agreement i think there's a part of us that craves agreement i just think you'll if everything you said i agreed with this conversation would be over fast and it would be very uninteresting like if everything you said i want that's such a good point jack you really that is you really drilled it down on that one that was great really good really good and i never disagreed with you and all you did was say something and then i went so it sounds like you're saying and then i just reiterated and regurgitated what you just said and i'm like okay i'm gonna say something and then i'm gonna say something and then i'm gonna say something and then i'm gonna say something and then i'm gonna say something like that's most undergraduate college classes like the professor just wants you to regurgitate to them what they just said their own point of view but that's also why people are increasingly dissatisfied with undergraduate education because the idea was not to tell people what to think it was to tell people what to think about it was to tell people how to construct thought and how to logically reason like and so i think what's happening with ai is that we are just digging deeper and deeper into our expectations and we're just digging deeper and deeper into our and we're not challenging ourselves in as many ways anymore and it's always dangerous to have people who just agree with you all the time so to the extent that large language models still do a lot of agreeing with you which by the way makes them useful like i want an ai to learn how i like things so that it spits out the output that i want it to i want it to be adaptive in a manner that is but that's why i'm not in a relationship with it though You know, like, I don't want a partner who's just going to agree with me 100% of the time. Like, that would not be enjoyable to me. I can't learn everything I need to know about myself from myself. Like, I need someone else. You break in relationship, you heal in relationship. Like, you don't want to marry you. You want to marry someone different than you. Disciplinary, in different ways. But you want, because you want to learn about them and you want to teach them about themselves and you want them to teach you about yourself. Like, you want someone who's going to see you in your imperfection and from a place of love, be like, hey, like, I know you're better than this. I know you can do better. Yeah, you fell down. Okay, people fall down. It's okay. Get up. I believe in you. Like, what a lovely thing to have someone who feels that way about you and to have someone you feel that way about too. And you guys are cheering for each other. That's the nicest thing in the world. That's a thing worth fighting for. And AI is just agreeing with you most of the time, unless you programmed it to disagree with you. And then it's still doing what you wanted it to do. I'm sure you've talked about this many times, but I just want to reiterate the concept because of the problem you're describing and the problem that I agree with. What are the things that people actually must agree on? In a marriage. Like, what are the things that are really important? I think it's important to agree on the direction generally that you want to be moving in together. So, like, what is important to us? Is family important to us? Is financial success what's important to us? Like, what are our priorities? I think that's really important. They don't have to be the same. But they shouldn't be antagonistic to each other. Right. Like, I think we're different. And to the extent that we're different, it should be in non-antagonistic ways. Right. So it doesn't have to be that, like, you're a neat freak and she's also a neat freak. That might be nice because you'll have a very clean apartment. But, like, if you're someone who's very rigid and very structured and very much a planner and she's also someone who's like that, that's great. Okay. That can be quite complimentary. But there's a downside to that, which is you guys will be very rigid all the time because you'll be reinforcing each other's rigidity. If you're super structured and thoughtful and a planner and she's just like fly by the seat of the pants, like relaxed, you know, just go with the flow. That could be awful. Right. Because you're just going to constantly be butting heads with each other. But it could also be an opportunity for each of you to help each other. Like, you'll help her be a little more organized. She'll help you relax a little bit and don't be so tight. It's okay. Like, relax. Like, we could just let some things go with the flow. So I think there has to be something directional. Like, we're moving in the same direction. We want to move to harmony. Like, we want to improve each other's lives. We don't want to make each other's lives more stressful and difficult. I think that is a core need, a core concept. I think sex is also gigantic. I think that sex is the glue that keeps people together in a marriage. And I think that when that starts to fall apart, the relationship starts to make less sense. These are the moments that make Nordstrom Nordstrom. Celebrating 125 years with new moments still add. What you want. Download the PrizePix app today and use code Spotify to get $150 instantly in lineups if you win your first $5 lineup. PrizePix, run your game. At ZocDoc, we know you care about your health. You wouldn't do that early morning cardio if you didn't. So the fact that your annual physical is overdue just shows how hard it can be to get seen by a doctor. Sorry, that doctor's not in network. Press 1 for more options. You've reached us outside normal business hours. 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Also called atopic dermatitis, that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies. Before starting Eblis, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Respect your time. Ask your doctor about Eblis and visit Eblis.com. Or call 1-800-424-7000. 1-800-LILLY-RX or 1-800-545-5979. And I think we have a proclivity towards not wanting to argue with our partner that I respect and understand. But I think sometimes telling your partner an uncomfortable truth in the moment is better than telling them a comfortable lie that creates false precedent. Right. Because if something bothers you or there's something your partner used to do that they don't do anymore, I think I understand why you wouldn't want to cause like any ruffling by bringing it up. But you're moving away from that person now. You're not being honest with them anymore, you know. And again, a lot of this comes down to how you present information. Because if you come home to your girlfriend and say, how come we're not having as much sex as we used to? That's going to bring out a defensive reaction from minute one. Like, well, you're not home. You know, you've been working all the time. Well, I'm working all the time because you spend all the money. Well, I'm spending the money because I'm by myself. And okay, now we're like off to the races defending our position. As opposed to if I'd come home and I'd said, you know what I was thinking about? I was thinking about, I don't know, I drove past that restaurant and I thought about how remember we went to that restaurant and then we like went back to my apartment when we were first dating and we like didn't get out of bed for a day and a half. Like, I just remember that. I was like one of the, that was so fun. Like, wasn't that the best? And now, what's she going to do? Be like, yeah, whatever. Like, oh yeah, that was really fun. Yeah, you're, God, you're so, I was so crazy about you. Like, oh my God, I still feel that way about you. You're still like wonderful. Okay, now we're in. Like, we're in, we're going, we're taking this trip together. We're getting excited about each other again. I'm bringing you back in memory. This is about me desiring you. It's not about you failing me. Like, why not frame it that way? Like, why wouldn't we frame these things differently? You know, I used the last time we talked the example about shaving and I talked about how I dated a girl and how instead of saying like, oh, your skin's so scratchy, she was like, oh, it's so sexy when you're clean shaven. I was like, I shaved like three times a day when I was dating that girl. Because I just wanted, like, the praise meant so much to me. Whereas if a girl was like, oh, your skin's so scratchy, I'd be like, oh, now I got to shave every time I see you. Like, I can't just have like one day where I don't shave because, you know, like, come on. Like, because again, it brings out something defensive. So I think it's the same concept, which is like embracing our sameness, embracing our differences, but having, we're moving in the same direction. It's important. I think sex is a piece of that. Sex is a connection you have with your romantic partner that makes it a romantic partner as opposed to just a friend. I'm not sure if this is a problem specific with my generation of men. It's probably more amplified. But it seems to me that, at least in my own life, I try to solve a lot of problems with words and try to get the words right instead of thinking about the emotions. I think we did an exercise recently. I was like, let's just try to not say any words and see if we like each other for like an hour. And it's a pretty interesting exercise because you realize like, what are the behaviors that you do in spite of the words? How do you look at each other? How do you interact? Like, what are the activities you're doing? Yeah, I mean, Wittgenstein said that when understanding fails, a word comes to take its place. And so I think sometimes like we fill the space with words and we try to explain something that really we're just need to feel our way through. Like my own therapist says this to me all the time because I'll just start like talking about something I'm feeling and she'll be like, wow, you really like are intellectualizing this rather than feeling it. And the truth is like I see, I see this in men of my generation and even of your generation because I have sons in their twenties. When something is incredibly sad to me, it's easier to be angry than it is to be sad. Like when I'm terribly sad about something, it usually looks like I'm mad at it. And I know why. I know it's not that I don't have an emotional vocabulary. It's not that I'm not an examined life. I've been in therapy a long time. It's not that I'm not evolved as a human being. It's that to me, anger feels like I'm doing something productive and sadness just feels passive. Like sadness just feels like I'm just, I'm just sad. I'm just in it. And anger feels like I'm channeling it or something. Like it has power. There's power in anger. And so for me as a man who's like a doer, you know, being angry is so much easier than being sad. But the truth is like, sometimes I'm just sad. Like sometimes something's just sad. Like in getting angry about it or like letting that like anger be instead of recognizing, no, this is just sad. Like I'm just sad. Like that, it's a hard thing to do. I think for men, what we have to do is we have to reframe it. Like I'm really trying at this, these days of my life to be very brave in the way I talk about this stuff because I'm really trying to say to men, there's something really brave about admitting that you're sad. There's something really brave about being vulnerable. Like be man enough to be sad. Be man enough to be vulnerable. Be man enough to be open. Like it's way easier to close a door than it is to hold it open. Like be sad. It's okay to be sad. Like it's okay to be brave enough to admit your mistakes. It's harder to apologize. It's braver to apologize than to just be like, oh, this is what it is. Like it's so easy to be angry. Like anger is so easy. It's so reflexive. Like it's so much harder to be soft. Like to be powerful. Like I'm not saying guys should just go out and be soft and stop being masculine. Like I think there's tremendous, I love being a masculine man. I love fighting, physically fighting. I've been doing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for 20 years. I love it. Like I love the idea of like dominating, someone physically and trying to resist someone's ability to dominate me. Like, and I, there's something amazing about that. I feel deeply in my masculinity with that, but that's not contradictory to like also being able to sit with sadness or to be moved to tears by something. Like it doesn't have to be like, again, the algorithms constantly trying to tell us it's this or that, and that's it. Those are your choices. I don't buy it. I don't buy it. I don't buy that you either have to be the, hyper-masculinized guy or you have to be like the totally effete gender fluid. Like I don't buy that. And by the way, I think that's actually what feminism was about. Like feminism was about the idea that rigid gender roles were bad. Like that they, that women could be mothers or they could be CEOs or they could be both or they could be neither. Like they get to pick, let them pick, and let them pick what fits them, their individual talents, their individual proclivities, their individual preferences. If a man wants to be a stay-at-home father, he's not less of a man than a man who wants to go out and take on the world and be hard-charging and finds fatherhood kind of like boring. You know, that's okay. Like that's great. There's room for all of us in here to be our authentic selves. And by the way, some men, the majority of men, might be super masculine. And the majority of women might be super feminine. There might be some biological pieces to this. And then there are going to be some people that that doesn't apply to them. Like they've overcome their biology or their biology is wired differently. Okay, cool. There's room for that. Like why isn't there room for that? There should be room for that. I really agree with that point. I think likely the two extremes, both are true. And you just have to put them together in a way that makes sense to you. Like I think there is definitely power in crying, if you do it in a way that feels powerful, if that makes sense. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, I do know what you mean. I think if it's productive, right? Like I think productive pain is meaningful, you know? And I think that again, like take ownership of it. You know, I think I said this to you before the cameras were rolling, we were talking about, you know, podcasts and shows. And I was saying how there's nothing less cool than trying to be cool. Like there's nothing worse than like people trying to be famous. Like you want to be famous, be interesting. Like be interesting and people will be interested in you. Don't try to figure out how to be interesting to people. Just be you and be interesting. And then people will be interested in you. Like I didn't, I didn't look for anybody to like, like I didn't call people. I don't have a publicist. I wasn't like, oh my God, I have to figure out a way to be interesting to the world. Like I, I'm just me and people tend to find it interesting. That's awesome. That's great. I'm me. I was me before anybody found it interesting. And if no one finds it interesting anymore, I'll still just be me. Like I'm just me. Cause I don't really know how to be anybody else. So I think there's something about like, oh, I'm a man. So I have to be this way or I have to be that way. Like, I don't think that's authentic. I don't think that's honest, but it's equally dishonest to pretend you don't have those drives and to pretend that those biological things don't in any way apply to you. Like they do. We're creatures of biology. Like that's okay. It's okay to admit that you're not. It's okay to admit that you're a creature of biology. Is your biology, your destiny is your biology, just an ideology. I don't think either of those things is anything but an oversimplification. I agree with that as well. Good. It's good to hear young men agreeing with that. Cause I, I think we're at a difficult moment for young men. I think for a bunch of years, you guys have been, I think, told your second-class citizens. I think everything you do is wrong. A clip of me went somewhat viral. Recently, where I was talking about boys and girls, how, if you say to a little girl, like, what do you like about being a little girl? Like almost anything she says is an acceptable answer. Like, Oh, I like being smart. Yeah. Little girls are smart. I like being strong. Yeah. Look, girls can be strong. You know, I like being gentle and nice and nurturing. Yeah. Little girls are nice and nurturing. So little boy, like if you say like, Hey, what do you like about being a boy? I'm strong. Girls are strong too. Well, I'm really smart. What are you saying? Girls aren't smart. Like it's, you know, and again, I understand why there was a tremendous amount of institutional misogyny in the world for a long period of time. And women were kept out of certain aspects of society. Thankfully we've transcended that in many ways, but now we've kind of done what we do as a culture, which was, we treated dandruff with decapitation, like take Beyonce's song girls and just change the lyrics to who runs the world, men, who runs the world, men. It's not a song anymore about how that's good. Right. But her song girls is a song of, it's good that women like take maybe next time he'll think before he cheats and swap the genders. It's a hate crime. A guy goes out and breaks her car and smashes everything she owns. Cause she was cheating. Like it's a hate crime. Whereas that song, when sung by a woman is like, yeah, girl. Why it's sexism. That's pure sexism. That's pure misandry. Now, again, the solution to misogyny is not misandry. Like you'll be surprised like hate crime is not misandry. It's pure misandry. Hate doesn't drive out hate. Love does like firefighters. Don't show up at the blaze with more fire. They bring water. Like it's the opposite, right? Like, so the idea that we're going to improve women's lives by making men's lives awful. Like we're going to show the world that women are great by talking about how much men suck. Like this is not going to work. It's a knife fight in a closet. Like just start stabbing. It's not going to work out for either side. Like, so how do we fix it? I think we fix it with curiosity and empathy and conversation, honest, non-defensive conversation. If there's anything I can teach you as a young man and as a newly married man, it would be to have open communication, like open communication with your wife. Like, help me understand you. I feel this way. Help me understand that. Or, and say to her, this is how I feel. Does that make sense to you? Like, cause it might not make sense to you, by the way. Like a lot, like I'm 53 years old and I've been in therapy for 20 years. I get like 70% of this guy and I'm in here. Like I don't completely get me. I don't know exactly why I do everything the way I do it when I do it. So if you've got it all figured out, God bless you. The best piece of advice I'd gotten about this was just that I'm not sure if he told me it directly, but just in general, that it's a dichotomy to be managed, not something to be solved in regards to marriage. And it feels like every day is a new battle, but you have to embrace that battle and expect it. You can't like learn more. Like the pattern to learn about your partner is being present and matching their emotions. And having empathy, like you're saying, rather than constantly trying to identify their patterns, appease to pass patterns. It's all about staying in the moment. I'm going to play with your metaphor a little bit though, because the thing I don't like about the idea of a battle is a battle is won or lost and a battle, there's usually an enemy in a battle. I think what you're describing is a dance, right? I think it's a dance. And in some moments you're following and sometimes the rhythm changes, so you have to change with it. And sometimes one of you misses a step and you don't just go, well, I'm not dancing anymore then. You did it wrong. You're like, oh, okay. How do we get the rhythm back? We lost the, oh, we both lost the rhythm. Like neither of us meant to, but we both did. Okay. Or, oh baby, I didn't lose the rhythm, but you did. Like maybe you didn't realize you did, but okay, let me help you. Like, or maybe you helped me find the rhythm, right? Like, and I think the purpose of, of living is to live. Like it's, you're going to die. Your wife's going to die. Like, I hope your marriage ends in death because it's going to either end in death or divorce. So I hope it ends in death. I hope it ends in death a long, long time from now, but it's going to end. Like she's loaned to you. Like she's not permanently gifted. She's going to end in death. She's loaned and you're loaned to her. Like there is a finite number of times you will kiss her. I don't know that number. You don't either. I hope it's in the hundreds of thousands. It could be three. You have no idea. And you won't know until it's done. And that's what's beautiful about it. Like that's what makes it a dance. It's a game you're not going to win. Like, but that's winning it. Like winning it is just playing it, playing it to the utmost. Giving yourself to it fully and just trying, knowing you can't win. Like the only way to win is just by playing it, playing it fully, playing it deeply. And I think that idea of it being a dance where even in yourself, like my relationship with myself, I, when I was a younger man, I used to think about, cause I have a very hard charging side of myself. Like that's very about my work and is like almost mechanical in it. Like I can go without eating. I can go with limited sleep. Like I'm really driven and I love like a challenge. I'm like a man of will, you know? And then there's a part of me that's extremely sensitive and extremely empathetic and extremely gentle and extremely like peaceful and calm and wants to like just be around the warmth of other people. And I used to think that it was a war inside of me. And that one of the things that I've learned over the years, I've learned over the years, I've learned over the years, is that I'm not the only one who should win. Like I had to figure out which is the one who should win and lean into that. So when I was like hard charging, I'd be criticizing myself for not being softer. And when I was feeling soft, I'd criticize myself for not being harder. And then I figured out probably only in the last 10 years that like, oh no, those are two very authentic aspects of me. And I just have to let them dance. And like one shows up for one sort of task and one shows up for another task. And like one shows up for another task and one shows up for another task. And I have to remember, hey, is the right person showing up for this task? Like, is this person needed from me, the problem solver? Or does this person need the warm person who's just like empathetic and compassionate? Like, and figuring that out with myself is a big, big piece of things. Like that would be for me, like the best marriage advice I could give you as a newly married man is that like, really figure out who you are. So you can bring it really authentically to that relationship. Because I think most of the people that end up in my office, the most dangerous lies are not the lies they told their spouse. They're the lies they told themselves and then told their spouse that lie, but they didn't know it was a lie. Like they stopped being honest with themselves about how they were feeling and what they were doing and what they needed and what they wanted. And so when they stopped being honest with themselves, by proxy, they stopped being honest with their partner. So like, if you can stay honest with yourself about what you're thinking, what you're feeling, and be brave enough to say it to your partner, even when she doesn't want to hear it. Because it's not what she wants to hear in that moment. But what she wants is you to be authentic and to show up and tell her the truth, right? She does. Long-term, that's what she wants. You're the only one who can give it to her. Like in relationship, you're the only one who can show up in your relationship. And by the way, you're the only thing you have control over in your relationship. You don't have control over the other person, but you have control over how you show up in that relationship. And the only way you're going to be able to show up authentically is if you're honest with yourself about what's going on inside of you. That's the first step. And I said that in my first book, that everything that ends up in my office starts because of two things. We don't know what we want, and we don't know how to express it to another person. But that first step is knowing honestly what it is that you want. And that's a very hard thing to do, and it requires a tremendous amount of courage, I think. We need to start fetishizing that, the same way that we do when we're in a relationship. The same way we fetishized ice baths. I'm more impressed. Believe me, I've done the ice bath thing. I did the Wim Hof thing. Yes, it's very hard to be in the water for three minutes very cold. Yes. It's also really hard to be honest with yourself about what you're feeling and what you're scared of and what makes you uncomfortable. I think we need to start in men fetishizing that battle and really saying, yeah, get in there. Are you man enough to get in there? Are you man enough to be honest with yourself and your partner? It's so easy to just be like, yeah, women suck. I'm just not even doing that. I'm just going to use them, and I'm just going to whatever. If it floats, flies, or fucks, rent it. Don't buy it. Why would you buy it? You're crazy. That's easy, so easy, and empty. Again, maybe some people, they'll find that life happy forever. Okay, knock yourself out. But I think realistically, it's harder and braver to challenge yourself to find depth of connection. I think it's harder and braver to challenge yourself to find depth of connection. in yourself and then with another person. And nothing is more attractive to a woman than a guy who knows what he wants and stays here as well. Well, but it's uncomfortable. I think women love saying that until they have a guy who actually tells them the truth. Right. It's hard. It's hard to hear your, listen, it's very hard to hear your partner's cheating on you. But you know what else is hard? Having your partner say, hey, I'm feeling really disconnected from you and my eyes start to wander. And I don't want it to, but I'm feeling restless in this relationship. Man, that is hard to hear. But my God, which would you rather hear? Which would you rather hear? I would rather hear my partner say, hey, I don't know what's going on. Maybe it's me. Maybe it's us. Maybe it's you. Maybe it's just the moment we're in. I'm feeling very like pulled in other directions right now. And I don't want to be. I want to be in this. Like there was a time, I was so in this and I feel like I'm a little less in this. Like, are you as into me as you used to be? And if the answer, like, if I have to ask, we've got something to talk about. Right. That's fair. But, but again, is that an easy conversation? No. Is it what you feel like doing on a Friday night? No, God, no. Like life's hard, man. Like, let's just have fun. Let's just, whatever. Let's not look at that. Okay. But it's easier to not go to the gym too. Like it's easy, like the hard thing to do and the right thing to do almost always. It's always the same thing. Almost always in almost every setting, hard thing to do, right thing to do. Usually the same thing. I think that's great advice. And that particularly is very true on the line portion. Have you seen couples get divorced after one of them lied about wanting kids? Yeah. Yeah. I think there's a, so there's degrees of that. Sometimes who we are and who we want to be are two different things. Like who we, like to be. Right. Right. Or like to be perceived as. Right. Yeah. So like sometimes people are like, oh, I think I'd really like to be a dad. And then when the reality of being a dad, like it's really easy for me to say, like, I think I'd do very well in a zombie apocalypse. Right. Cause there isn't one currently. Like it's very easy. Like we, you know, having trained Brazilian jujitsu for a long time, like it's really fun to watch, uh, like UFC with people who have no training in fighting whatsoever. Cause they just are like, I would do this. And you're like, you've literally never been punched. Like, what do you do? You have no idea. You're like, I would do this. And you're like, you wouldn't even be able to think clearly while that was going on. Your adrenaline would be going so high. So when the idea of having children and the reality of let's actually have children now are, there's a pretty far distance between those two things. Like I know a lot of guys who are like, I really want to get married and have kids. And I'm like, nothing in your life is tracking in the direction of you actually wanting to get married and have children. You're living in Miami. You're banging Instagram models. Like what aspect of your life reveals that you would like to have you, I think you would like to be a person who would like to get married and have kids, but you're not currently. And that's okay. Like, but just be honest with yourself about that. So that's one piece is I think there are people that they'd like to think, so they're lying to themselves and therefore lying to their partner. Then I think there are people that legitimately want this thing, but don't really know what's involved in it. And when they get to the reality of it, they go, oh, wait, like that's going to be very expensive. And it's going to change sort of the focus of our relationship. Like, like when you have a kid, someone other than you becomes really, really important. And for people that are used to being the center of things, that's an adjustment. Good news is most people love their children so much that they actually love them more than they love themselves. And so it's a good fit, but that's not automatic in everybody. And it's not always easy. There are moments where you're sort of frustrated and you're like, oh, I miss my partner. And now my partner is very fixated on this baby who I also love. So I'm kind of frustrated that I feel this frustration. Like, cause so it's very human. It's very, you know, it's challenging. I think there are of course, people who just straight up lie, like straight up lie about what they want, just because they, they know what they're supposed to say in order to attract attention from somebody. Like every woman I've ever met who says, you know, I don't want a big wedding. I would never want a big wedding. Or I would definitely sign a prenup. No problem. I would definitely get, and then, okay, great. Sign this. Oh, well, wait a minute. I just want to look at that. I mean, wow. It's very unromantic that you would even want, and you're like, okay, wait a minute ago, you were totally okay with a prenup. Like I do prenup negotiations, you know, constantly. Cause I represent a lot of people in the context of prenups. And it's very funny. Cause guys come in all the time and they're like, oh yeah, she's totally cool with doing a prenup. We talked about it from like right away when we were talking about it. And then when we actually start doing the prenup, it turns into like, well, wait a minute. And the guy's like shocked half the time. Cause he's like, I can't believe it. She said, she was totally cool with a prenup. Like, right. When it was just an idea, but when you're actually doing it now, it's a little bit more. Now again, is that, that that person was lying? I don't know that it's that. I don't know that that person like knew that they were against it. I think it's that the idea of it seemed fine. And now the reality of it, like, haven't you ever been like on the rollercoaster and it seemed like a good idea. And now you're like going up and up and up and up. And you're like, oh, oh, I don't think I want to be on a rollercoaster anymore. This is not fun. I did not know that. Like it's, I, I, I'm sure there are people, that get in the plane to go skydiving and then they get up there and they're like, yeah, no, I've changed my mind. I'm not jumping out of this plane. Like that's okay. But I think you got to be honest with yourself and with your partner. But yeah, I think there are people that there's all degrees of how people approach parenthood. I mean, it's a definitional change. Like it's a massive change. Like it's a change to your identity. Like, you were Jack and now you're Jack, someone's husband. And then you're going to be maybe Jack, someone's dad. Like that's a whole different thing. And by the way, I tell you from experience, it holds up a different mirror. Like it's a scary and brave thing having kids because suddenly it's not just what man do I want to be? It's what men do I want to model for these, someday going to be men. Because I know with my father, he sat there smoking a cigarette telling me you shouldn't smoke. It's bad for you. I got the message. I smoked cigarettes. I was like, oh yeah, yeah, sure. Cigarettes are bad for you, but he smokes. So that's what men do. They smoke. Now, thank God I quit smoking right after college. So my sons didn't grow up watching me smoke cigarettes. So when I said smoking is bad for you, you shouldn't smoke. I smoked. It was a really bad thing. It was really hard to quit. Like these are important things, but it holds a to you. It challenges you in some ways. And not everybody's up for that challenge. Not everybody wants to have that level of introspection. You have to look at yourself a lot if you're going to parent properly. This episode is brought to you by Nordstrom. For 125 years, Nordstrom has been part of your story. The stylist who found the perfect outfit for your big interview. The first pair of walking shoes for your one-year-old. The tomato soup you shared with your sister at the cafe. These are the moments that make Nordstrom, Nordstrom, big or small. We're here for all of it. Sorry, that doctor's not a network. Press one for more options. The next availability is in. Read real patient reviews, then book instantly. Eblis, labrakizumab LBKZ, a 250 milligram per 2 milliliter injection, is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema. Take your time. Ask your doctor about Eblis and visit Eblis.com or call 1-800-LILLY-RX or 1-800-545-5979. We have no stores. No, it's not. It's just weather. See MintMobile.com. SimpliSafe keeps danger away from your family with three layers of protection. Plan starting around $1. On your parents, when you were six, your mom was diagnosed with. Leomyosarcoma. Soft tissue sarcoma. Yeah, she had cancer. How long was she given to live? Six months. Six months. Three to six months. How many times was she given six months to live? Seven. Seven times she was told she had six months to live. Until the last time. And then the last time she was told she had six months to live and she lived two years. And then she died. From that cancer. She died from Leomyosarcoma. They got the number wrong. You know, they. When I was six, they told me she had six months. Turns out she had, like, 46. Something years. But it did ultimately take her. But they routinely told her, and therefore us, that she was imminently dying. And your dad stayed with her. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, my dad stayed with her until her death. On that topic, and I do want to talk about your parents, but when you get married, the vows are in sickness. And in health. Is there a specific kind of person, like men or women, or maybe a diagnosis that often leads to divorce? Like, do people really stay together through sickness and in health? Um. So, illness sometimes is that common enemy that binds people. The worst statistics for staying together are loss of a child. If people lose a child, the divorce rate spikes incredibly high between that couple. And I think that's because they become a living reminder of that pain to the other person. I've had a number of divorces I've done where people lost a child. And it's a very, very depressing case to be involved in. Because you know these people are just in pain. Like, they're just in pain, and they don't know who to blame or how to navigate that grief. And. You know. They take it out on each other or on the marriage. And that's sad to see. But, I mean, the saddest thing in the world has happened to these people. So, it's the loss of the marriage is certainly a loss, but the loss of the child. For most people, that's like the most unfathomable loss, you know. It's the most unnatural thing to bury your child. So, that's a huge cohort. In terms of illness. I've not seen a lot of. I've not seen a lot of divorces as a function of one partner suffering from illness and the other person losing patience with it. I'm not seeing that. And I think if it was something that was a routine thing, I would see it. Because I've been doing this for a really long time. And I represent all kinds of people, and I see all kinds of trends. I haven't really seen that. What I will tell you is, anyone who's ever lived with or loved someone who has serious chronic illness and or serious chronic pain, inescapable pain changes a person's personality. My mom, with each recurrence of her cancer, became more and more angry, sad, frustrated, difficult to access her joy. You know? And I don't blame her for that. You know? Like, I herniated my L5-S1 doing deadlifts once. And I was in severe sciatic pain for about 8 weeks. I was so short with everyone. Like, because I was just at pain. Like, physical pain. Inescapable physical pain. I couldn't hardly sleep. No position was comfortable. It was horrible. So, I get it. Like, I get it. You know? But it doesn't change the fact that, like, it's hard to be around someone who's like that. And also, you miss the person. Before the cancer, like, took so much joy from my mom. Like, she was a much happier person. And cancer took that away. It took away her happiness. It took away her hair. It took away her pride, her self-esteem, her bodily autonomy. It took everything from her. And, you know, it took her joy. And it -- when you're a kid, you don't really understand that. You just understand that mom's just always in a bad mood now. Mom's angry a lot. As an adult now, I can look back on it and go, like, oh, she was in so much pain. You know? Like, I have so much more empathy, you know? But 12-year-old me didn't get it. You know? 12-year-old me didn't understand what was going on. You know? So I think it's really difficult when someone you love is suffering in a way that's inescapable and you can't do anything about it. Like, it's one of the worst pains in the world. I hope you have a very limited amount of it in your life. That people you love are in inescapable pain and you can't do anything about it. Like, you can't throw money at it. You can't fix it. Like, that's a really, really hard pain. Like, that's a really, really humbling, hard thing to have happen. You described your mom as the kind of woman who would cry listening to a song. Mm-hmm. Yeah, when I was a kid, my mom -- everything poetic about me is from my mom. Everything soft in me is from my mom. Everything hard-charging and disciplined in me is from my dad. My dad was a Naval Academy graduate, Vietnam veteran. Businessman. Like, very -- a man of will. And my mom was just all heart. My mom was just lovely. Like, she was just soft and she loved music and she was very unselfconscious and expressing joy. She loved to cook. She loved to garden. She loved animals. Every kind of animal. She fed the birds. She fed the squirrels. She took in every stray, everything. She just loved every -- she was just one of the most, like, warm people in the world. She was just one of the most, like, warm, loving, happy people in the world. And, yeah, she was very effusive in her expression of emotion. My dad was very icy. My dad was an alcoholic. My dad was a Vietnam veteran. He had bad PTSD. So he was very -- his emotions were always pushed down and he was very focused. My mom was the opposite. Like, my mom was just warm all the time. And very, like -- she didn't care if she looked silly. She kind of liked looking silly. Like, she would sing really loud. And she would sing -- she would sing really loud along with the radio. And she would always get the lyrics wrong, but she didn't care. Like, she just would, like -- she would just, like, say -- like, she was so -- she danced. She loved to dance. Like, she would just dance by herself in the kitchen. Like, and she was just very, like, unselfconsciously. And, yeah, she would be very moved. She would be very moved by things. She was very moved by poetry and music. And I remember many, many, many times growing up, like, her just being, like, moved to tears. by the beauty of a poem or a song. And I just, I just thought that was normal. Like, that's what you, like, if something's moving and it moves you to tears, just let them come. Like, there's nothing to be self-conscious about. Your mom, her dad, he was an alcoholic. He was an alcoholic. Like most women who marry alcoholics, their fathers were alcoholics, but yes. How did she see you as her little boy? I think my mom, it's very hard to separate my mom from her illness because my mom's illness, my father's alcoholism, it's all like an ecosystem. You know, like you add a lizard to an ecosystem, you don't have like the old ecosystem plus lizards. You have a whole new ecosystem. Because the lizard eats the bug and the bug eats the plant and now nothing's eating the plant, so the plant overgrows. Like, and then if you were like, oh, let me get rid of the lizard, it doesn't go back to what it was because now the plant is overgrown because the bugs weren't there anymore. Like, that was what my household was. Like all households, it was an ecosystem. So my father's alcoholism, my mother's illness, my father's hard chargingness, my mother's sensitivity, me having the journey that any young person has. Like my mom, when I was a little boy, was really good at me because a little boy is just like little and happy and warm and could be the same as a little girl. She's like, it's like a little kid, just a little kid. Boys and girls, when they're in kindergarten, they're just, you know, wide-eyed and kind of like, you know, they just love everything. They try, they both cry, they both whatever. Like they're just kind of, they haven't figured out that rigidity yet or the hormones haven't kicked in and turned it into. You know, I was talking to a woman the other day. We're having a conversation. We're having this discussion about feminism. And she said, oh, well, you know, I have two sons and like they're so warm and wonderful and soft and gentle. And I'm like, how old are they? And she's like, oh, five and seven. I'm like, yeah, testosterone hasn't kicked in yet. They're going to change. Like they're going to change. They're going to turn into boys and then turn into men. And then like, believe me, like it's, that's a thing. It's going to happen. You know, their bodies are going to change. Their brains are going to change. Like I'm not saying they won't still have warmth and beauty and all those things in them, but they're going to change. Like I think when I was a kid, when I was very little like that, my mom knew how to navigate me. And I think when I started to become a man, more of a man, more resembling a man, like you do when you're 10, 11, 12, she didn't really know how to navigate that. And at the same time, she was dealing with these horrible physical issues because she was, you know, her cancer kept coming back. And so I think I'm the only man she ever had any control over like her father was an alcoholic. And like all alcoholics, everything in the house sort of ended up having to revolve around his chaos. Then she married my father who was an alcoholic and everything in the house revolved around his chaos. So I was the first man she ever had any power or control over. And she was also really, really struggling and in pain. So yeah, she wasn't kind to me anymore. When she passed, the therapist had you write a letter to her. Well, it was an exercise. So it's a useful exercise. You could certainly use it in your own life with anyone that you have challenges with, living or dead. After my mom passed away, I was talking to the therapist about it because there were a lot of things that we didn't get to say to each other that I think would have been helpful, you know. We had closure of a, not the sort, but not the sort you imagine. You know, you imagine in your head, you're gonna have this moment of like real closure. We had some closure, but not of the kind I'd imagine. And the therapist gave me a really useful exercise. They said, "Write your mom a letter." Now it's easy to do because I knew she wouldn't read it 'cause she's dead. So I knew I was just doing this as a thought exercise. So I did. I wrote a letter saying all the things I felt like I needed to say to her. Like, these are the ways that I loved you. And these are the ways that I loved you. And these are the ways that I felt like you didn't love me. And these are the ways that I feel like I wish things had been different between us. And these are the things I want to apologize for. And these are the things I feel like you owe me an apology for. These are the things I wish were different for you. And these are the things I wish were different for me. You know, I really said all the things I needed to say. And then I read it out loud to my therapist. And that was very hard. Like it was, it was hard to, to give voice to all of those things and to admit them to myself. But then the therapist did something that, you know, only a sneaky therapist would do. And that is, he said, that was really good. I want you to write a letter back from her to you. And that was much harder. But it was also an incredibly powerful experience. Because I wrote all the things that I, that I wish she would have said to me. Or that I believed to be true if she saw the truth. And what it taught me, aside from being very cathartic, because you get to hear the things that you wish this person had said to you, it also taught me that I already have the answers. Like that I, I know why she did what she did. I know why she felt what she felt. And I have a right to feel. The things I felt and she had a right to feel and do the things that she did. Like there were no good guys. There were no bad guys. Like there were just two human beings playing the cards they were dealt. - So the letter back from her to you, did you write that as though it were her accurately responding to you? - No. - Or what you would wish she would say back? - What I would imagine she would say if she had a different insight. Most of, I mean, I think most of our life is in our imagination. Like most of the things happening in your brain right now are happening in your imagination. The future hasn't happened yet. So you're imagining what you're gonna have for dinner. You're imagining who you're gonna be in 10 years. You're imagining who you're gonna be in 20 years. You're imagining what role AI will play in the universe. You're imagining, like you're just imagining all day long. And the past is, it's a form of imagination too, because you don't perfectly recall everything that happened and it's all filtered through your subjective experience. So the only thing that's accurately unfolding right now is the present, this moment. So I think all that that process of writing a letter really is, is just an active imagination. Like it's actively imagining what could she say that would heal you? Like you have this imagination in your mind of what closure, would look like. Great, what would it look like? Like what would this person say to you? Would they apologize? Would that make you feel better if they apologized? If they apologized, what would they be apologizing for? How did they hurt you? Is that what it was for you? For me it was that, yeah. For me it was her saying to me, you know, it wasn't about you. Like I felt powerless. I didn't have power over my husband. I didn't have power over my father. I was in pain all the time. It wasn't about you. You were lovely and you deserved to be loved and you shouldn't be scared to let people comfort you. You shouldn't be scared to need comfort 'cause it's not always gonna go away. It's not gonna die in six months all the time. It helped. Did it fix it? I don't think it fixed it. I don't know that that's the goal. Like I think the goal is to just get better, like a little better. Or as better as you can get. Like I don't know that you can spend 40 years of your life knowing that your primary attachment figure from birth is gonna die in six months. I think it wires your brain different. But I have the brain I have. Like and I can do with it what I can do with it. I'm, I think there's some things in me that might not ever change, no matter how much therapy I throw at them or introspection I throw at them. But I, I'm learning to love who I am. And I'm learning to see the gifts in it. I think my mom's illness was a great curse of our family, but it also was a great gift. It taught me about impermanence. It taught me about, about how everything is loaned to you and nothing is owned. And how, how could you be afraid to lose anything? 'Cause nothing was ever yours. Like you never had anything. It was never yours. Like it was loaned to you. And I think that that's been a gift to me. Like I think I relate to the world and to my sons, to the people I love differently because of that. I'm constantly thinking about the, the nature of, of endings. I think I'm a good divorce lawyer because of it. I think my father's alcoholism made me crave control and avoid chaos. And I think that made me, a phenomenal lawyer. and gave me an attention to detail that's through the roof. And, you know, I think being lonely and isolated for so much of my life made me have a decided case of not really giving much of a fuck, which gave me the freedom to just play in the world in a way that's built me an incredible life. So I don't know. I think you can't have my life without a mother who has cancer. You can't have my life without a father who is an alcoholic. Like, when my father got sober 10 years ago, he did what a lot of people do when they get sober, which is he felt the pain that he caused, and he was very apologetic. And I just remember saying to him, like, I love my life. Like, I wouldn't want to be anyone other than who I am. Like, I love it. Like, I feel like I'm so beyond blessed. Like, I love it. Like, I've lived more life than, like, so many people I know. Like, I've loved more. I've got two amazing sons who are adults now. Like, I've crushed it professionally at the highest level. Like, this is ridiculous. This is ridiculous, this life. It's incredible. Like, I'm so blessed. Like, if it took it all the way tomorrow, I had more than I should have ever had. And so, like, how can I look at my dad and, like, all those things that he got, quote, unquote, wrong, like, turned me into the person that I am, that gave me the life that I have? Like, so, I'm learning in therapy to attend to the parts of me that feel pain from it and to, like, let myself feel that pain. And to be honest, that there is, like, seven-year-old Jim in there, really sad, you know, and really afraid of loving anybody or holding on to anything because he's afraid he's going to lose it. So, he just tells himself, he doesn't need it. I'm trying to, like, not yell at him. I'm trying to let him be there. And I'm trying to realize that him being there won't make me lose my edge. Like, that I don't have to, you know, feelings are like little kids. You know, you can't let them drive, but you can't shove them in the trunk either. Like, you kind of have to, like we said earlier, you have to do the dance. If you had to distill between your mom, and your dad, like, what's the one thing your dad taught you? And what's the one thing your mom taught you? Gosh, that's a great question. I think my dad taught me that a man should have a code. Like, a man should have the things he does and the things he doesn't do. Like, he taught me that in word. Like, 'cause he was a military man. And he also taught me by the negative example. Because he was, he was constantly failing, you know. Because of, you know, trauma, and weakness, and alcoholism, and PTSD, and all those things. It was never that he's a bad person. But he, he taught me about having a code. Like, and that it, that was an important part of being a man. It's like, these are the things I do, and these are the things I don't do. And to, like, just have enough courage to have conviction in yourself. And to have conviction in your code, you know. My mom, I think my mom just taught me a lot about beauty. She taught me a lot about how, like, softness, and love, and beauty. You know, my mom, when I think of my mom now, she's been gone for ten years. But when I think of my mom, I, I think of her in the yard with the dogs. Like, she loved, she had always had a couple of dogs. And they were always rescues. And she was so kind to them, and gentle with them. And some of them were, like, rescues that had been abused. So they were, like, skittish. And she was always, like, infinitely patient. And they always, like, pressed right up against her. Because there was something about her that was so gentle and kind. And I think that taught me a lot about who I want to be as a person. Like, I always want to be a strong person. And I always want to be as strong and disciplined and focused as the best parts of my father. And I always want to be as soft and kind and warm and empathetic as the best parts of my mother. And if I can, if I can harness those two pieces of those two people, those two authentic aspects of who they were, and amplify that in my life, then I'll be very proud of myself. These are the moments that make Nordstrom, Nordstrom. Celebrating 125 years with new moments still ahead. Football is back. And PrizePix is bringing out their best. 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I love that because that's, it's almost the secret to a good marriage in the first place is finding a person that, like you're basically choosing a person to combine your traits with that will make great kids, you know? Well, I see it in my own sons, I'll be honest. I, having sons and being divorced was a really amazing lesson for me in part because I see all of my favorite things about my ex. My ex-wife in my sons, like my ex-wife has an incredible sense of humor, like a really dark sense of humor, but a great one. Like we, we were friends before we dated and I, they have her sense of humor, which is very similar to mine. And like, so we just, I still get to experience it. I don't really talk to her as often anymore, but because the boys are grown now, but every time I talk to her, I still like really like her sense of humor. Like she's just hilarious. And she's also like fascinated with history. She's really, really into history. She's a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution. And she like traced her whole lineage. And my sons both have like an abnormal interest in history, which they got from their mom, which I don't share, but I always thought was really cool that they were like, she was so lit up about something. But what was also interesting is learning how to navigate the parts of my ex-wife I didn't like. And my children, like my ex-wife has a temper, short views. She'd call it an Irish temper. She's Irish. And, uh, I could divorce her, but then my sons have my ex-wife's temper sometimes and I can't divorce them. So I had to learn, okay, how do I navigate this personality trait that I'd didn't like in the two people I love more than any one in the world. And I imagine she probably had the same challenge because my sons have the best of me and they have the worst of me. And so I'm sure she's had that same challenge sometimes where she's got to listen to me come out of their mouth and go, oh my God, like I hated it when I was married to it. Now I got to hear it out of my kid, but what a lovely thing, you know, like it, I felt like that was God talking to me, like saying like, yeah, you can't divorce this. You got to sit in it and figure it out, buddy. And I thought that was good. I needed to learn that lesson. Made me a better man to learn that lesson. It seems like the worst parts of people are also like the inverse of the best parts of them. So the reasons you love people, the same reasons you hate them. Yeah, that's true of me. I think, I think that, that, you know, the things that are my greatest strengths are also my greatest weakness, you know, my intensity and my like intellectualization of things and my gift of talking. They're also like a way for me to talk so much that I don't have to feel things, you know, like it's, it's definitely, yeah, I think what's virtue's vice. I think you, you, you know, they're just ingredients. Have you seen someone get divorced because of TikTok live? Yeah. Well, that's an oversimplification. I've seen someone lose their mind on TikTok and then that became the precipitating factor in their divorce. But I think it was a mental health issue more than just TikTok live. I mean, I had a case where I was representing a woman whose husband began sort of obsessively spending time on TikTok live, trying to like, win some kinds of competitions and also like buying. I learned a lot about this, like lions and universes and galaxies. There's certain levels of giving. TikTok has this incredible monetization that you can for $500 buy a galaxy. You pay them $500, you give it as a gift to another TikTok user and they get $400. So TikTok keeps that hundred in the middle, so they make money on it. And this, you're giving money to this person. Now I think, again, it's like being at a casino. Like you don't feel like it's money because it's, it's just a chip. It's not money, but the chip is worth money. Like you bought the chip with money. So this guy was quite successful and just started like giving away money to mostly beautiful women from Brazil and, and, and Mexico. A couple of other places. No one in the US, no one he'd ever actually met. And yeah, he, he ended up giving away in the first month and a half, he gave away over $300,000. By last count, I think he was somewhere in the area of like seven, $800,000. It was kind of insane because he, he was a very intelligent, educated person, but he, he kind of gone crazy. It was irrational. Like he seemed to be of the mind that he was creating a business. Like he was going to create like an entertainment. He was going to become like a creator on TikTok and his character was going to be this guy who gives away money to people. The problem with the business model was the amount of money he was giving away versus the amount of money he was getting from TikTok monetization. Was like, he'd given away at one point $300,000 and made like $14 in total views. So he was donating to women, just giving money away to women. And like, it would pop up on screen, like you've got a galaxy. Yes. And they would like, like be so excited and he would like screenshot it or whatever. And then he would play that as his video. It was like, his thing was that he was like this guy who's like, making women's day. It was like a pimp daddy vibe. I don't know what he was trying to, I don't know what he was going for. So he thought he was Mr. Beast. Sort of, but without a business model. Right. Like, and not, and he wasn't like a MD motivator. Like he wasn't like giving away money to people that needed it. He was just giving money to hot girls. Like it, it was odd to me because I already think the concept of a strip club is insane. Cause like a strip club is like a woman's going to take off her clothes and I'm going to pay her to not have sex with me. That's like going to a restaurant where you're allowed to order food and then you can't eat it. Like you can just yell at it. Like, like you bring out a Turkey and you're like, Oh, I bet you go good with gravy. Like there's not like, you don't get to eat it. Like that seems very strange that you'd pay money for that. So this is even weirder because you're not even in a room with the person. You're not even in a room with the person. Like you're just watching them on a screen in another country, be excited about the fact that you're giving them money. And it's not like they're, they need money for like my, their family, or they're like have a pet with a medical issue or something, you know, something that you'd be like, Oh, I'm going to like change this person's life in a positive way. These were just like good looking girls who were like dancing in their rooms. Hmm. Yeah. I mean, it was, it was, the divorce was, it was really ugly. Um, he got hit with wasteful dissipation of marital assets. He lost custody of his kids. I don't think he's seen them in over a year or more, probably two years at this point. Um, yeah, I think he had some kind of mental health issue. Did he lose custody because of the TikTok thing? He lost custody because of the erratic behavior that the TikTok amplified. Like he had other issues, like he had other significant issues, like he had anger issues and substance. Yeah. He, he, um, but that was the most glaring example of like, Oh, no sane person. Like even if he had said, yeah, I did this and it got carried away. And I realized now that was like nuts. That would have been like forgivable. But he, to this day would say to you like, Oh no, that was like good business. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It made sense. Any day now. Did you say something like, uh, you represented trillionaires in cases? Billionaires. My wealthiest clients probably worth $8 billion. I've never, I've never represented a trillionaire. I think there've only been, I think, I think Elon Musk was the only trillionaire currently. Hundreds of, I, I, I represent a high net worth and ultra high net worth. High net worth is generally defined as a marital estate of over 10 million. Ultra high net worth is like over a hundred million. Right. The quote I had was the game changed so the people at the top could have trillions instead of billions. And I know because I represent them in their divorces. Yeah. So I, I think I was speaking more in the aggregate. I mean, I represent a number of billionaires where people married to billionaires. Most people are in the, who are wealthy New Yorkers in finance, um, are in the wealthiest New Yorker in the world. I mean, I'm not saying the hundreds of millions range. There's fewer billionaires. What do billionaires fight over in divorce? Money. Money, kids, property, but mostly money. You would think that when you have that much money, that divorce would be easier because you'd be like, oh, I have $800 million. You'll have four, I'll have four, and we're both going to be really, really rich. Hmm. You'd be surprised. People's lifestyles adapt to their circumstances. So if you have a burn rate, if you've only seen the trajectory of your wealth go up, giving away half of it is very challenging for someone. Or if you've had the ability, you're going to get a few hundred million dollars in your divorce, but you're not going to have a private jet anymore because you're no longer married to the guy who owns the private jet, who's going to continue to make lots of money. And you're just going to have the money you have and whatever money that money makes, because if you have hundreds of millions of dollars, that's also an income stream. If invested even conservatively. But yeah, it's an adjustment for people. I mean, most people's lifestyles are tied in some way to their net worth. So if you're used to having a $70 million house in the Hamptons, and now you have a $5 million house in the Hamptons, you're going to feel like you took a major step down. If you have a $20 million penthouse, and now you have a $5 million two-bedroom apartment, that's someone's dream apartment. But to you, it's a massive step down. So, you know, it's all relative. What you learn representing, I started out representing people on the assigned council plan, where I got $25 an hour to represent them. So I represented the indigent poor for the first few years of my career. And now I represent billionaires. What you learn in that amounts of money, enough and not enough. And that's it. If a hundred million dollars is not enough, I promise you 200 won't be. And if two isn't, four won't be. Like it's a horizon that just forever recedes. So you either have to figure out like, okay, I've got like, cause I will say as someone who did not grow up with money and now thankfully has been successful. Anyone who says that money isn't useful and good to have is lying. Like it makes a lot of things easier having money. I agree. Yeah. Yeah. And I would not want to be poor again. It's great having money, but does it solve a lot of the fundamental problems of life? No. Like money is like technology. It offers real solutions to imaginary problems and imaginary solutions to real problems. But money is a great servant and a terrible master. Like if you use money to have the things you need and to ensure that the people that you love have some sense of security and safety and the things that they need, that's a wonderful, wonderful gift. But if you consider money, the goal, like numbers on a page, you will eventually, you know, everything in this room from my tie to your tie to your tie tack to it'll end up on a dustbin somewhere someday. It'll end up on a dustbin. It'll end up on a trash heap. Like it's just stuff. I remembered this from last year that Andy Bustamante, a former CIA officer, told me that he, what was it? The highest divorce rate of any occupation more than stay-at-home moms or CIA agents. Oh, interesting. Well, that's a small number though. And it'd be impossible to track because they're, they're dark agents. So you don't always know, so it's an unfalsifiable claim. That makes sense. It's, it checks out to me because I don't be able to lie to each other, you know, but have you ever represented like agents in a case? Um, so I've represented all kinds of law enforcement. When you interact with someone who is in the CIA, they don't identify as being in the CIA. They say they work for the state department. And usually when you ask them, what do you do for the state department? They say things like I work in computers or I work in intelligence. They're, they're not allowed to say that they're in the CIA. So even when you're representing them, they tell you, I work for the state department. Their paycheck is from the state department. Like they're, they're not. Similarly, no one who's ever said they're in the mafia is in the mafia. Like I've represented a number of mobbed up people. They say I'm an entrepreneur or I have a number of business interests or I'm a business owner or I'm in waste disposal or I'm in pest control or I'm in like they have, I own car washes. I own adult entertainment clubs. So if somebody says, you know, that they're in the mob or someone says they're in the CIA, they're probably not because I mean, X, certainly X CIA, some people just like X Navy SEALs, like can sometimes talk about things that, have been declassified or that they've decided they're going to share with the world. You know, I don't, uh, not to quote Vince Staples from street punks, but you know, there's a line from that song. You ain't ever caught a body. I know it cause you talk about it. I think that's true. Like when you represent killers, when you represent mobbed up people, when you represent people who work in like, you know, covert service, they, they don't talk about it. They intentionally don't talk about it because part of that is not talking about it. Are those cases particularly interesting for any reason? Because I know a lot of CIA officers typically marry other CIA people in intelligence. Yeah. I mean, my experience is that people who work for any government position, it's not very interesting because the division of assets is really straightforward. Like if someone's an active member of any like black ops or any, um, like FBI SWAT, any, uh, like special forces, they often don't have kids because the demands of that job. Um, or if they do have kids, it's very clear who is the primary parent and the other person's more, you know, on the road. So custody is not hard and they work for the government. Like when you work for the government, you're a W-2 wage earner. Like there's not a lot to talk about in a divorce. Like you have a pension interest, you have a house maybe. You know, you don't have a very complicated asset profile. If you're a C-suite executive, you have a closely held business perhaps that has restricted stock options that are hard to value. Like the complexity of a divorce is usually a function of the complexity of the asset profile. Like a lot of my time is spent trying to figure out what people have and how, how to divide it. Yeah. Can you, as a lawyer, like, uh, this is just my curiosity, so I think there's a thing where people can like buy private metadata from like third-party companies. Like imagine you and I are married, we get divorced and I buy the private metadata from your phone that shows you spent a hundred thousand dollars on TikTok live. Like is that, can that be in evidence? Um, yeah. If something that's obtained legally, like if it's part of a public market, then yes, you can broker in data. Like there are data brokers out there that are legitimately and legally available. So if you're a lawyer, you can broker in data. So if you're a legalist selling personal information about you, is that used a lot often? Um, it's usually not relevant. There's other mechanisms to get that information. There's very little information that you can glean from those things that I couldn't get from a subpoena. Like we'll send subpoenas. Like we do pretty comprehensive document discovery and it's hard to move money. Ever since 9-11 and the Patriot Act, it's really hard to move money without leaving a trace. Like unless you get paid in cash and you keep it cash and never put it in a bank. And you can subpoena like a crypto wallet or something like that. Well, most people who hold crypto don't hold it in a hard wallet. Most people who own crypto own it in a traditional like bank that trades in fiat currency. Right. So like if you're on Coinbase, like you're, you have crypto, but a lot of the decentralized currency aspect of cryptocurrency is now lost on you. Right. It's numbers on a screen. Like if somebody has a hard wallet, it's pretty hard to prove that. Right. So if you have a hard wallet, you have to have a hard wallet. Hard to prove the existence of a hard wallet. It's like proving how did, how much cash do I have in my briefcase right now? Really? Yeah. It's a hard wallet. There's no, there's no proof of a hard wallet. I mean, you can show money going out and then say, okay, I'm going to infer that that money went to as long as there was some third party purchase. But again, if you use a third party purchase agent, like most people do, most people buy crypto by going to things like Coinbase or like a third party agency, which then leaves a trail. Then I can subpoena them. What they then do with it, you know, but I've had a couple of people where there was like a hard wallet at issue. I had a client who I was pretty sure had like a significant, like they, they claimed that they'd had a hard wallet and then they lost it. And then, you know, but they were very generous in the divorce and they wanted it over with pretty quick. And I was like, I bet they're sitting on that, that hard wallet. Well, everyone, this has been your guest, James Sexton. This is the Jack Neal podcast. We're just going to do this every year or are we going to like, you know, was it a year ago that we did it? When was it? I think it was November. So about a year and a half. Okay. So I'm just wondering if like every couple of years, we're just going to check in, you know, on, on where you're at, you know, like when you'll. Yeah. I hope to keep the conversation going as marriage evolves and relationships evolve. I enjoy your conversations. I will say I, when we first sat down together, I didn't really know you. I just knew you were like a young guy who, you know, had an interesting point of view from what I could tell and, and seemed very, you were very persistent about wanting to sit down with me, which I appreciated the tenacity of that. It reminded me of my own youth. And then I really enjoyed our conversation. Uh, so as soon as you wanted to do it again, I was very happy to do it. Um, but it's also interesting because, you know, you have these conversations and connections and then, you know, I, I watch what you're up to, you know, and I'm cheering for you. When I saw you get engaged, I thought that video was very adorable. I think I commented on it and, uh, yeah, it's, it's, it's really been one of the blessings of doing this type of work is like making these connections with people and, uh, feeling like, you know, there is a connection then, and I'm sort of cheering for you. So that's a nice feeling. Definitely one of my favorites, uh, favorite people I've spoken with. Ah, thanks man. I really enjoy our chat and I, uh, I, I'm really glad that the clips of it seem to resonate with people sometimes in positive ways and sometimes in controversial ways, but it's good if we got people thinking and talking, that's a really good thing. I'm, I'm really proud of you. I think you're doing really interesting work and you're not always doing the easiest thing. You're, you're, you're having some conversations that could be controversial and you're having some conversations that maybe aren't as controversial, but are interesting to you. And it's, it's nice to see, um, a young man with a, with a vision, um, trying to do it. So I'm cheering for you. I appreciate that, man. It means a lot. Yeah. Uh, James, you have a new book? Do you want to? It's not coming out for another year, but yes, my next book is coming out September 14th, 2027. Yeah. It's called You Suck at Love. And the good news is the you is all of us. So the book is about how we can all suck a little less. I love that. So stay tuned. Yeah, we should. We'll sit down again when it comes out. Yeah. Send me a copy of that. You got it. Absolutely. Awesome. See you guys. Cool. ZocDoc. Ready to be seen? Football is back. And PrizePix is bringing out their best offer yet. What you want? PrizePix. Run your game. Tammy. Regularly hauls stuff to her kids at college. Home of the save. Open soon. BJ's. Home of the save. Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. The message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop. With Mint, you can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments, but that's weird. Okay, one judgment. Anyway, give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of $45 for three-month plan, equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. See full terms at mintmobile.com. 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