Marriage Is the Biggest Financial Risk You’ll Take — ft. James Sexton

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“Today's number, 49%, that's how much more likely AI chaplots are than humans to validate”

a user's action, even if it's deceitful, illegal, or harmful. I would just try to ask my ex-wife once she wanted for Christmas and she said a divorce, and I said, "Hmm, that's way too fucking expensive."

Basically, market to a finger, then, what you have here is a structural change in the world

if you should cash, just trash. Stocks look pretty attractive, something's going to break, forget about it. Ed, how are you? I'm doing all right. I'm in New York.

Yeah, I'm doing okay. How are you doing? Well, I was fascinating, Ed. We don't talk about me enough. I'm doing great.

I'm headed to Florida on Thursday, I'm going to take some time off, my kids are coming with me.

They'll get to see their friends, and yeah, I'm super excited.

I'm going to Los Angeles to get more projects going that will soon be canceled. Movie projects? Yeah, or TV, I book as an option, notes on being a man, and it's either going to be a dark man or a seven-time lucky. Yeah, there you go.

It's either going to be, I can mock my failure in Hollywood. You cannot. It's either going to be, which you like better, a dark man or a, on young man and the challenges they face, including solutions or an original scripted series that sort of an r-rated wonder years original scripted series, Louis III already did it, and he did it better

than anyone could. Yeah, this would be a little bit different. Did you see the manosphere? I have. I thought it was one of the best dark humanities I've seen in years.

Well, let's talk about that. What did you, what did you take away from that?

“Honestly, I think my biggest takeaway was the fact that there is an entirely different”

media ecosystem that is flourishing beneath a lot of people's noses. I mean, I thought Louis, the way he conducted himself was excellent, and I thought that the way he exposed what is happening and the messages that are being put out there by these guys was excellent, but honestly, I think the big takeaway of what I loved about is that he's shine the light on how huge these guys have become.

And most people don't really know the names of these people. They don't really know who Justin Waller and Sneakow and H.S. Tiki Toki are, but, I mean, thousands, hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of young children love these guys. So what he did was he showed, like, this is what is exactly happening. And he didn't, you know, you didn't really meant words about it.

He literally went into the, as the documentary says, he went inside of it. And he showed us what's really happening there. I hope the way he did it was just excellent. Even the way that they showed how the live streams work and the common streaming in and how things get reposted and clipped up and repackaged, like it was really a lesson on how media

“works today in a way that I think a lot of people could honestly benefit from.”

The minister starts off positive. The fact that there's a group of people or thought leaders trying to speak to a young man, I think as a positive thing, and it starts fine, be fit, be action oriented, take responsibility for your life, initiate action, and then it just comes off the tracks. It's all about money, it's all about dominance, it's all about the grief.

It's all about misogyny, which is really a shame, but I'm, I have another theory I want to lay on you as a young person, and I'll be, maybe we'll get Claire's reaction. So 80% of women under the age of 30 now don't have a kid. And I don't think it's because they've decided they don't like kids. I think it's because they're having trouble finding economically, emotionally viable partners.

And also there's less venues for men to demonstrate excellence.

I think that the lack of bars, the lack of venues, the lack of people going out.

“I think the young people, I think we should have tax subsidies for places that offer dancing.”

I'm convinced that one of the venues for mating is when people dance. And now nobody dances. I just read an article saying the number of times a person under the age of 25 dances is off 60% because they're worried about being filmed and mocked. And that people aren't drinking as much so they aren't dancing.

And I remember I go back, you know, everything is anecdotal here, but I remember in college, the initial state is a flirtation where dancing was somebody. And that we need more dancing in young people's lives. Anyways, Ed and Claire, more dancing, is that going to cadapia solve here? I think that's one of the problems, but there are way more problems.

I'm not suggesting it's the solve. To tax subsidies, right, for places that offer it.

My idea is to have subsidies for third places.

And that is a place where you don't work or sleep for the young people get together and the company of each other for no other reason than to do something together. Yeah, I love the idea. I also think some of the best clubs in New York are the ones that don't allow phones on the dance floor, for exactly that reason.

“I mean, I think partying has just been ruined by phones and concerts have been ruined by phones.”

It's kind of sad to go to them these days. And everyone just has their phone out recording the situation instead of just living in it. Yes, that being in a moment, yeah. Yeah, instead of being in the moment and meeting people. So clubs that have phone-free dance floors, I think, would be a good thing to encourage.

All that said, we have our guests in the lobby. All right, get to move on. All right, let's try them off. We spend a lot of time on this podcast talking about where young people are struggling and relationships on near the top of the list.

Fewer young people are getting into relationships and even fewer are getting married. The shift is dramatic. 60 years ago, more than 75% of 25-year-olds were married. Today, it's less than 25%. So instead of asking why relationships are breaking down,

we brought in someone who sees first hand how they fall apart.

James Sexton is a divorce attorney who spent his career on the front lines of failed marriages, making him uniquely qualified to tell us what not to do. He has been an attorney for 25 years and has earned a place in the top 1% of family law attorneys practicing in New York. So James Sexton, thank you very much for joining us on Prophogy markets.

Thanks so much for helping me, great to see you guys. So I'll start with a question here. Something that we often talk about on this show is the fact that money seems to be a big problem in relationships. Some people say that it's the number one issue that married couples fight about and we've also seen that it's actually the second leading cause of divorce behind

infidelity. I just be curious to get your perspective to what extent has money and money management played a role in the divorces that you've seen over the course of your career. Yeah, I mean, money is a tremendous piece of the puzzle.

“I think it's not just the money itself, but it's also what the money comes to symbolize for people.”

I think people who grow up with economic insecurity, money comes to symbolize all the things they didn't have in their life so it becomes money is a symbol of security, money is a symbol of of peace and tranquility, safety, a feeling of not being so afraid. So I think when that gets threatened, it creates tremendous distrust between parties. When people lose their jobs, when there's economic instability, when technological innovation

changes, the job landscape that has a tremendous effect. I mean, there's a high correlation between men losing their job and the divorce rate because there's a significant hit to a man as men being defined in many cultures as being the provider, the protector, feeling like as a result of factors beyond your control, you've lost your job as a tremendous difficult experience for anyone, but certainly for men when they're defined in their role as a provider.

And then you see second order effects that come from that substance use issues as a coping mechanism, men being disincentivized to participate in genuine things like therapy that might be a better solution than trying to pour whiskey on the shame. So you see money underneath

all these things, but I always try to say to people, even when you're talking about infidelity,

we want simple explanations for the complex problem of a divorce and the breakdown of a relationship, but I think people get divorced the same way they go bankrupt very slowly and then all at once. And so no single range of response will for the flood, but all of these little things that up. And then there is some final indignity, some final moment, whether that's infidelity,

And I see that both with when I used to represent the cop in the teacher and all they really have is a 401(k) and a house. And now I represent billionaires and they have some of the same

problems. There's just no, if a hundred million dollars is enough, 500 is not going to be enough.

“If a billion is not enough, 8 billion is not going to be enough. And I think that has a lot of”

second order effects on relationships. James, it's really good to see. I feel so if I know you, I see you so much on TikTok at the algorithm. It consistently says you'll be interested in what this guy has to say. So you see couples on the back end after it's gone south. Do you have kids, James? I do you and I both are fathers of sons. I'm a little further down the road. I have a 26 year old and a 28 year old. So if you, if you had, I would imagine at this point, you're asked

to on the front end for advice around how to avoid ever seeing you or your colleagues. What, you've talked really eloquently about some of the red flags in a relationship. If you were to advise people who are thinking about getting married and say, in by the way, I don't expect any of them to listen to listen. I find that one, people are in that situation. They don't listen to, by the way, I've found it as a no-in situation to tell your friend not to

get married. Because they get married anyways, but they tell their spouse that you told them not to get married. Anyway, so what are the two or three red flags? You would say you really want to be mindful of if you're thinking about getting married in a partner or in the relationship more broadly? I am a very much a believer still in marriage. I think the value that a good marriage adds to

“someone's life is just beyond measure and I think on every level. But I think marriage is like”

the lottery. You're probably not going to win. But if you win, what you win is so good that it would be really difficult to argue. You shouldn't, you know, buy the ticket. And unlike the lottery, you can actually do things to improve your chances of success in a marriage. And I think the red flags are actually sort of the counter of what I would see as what you need to do for the marriage to be a successful and stable one. And I think, you know, you're a divorced man. I'm a divorced man.

Like we learn, I learn from my mistakes. I have to step on the rake in order to learn how to do something well. And I think sometimes people who've been divorced or have shepherded hundreds if not thousands now, people through a divorce, we get a very unique view of, okay, here's where people get things wrong. I think big red flags are the things that draw us together or sometimes things that in the long term are going to be hard for us to navigate. So, you know,

you may love the fact that you're this discipline focused really, you know, like OCD person. And she is, you know, more like, you know, free and easy. It's a barefoot in the part kind of a thing going on. You know, in dating, like you help her be a little more serious. She helps you be a little lighter-hearted. Man, that feels so good when you're dating somebody. But when you marry someone, those habits and those, you know, that polarity that brought you together, it might start

being something that's antagonistic. And it's going to start creating long-term issues because, again, marriage, it's such an odd thing, modern marriage, because we've really packaged it as this person's your best friend, best roommate, best co-parent, best financial partner, best travel partner, best companion animal partner. Like, it's a long list. You know,

if I was talking to you about a chef and said, you know, Jose Andre's an amazing chef,

would you be like, well, but can he farm? You know, like, well, no, like those things have to do with food, both of them, but it doesn't mean, like, if you're not good at one or you're automatically

“good at one, you'd be good at the others. So, I think, you know, not being mindful of how the”

polarity that drew you together might have long-term difficulty facts. So, that would be red flag number one. Red flag number two would be the inability or the fear. Like, if you feel a real fear about talking to this person, about issues between the two of you, that's a huge red flag. Like, you are going to have disagreements with your partner. You're going to have to navigate difficult conversations. When I talk to people about pre-neutral agreements, you know, very often

people will say, like, wow, I'm just, you know, I don't want to have this uncomfortable conversation. And I want to say to them, if you don't feel comfortable having an uncomfortable conversation with this person, you might want to choose one of the other eight billion other options, because you're going to have to have difficult conversations from time to time. And I guess a third one, you know, would be your, it's sort of, you know, like, it's a little contrary to

each other, right, or a little contradictory. But I think two major mistakes people make when they're

getting married is thinking that if I marry this person, they're never going to change.

They're going to stay the way they are. Like, this is so great. It's going so well. I want it to stay really good. So I'm going to marry them because that will be like the wall

I don't think you can have a long-term relationship with someone. Have that changes the slings and arrows about rage, just fortune that everybody has in their life. And conversely, thinking that marriage will change your person is another big problem. Like, like, it is, they are going to change, but they may not change in the ways you hope they would as a function of marriage. Like, you know, he drinks a little too much now, but once we get married, if we have

kids, he'll stop that, or, you know, he works at ton now. But once we get married, he'll make

“more time and he won't push it so red line. Like, I think sometimes the things we think are going”

to change don't. And the things we hope won't do. And that leads, unless there's good communication, that leads to a lot of disappointment. So just a follow-on here. So Ed's girlfriend is much higher character, much hotter than him. Is that a problem? Sorry, I mean, listen, playing above the rim is excellent. I've been waiting for ten minutes to say that. So let's talk about, let's say that things, let's say that things work out in a moment of weakness she agrees to marry him, give

them advice. What are two or three best practices during the marriage that make it less likely they'll be in your office? I mean, you know, Ed first of all, what I'll say is Scott and I are proof of the fact that thank God for good women with terrible taste in men. That is something you bad vision. That is a good thing. Okay. So yeah, when you've got when you're playing above the rim, realize you're playing above the rim. That's a good thing. But you know, I think one step I think

is really important is to talk when you're not fighting about hey, at some point we're going to disagree on something. What does that look like for you? Do you need a minute? Are you somebody that like give me a minute? So the emotion of it comes down and maybe sleep on it will talk in the morning or you the, hey, we got to figure this out right now. I'm not going to be able to sleep tonight. If we don't work it out right now, like I need you to engage with me on this because I can't

let this sit and fester. The time to have that conversation is when you are in that place of a abundant goodwill and deep connection to each other. And you, because look, this is a job. The two of you signed up for the job of loving each other. The job of being the other person's person.

Like marriage is fundamentally your my favorite person. Like there are eight billion in the world

and you're my favorite one. What more beautiful four words could someone say then you're my favorite person? And what more beautiful four words could you hear someone say and know they mean then you're my favorite person. Like that's the most lovely sentiment. And if I had a toast for you at your wedding, you know, it would be I hope 50 years from now. One of you when you're losing each other because every marriage ends at ends in death or divorce and I hope yours will end in death. That's a

weird thing to say to a human being, but I hope it got. I hope what you'll say to each other is this person helped me become the most authentic version of myself and there's still my favorite person. And that's the greatest blessing you could shoot for. And I think the way to do that is to not

“be afraid to talk about, hey, when we disconnect, what's the best way to reconnect? The other thing is,”

I think that, look, man, we have all these gadgets, always reminders, all these little watches

and whoops and all the things we all use, you know. I don't think there's anything wrong with, you know, every day, just take in a minute to remind yourself, hey, her, like keep her in your line of sight. You know, we're busy people, we're hardworking people, we got a million things going on, we're spinning all kinds of plates and anyone who's signing up for someone like you or either of us, they're doing it for, you know, a reason they know they're, we're as advertised, but take a minute,

take a minute to just because right now you're still trying to close the deal, you know, you're still, you're still trying to impress each other, you know, you're saying, and I think that if you can keep a little piece of that, like how what does it take to send her a text message that just says, hey, I was in the coffee shop and that song came on that, you know, I, it makes me think of you. Or, you know, hey, you know, it's so fun on the couch watching TV with you last night. I'm so glad

“I have the prettiest girl in the world, you know, I caught her eye. What does that take 30 seconds?”

That is the equivalent of her sending you nudes. Like that is for her, like that's flowers, like you just send a dozen roses if you send that, you know, and it's a lot cheaper and it's a lot easier and it's something that, again, if you make a point of just, you don't even have to tell her that you put a reminder in your phone, but put something that just reminds yourself to just that little bit of connection because it's really easy for, for all of us to say, all right,

I've got that. Oh, thank God. You know, I found my person. I focus on these other million things now,

but take the time, like take the time to just keep that little bit of connection, that little bit of gratitude, that reminder that this is your person. I think that's a giant piece.

able to share with each other. Again, I liked things that are a practice, so I would say build into

your week. You know, once a week, just have like a walk and talk or send each other an email, whatever works for the two of you in your dynamic. What are three things I did this week that, you know, made you feel loved? What are three things I did this week that maybe I could have done better? What are, make it fun? What are three things I did this week that turns you on? Like I have to tell you, you'll be shocked. You'll be shocked. It won't be the things you thought. Like it won't be.

Oh, you had to have eight pack abs. Like it was something like, oh, when when the dog was running around and you wiped his paws off in the mud, you looked like so sweet that you were getting that turns you off. Like what I've been doing my obliques in the gym, like what was that? You know,

“and the truth is, like, never stop exploring that connection. I think that's so easy, so low”

percentage. It's free. That's why I don't hear about it because it's free. You don't have to buy anything.

You don't have to get an app for it. Like there's nothing you have to do except that little bit of connection. And I'm telling you, I think that keeps, that'll keep you connected to each other, keep you communicating with each other. If you add in that piece of what's something that I could have done better this week, then I think that that starts to create a space where both of you feel like you can give each other pointers. Because I'd say like, I'm 53 years old. I've been

in therapy 20 years. I understand about 70% of this guy. And I mean, you know, like, so to think another human being, I'm going to be able to navigate them perfectly, like you're kidding yourself. That's insane to think. So I think there's real value in creating habits of connection and communication. We'll be right back off to the break. And if you're enjoying the show, please follow our new Proffgy Market's YouTube channel. The link is in the description, starting next week. That is

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in cash prices and 50 winners, free so-fi plus membership for a year. Head to so-fi.com/scotchy to enter. Terms and conditions apply to learn more about so-fi plus, head to so-fi.com/so-fi/hyphen plus. We're back with the Prophetic Markets. So, James, I've read that 70 percent of divorce filings are now from women. And some of that is that women no longer fill an economically indentured and that in increase in divorce rates in some ways represents progress in our society.

But also that potentially women bring quote-unquote more divorce energy to a relationship. And the data I saw that, and I'm very open to push back here, is that the lowest divorce rates are among gay men. Second lowest heterosexual couples highest divorce rates gay women. Thoughts on divorce energy by gender and different types of marriages and what you observe in terms of the likelihood of them deciding to end it. Yeah, I mean those statistics are accurate.

“I think they're often weaponized in the wrong ways. So, you know, in me, what I'll roughly call”

the Red Pill Manisfier space, although, you know, our mutual friend Chris Williamson describes you and I and he as the gentlemanisfier. So, we're sort of, you know, we have a male audience or a percentage of our audience that's male, but we don't have that sort of, you know, hard-line position that made for an interesting documentary for Louie Thuru. I think the way that gets weaponized is this idea that women are somehow playing at the casino of marriage and then when the chips get

high enough they cash out, what I think it really is is the tendency of men more than women to go

out for milk and never come back. And then what happens is the woman comes to my office or one

like it and says he left. He left for his secretary or he left and I don't know where he is and he's not paying the mortgage and I don't know what to do and I go, okay, we have to file a divorce section. And she goes, wait, I don't want a divorce. I didn't ask for a divorce. He's the one who left, I wanted him to come back. I wanted to figure it out or I want us to be civilized with each other. And I say, look, if you want that mortgage paid, if you want temporary child support,

“we have to go to a judge. And the only way to go to a judge, there's no such thing as an action”

for I'd like to work it out if possible. It's an action for divorce. So we have to file the divorce section. And I can't tell you the number of divorces I've done over the span of 25 years is a high number. But I would say very few of them have ever been a woman just caching the chips out at the casino, whereas I've had a large number where the guy just leaves and the woman ends up having to be the plaintiff. And adding indignity to that is it very often that man will say later on, well, you're the one who

filed for divorce. You know, you're the plaint, your mom filed for divorce. So it's it's misleading. But I do think the idea of like divorce energy, I think we're in a, you know, unfortunately we're in a misangest moment, I think. And it's, it's, it's become very acceptable for women to engage in behavior that in relation to marriage that if it occurred with men would be viewed very differently.

I've always said that in the context, even of like, you know, the song maybe next time he'll

think before he cheats, you know, where she crat, you know, breaks his car with baseball bat and all these things. If that was a song by a man about maybe next time she'll think before she cheats, it would be a hate crime like it's multiple felonies being described in that in that song. And, you know, if a, if a man cheats on a woman, even if she hasn't had sex with them in years, it's, well, he couldn't keep it in his pants and he's a lithario. If a woman cheats on her husband,

even if it's with like the hot personal trainer or tennis instructor, it's, you know, he wasn't keeping her happy. Her husband, she needed to figure out who she was. So if he cheats its fault of she cheats its fault. And there's a lot of that energy out there on the internet and a

“lot of that content that I think the algorithm continues to drive that. And, you know, I, I, I know”

that you, you understand better than most in the context of your writing and thinking that, you know, this boy's versus girls world that we've created and then at the algorithm, rhythm pushes because it creates engagement, you know, whether you're shouting in opposition or shouting a man, it's just engagement and, and so, you know, the, the social media gods love it. So I think that's only increasing. We're getting further from each other and we're not recognizing what you've

rightly pointed out, which is that a world in which men are flailing is not a world where women are thriving and vice versa. That's a obvious insight that men, more men and marriages than it,

than is perceived because it's the woman that ends up filing. I never thought of that. The

They're just not the ones legally filing for divorce. Correct. Yeah. I mean, the divorce statistics

that are tracked. So I get into this conversation a lot because I talked to people about how, how, how marriage is arguably from a legal standpoint, not just a negligent activity. It's potentially a reckless activity. So the law makes a distinction between negligence and recklessness. negligence is a failure to perceive a substantial and unjustifiable risk of serious harm. And recklessness is a conscious disregard for a substantial and unjustifiable risk of serious harm.

With the divorce rate hovering just over 50% and then you add to it, there's been quite a bit of

“interesting studies about marriage dissatisfaction. Because remember, those are just the marriages”

that catastrophically failed, meaning they divorced. There was the entry of a certificate of

dissolution and marriage, which means that the divorce was finalized. But there's another 15 to 20%

that are physically separated under a binding written agreement, but not finalizing a divorce for whatever reason. So I can say on each other's health insurance, religious reasons, whatever it might be. And then there are the percentages of people and there's been a lot of interesting research on this that stay unhappy in a relationship either for the children or because they don't want to give away half their things or economic insecurity that you can't move out now of two cable bills because

you're barely affording your single cable bill. So it really turns into something where statistically, this is a very unlikely to succeed enterprise and one that is likely to cause tremendous harm. But again, it's wildly popular. And it's not one that we would ever ask the question of someone like if that said, hey, guess what? My girl and I were getting married. If I said, really, why that would be in delicate. That would be a rude question to ask. Whereas

most things that catastrophically fail 50% of the time and generally fail to achieve the objective, which was living happily ever after, roughly 75% of the time. It's not unreasonable to say to this person, hey, what are you? What is the problem to which marriage is a solution? And you know, my graduate work before I went to law school was at NYU and I was Neil Postman's research assistant on a few of his books. And I was in his department of department of culture and

communication. And when I was there, Neil had this approach to technology of saying any time you

“encounter any technology asked yourself, what is the problem to which this technology is a solution?”

Who has that problem? How does it practically solve the problem? And what new problems might it unintentionally cause? And if you apply that model to the technology of marriage, you're going to have people that are going to approach it very differently. Because marriage is above all else a contract with the state in regards to the rules set for your relationship. And that's not how most people look at it. So I just want to push back or ask for a fault on that 50% number,

because my understanding of the 50% number is that each year, at that moment, they look at the number of marriages, the number of divorces, and they divide one into another. But my understanding is that a lot of divorces coming to fruition right now are a function of the economic dependence women may have felt 20, 30, 40 years ago that they no longer feel. And that if you look at the data

“around young people, Geneseen millennials getting married now, who start out on more of an economic”

equal footing, that the divorce rates may in fact be much lower, that that 50% number is actually misleading. And young people getting married today will, in fact, have much lower divorce rates. So I've spent a lot of time discussing this and defending this. So I've really done the research on it. So the, you know, I'm going to rely a little bit on notes here, but because I want to get the numbers right. But, you know, there's what we call the crude divorce rate and the CDC

does the national vital statistics system that looks at a crude divorce rate of approximately 2.5 per 1,000 population of recent years, which again, seems low in the scheme of things,

but it translates to literally hundreds of thousands of divorces. Second and third marriages,

it's much higher. Second marriages, you're looking at 60 to 67%, third marriages, 73 to 74%. You know, what's really interesting is couples who married before the age of 25 have a significantly higher divorce rate, roughly 60%. Whereas, and couples where one or both partners did not complete college divorce at much higher rates than college educated couples. So what often happens is people do a great job of lying with statistics on this. Because they'll say, well,

you know, a survey of college educated women over the age of 30, divorce rates only 5% are like, right, you just cherry picked people who graduated college, which is not the majority of the world or a the United States, and people who marry after the age of 25. And so this is like,

top of that, like I said, you have these statistics of a marital breakdown without a formal divorce.

And the American Psychological Association did some good work on that. The US Census Bureau American Community Survey, Bowling Green State University has something called the National Center for Family and Marriage Research. And they've done a ton of research not with that simplified model of saying, here's the marriage rate, here's the divorce rate, and let's match those up. Because people are very rarely in the same year getting married and divorced. And when you have

things like the pandemic, where the court system essentially slowed or shut down for a period of time, then of course, right after the world sort of came out of lockdown, there was a glut and backlog

“of divorces that happened. So really, you have to look at the data in a long term way, and you”

have to sort of try to control for all of those variables. But the marriage rate has gone down. The divorce rate has gone down as a function of the marriage rate going down. But what's frightening in terms of what you'd call like the refined divorce rate is it's really the majority of Americans and people don't, you know, like to talk about that. But the majority of Americans don't have a college education. And the college education framing is a very important piece of this,

because there is such a disparity in the divorce rate when people are college educated versus not college educated. And again, I'm not sure of the reasons behind that. I'm sure there are people more qualified than me to answer that. But if, you know, like if one in four planes crashed, people just wouldn't fly. And so even if you just said 25% of marriages catastrophically fail in divorce, I think that would be, you know, a very frightening number. But again, I still think

legal separation and unhappily married. Like there's a what's called the Tishiro estimate, which was a psychologist named Titashiro wrote a book called The Science of Happily Ever After. He talks about, you know, the percentages of people who express real satisfaction in their marriage. And I'd say some of the stuff that comes out of that is absolutely terrifying,

because what you've got basically is 42 to 45% of people that formally divorce 3 to 4%

separate without divorcing and 14 to 19% report their marriages unhappy, loveless, feeling obligated to stay and actually report that they dislike their spouse. Now, I don't think anybody who got married is saying that would be success. That if I could maintain that level of connection, that would be success. Like so, so again, are we looking at marriages like an endurance race that if you don't divorce you won or are we looking at

as we maintain this high level of connection and goodwill with each other? And then we say, hey, I don't regret this choice that I made. And I think that impacts the statistics in a real way. We try on this show. This is property markets. So we try to look at things through a general lens of economics and economic security. One of our views, I'd be curious to get your perspective on this, is that marriage, which is strictly from an economic security perspective, is generally a good

thing that it means that we kind of get our shit together. We work harder. We notice this anecdotally among the people who work at our company. But generally speaking, if you're trying to get

“rich, if you're trying to build economic security, then you should probably try to get married too.”

And I have some follow-up questions, but first I want to hear your response to that question. I don't disagree. I mean, I think a successful marriage is a tremendous asset. I think Warren Buffett said that the best investment he ever made was his marriage and that choosing the right spouse

is the most important economic decision you're ever going to make. I think many, many people would

agree with that. I represent a tremendous number. I'm in New York. So, you know, if you're talking to Laura Wasser, you know, she's going to tell you about her clients that are all celebrities. My clients, you'd pass them on street. You wouldn't know who they are. Scott might know. You might, you guys might actually recognize a different, you guys are a different kind of geek. You might be like, "Hey, I know him. He's from Black Rock, you know." But they're the Patagonia

vest wearing guys that I do the, the pre-nups for when they marry a yoga teacher. And what I'll say is, yeah, I think they, they realize value. You know, they see that this is bringing something to my life. And I think what that is is it's eliminating a certain noise and that is the noise of mate's selection. It's, it's grounding someone, you know, in connection with another person. I mean, look, I'm still very much a romantic at heart even after doing this for 25 years. Like, I think

“that the value that a good strong relationship brings to someone in their life is, you can't measure”

it. I mean, I, I've seen some incredibly successful people have incredibly successful marriages.

you know, you can have a, a happily ever after separately. You know, my ex-wife has been remarried

for 15 years. She's a wonderful person. The man she married is a wonderful guy. I can consider him part of our family. You know, and we raised our sons as a group. And, and I'm so blessed

“to have had that chapter. And I think that it would be much healthier if we viewed relationships”

as chapters in a long story. And I think, you know, marriage came about when most women died in childbirth and most men died before they were 50. And now happily ever after were marriages running into the same problems that the pension system is running into, which is it made sense when you paid in for 20 years. And then you died when you were in payout for 10 years. But now you pay in for 25 years. And then you define benefit plan kicks in. And it's paying you for the next 40 years.

That is why the postal system is going to go under. Because the pension, it was not designed for these current climate conditions. I mean, marriage is like so many other things. We are primates living in medieval institutions with godlike technology in our hands. Like how does that story end? Does it end with a happily ever after? Does it end with a tremendous amount of confusion? I think it creates a lot of confusion. But I do think, again, if you get it right, the stability and

“security that a pair bond brings, even without children. Like with children, of course, I think”

it takes multiple people and it takes, you know, a tremendous amount of energy. I won't even call it masculine or feminine energy. Because I actually think it's human traits that tend to cluster and man or cluster and women for a variety of reasons. But it takes the unique skill set of multiple people to raise children successfully. And I think marriage is a great opportunity to bond very closely with another person in raising, you know, new humans. Or even if you don't have children,

navigating the self and having someone there who genuinely sees your blind spots and calls them out with real love and helps you again. When I gave my example earlier about what I hope on your deathbed, you get to say, it's not this person became who I wanted them to be. It's I help this person become the most authentic version of who they are, who they were. And I think that that is something we need other people to be able to do. Given how high these marriage rates have gotten,

it seems as though that's something that everyone should at least recognize. Yes, you're getting into this relationship. This also contractual agreement, which might pay dividends later. Hopefully

“it will. That's why you're doing it. But also it comes with tremendous tremendous risk,”

which makes me think shouldn't everyone be signing pre-nups? What is your advice to most people getting married today? Every marriage has a pre-nup. It's either one that was written by the state legislature of the state in which you reside and can be changed by them without your consent. And then once they change it, you don't have the right to opt out anymore. I mean, find me another

contract where you sign up for something and they can change the essential terms. And you're not

allowed to say, well, wait a minute, if you change the amount of my car lease, I don't want it anymore. I know you change what apartment I get in my apartment lease? No, I signed up for this one. Like the state legislature in the state in which you reside for a period of six months or more has jurisdiction over your divorce. And they can change now. By the way, I don't care what side of the political aisle left, right, or a raging moderate. That was my little plug for you, Scott.

The reality is you put yourself in this situation and your, I guarantee over the last 16 years, every single person you know has looked at the government at some point and said these people are idiots. So you're signing a pre-nup with the government or or the person you like better than the

other eight billion other options. You tell me, you tell me which of those two things is more sensible.

Relying on a future government that will be elected by a popularity contest and you hope it'll work out and the rules that they came up with will make sense for your specific dynamic or this person and I this person I've chosen out of the eight billion options, we're going to make a rule set for our marriage. There's no contest there as far as I'm concerned. I think some people would say that the trouble is that it's a little overwhelming and at least if you're going with

what the government has decided you're depending on some level of precedent for these very, very difficult questions that often do have to do exactly with money. The kinds of questions that people don't really want to confront. So I guess my follow-up question of you is what kinds of things should be going into a pre-nup? How should couples be thinking about their finances? Are they together? Are they separate? What are the kinds of things you run into? Yeah look it may be a

have difficult conversations with them. The solution to it though is look I've been to the DMV.

I've never walked into the DMV and thought oh yeah these people should be in charge of everything.

They've got this whole thing locked out. I'm going to put them in charge of my finances. This is great. This is the best and brightest the world has to offer. Like that's who you're trusting if you don't do a pre-nup together. But look I don't I've represented victims of an important review scores of controlled domestic violence for many years and what I will say is I've learned conclusively from that that you cannot feel loved if you don't feel safe. Like the most important thing is to

feel safe and safety comes in a lot of forms. It comes in the form of physical safety which is obviously the most important but also emotional safety, economic safety. When you love someone

“enough to marry them you should want them to feel safe. And you know there's a line from a song”

by Prince of the Alps and sign at the time. It's a song called If I Was Your Girlfriend and Prince as a man is singing it to a woman he's dating and one of the lyrics is if I was your girlfriend

would you run to me if somebody hurt you even if that's somebody was me. I always thought

that was a very romantic line because the truth is like that's what a pre-nup conversation is. What are you afraid of? Like what are you afraid of in this relationship? I'm afraid that I'm going to sacrifice a bunch of things and trust you to take care of the finances and I'm going to diminish my lifetime earning capacity and then you're going to find a younger model and split. Hey you know what? That's a very fair thing to be afraid of. There's lots of examples of that

you can point to. So say it out loud. Sometimes when you're afraid of something you know Scott knows this as a father you know my kids were little and they would say out loud like yeah I'm

“afraid of this or I think there might be something under the bed like that's the way you go okay let's”

look let's look under there let's put the light over here and let's see what that is you know let's not you don't do well by like pretending it's not something you're afraid of so I think sharing with each other look I'm afraid that you're going to weaponize against me someday and try to take everything I built including the things I had before we got married and that you're going to the threat of litigation is going to be so potentially expensive and the valuation of my business

interests is going to be and the things I'm going to do for wealth preservation and tax avoidance that are legitimate fair things are going to get weaponized and spun in the full contact story telling that is divorce law and the lawyers are going to walk out with hundreds of thousands of dollars and fee and we're going to walk out with a lot less and a lot of pain and I don't want that okay those are both really legitimate fears if we can give them voice I think if you love

someone you'll want to understand their fear and not go well you don't trust me you'll look it and say okay I know you trust me but you're afraid it's okay to be afraid let's figure out how we can make each other feel safe is there some form of managing finances is there a way to go about the money problem in a relationship in a marriage that is ultimately either going to maybe decrease the likelihood of getting a divorce or if we're not trying to make a boogey man

out of divorce that makes the divorce less difficult that is generally speaking a good thing for the marriage obviously everything in a relationship like how much sex should people be having what should they do in terms of dinner rituals or date nights I think the particular chemistry of two people is important to look at so I'm not a fan of giant like one-size-fits-all approaches but what I will say is for me I think a very sensible system that I can understand is the yours

nine and hours because I think really our relationships are based on a series of then diagrams you know like there's the you of the me and the way and like you know you met her there was you and there was she and and then there's we and so whether it's economic or whether it's interests or how we spend our time you you want that then diagram to continue to be a then diagram like there's a temptation to make the we because it's so warm and cozy to make the we everything and reject all

the you and the me but that's not healthy because you fell in love with each other and that's the you and the me so the we wouldn't exist if you didn't like each other so you can't let it subsume your identity and I think the same thing financially I think that there should be some shared sense of the finances but there should also be some separateness if I'm buying you a Christmas

present and you're going to always see exactly how much it costs we have no privacy or autonomy

in our spending and so I again I think for each couple the conversation about what should be the

“you the me and the we economically it's the same conversation that you should be having on every other”

thing which is what do you want what do I want what's good for us and how do we have that you know check in and again it's kind of like a state planning when somebody says to me you know when should I do my estate planning I always say early and often you know and it's the same thing like you can you should check in early in the relationship and often and constantly say is this still working

see that as time goes on like what's incredibly important in your 30s and even in your 40s it shifts it starts to change like in it it moves in different and again that's not necessarily a bad thing as long as you say to each other hey something changed is it good is it bad is it just

“a function of the the natural flow and progression of time that that's I think the most important”

thing is to have the the mechanisms for just constantly checking in will be right back and by the

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curiosity shop on youtube or follow in your favorite podcast app to automatically receive new episodes every Thursday. We're back with profg markets you said something that some data that was really illuminating that people get married when they're over the age of 25 have lower divorce rates and people with college educations have lower divorce rates so if you take away that as you get older

you're more mature, better perspective and if you are fortunate enough to have a college degree it might it doesn't necessarily mean you're smarter but maybe have more historical contacts maybe even again you're blessed with knowledge privilege but maybe some perspective that comes from education isn't a takeaway that it's a smart thing to do to wait to get married

“and also a really smart thing to try and stay married. Yeah I mean I think you can make that argument”

from that data that the downside of making that argument is the biological reality of people wanting to marry for the purpose of having children so if you say to somebody and this is where this you know this becomes such a fraught conversation to have and and somehow you know thankfully I've managed to like have it without too much offending either side partly because I've represented both sides of every single argument in the divorce space you know and and so whenever somebody like

I posted something a few weeks ago on international women's day that got me a lot of negative and positive you know press because I I posted five of the wealthiest women in the world and they the majority of them the ones that I posted were all billionaires as a function of divorce and you know of course I was immediately getting attacked and people were saying you know well didn't these women deserve this and I wanted to say what what are you meant to

you the men were billionaires because of the women they married well argument do you think I'm making court like I represent those women and I represent the men they're married to in roughly equal measure so like I'm I think it's hilarious when people are saying to me an argument that I've

course I know those were because you're but I've made those arguments some of those women are my clients

“so of course I get that but I also get the other side of that argument as well I think the the”

truth of of marriage statistics is people who have a college education it's usually a sign of other things like they're you know again the substance use disorder rates related to a person who has a college education and doesn't this is not a function of the fact that they had a good liberal arts education this is a function of the fact that this is a person who probably had the economic stability that they could go to college in the present climate you know again it's not you know it's

not your story of of a person who could get into a state school and could do that they're not I went back to I went to a state school in New Jersey I went to Ramapo College of New Jersey and they asked me about 10 years ago to come back and to speak at an open house and you know I was very effusive about the fact that hey I I didn't have good SAT scores I was a really unambitious bad student I had long hair and a bad attitude and I said you know this is a school that took a chance on me and I'm so grateful

of the fact that I moved on to become someone very successful and afterwards one of the admissions people came to me and said you know this was so great and you were so funny but in the future when you come like maybe don't talk about that because you wouldn't get in now like you then wouldn't get in

“now and I said do you know how horrified you should be to say that out loud like because you just”

admitted you would have passed on me and look at me you have me speaking here today so I think that there is a um a reality and I mean again I don't want to sound like a me in college saying there's

no war but the class war but I do think that that you know if you really care this is why I always

think it's funny when like right wing conservatives you know I debated with Matt Walsh on the daily wire about this because it was very gung how about how we got to get rid of no fault divorce you know the no fault divorce is to blame for the demise of marriages which is kind of like saying like emergency rooms are to blame for the number of injuries people have like you're mistaking causing effect and you're thinking barriers to exit I would actually say barriers to entry makes more sense like

you got to you know it's the most legally significant thing you're ever going to do other than die and you don't even have to take a test you know before you do it or fill out like there's no waiting period nothing like that but if the right really cared about marriage and keeping marriages together they would care about creating economic stability they would care about creating opportunities for people to go to college and to be able to get educated they would look at the raw data and say hey

this improves marriage outcomes so let's feed that and that by the way would have a lot of other cascading effects because that would increase the number of people that don't deal with you know substance use disorder which again when you take that demographic out improves the marriage rates so all of

these things they're all tied to each other and the answer is not that difficult to to sus out

but it's not going to be popular among the left or the right the left because it's got a lot of gender stuff in it which becomes fraught terrain and on the right they don't want to have to look at the fact that the you know the wealth disparity in the United States is a big piece of this when we look at the way that divorce rates have changed over time also we've been talking about how young people are not really dating as much as they used to they're not having sex as much as they

“used to and they're not really having children as much as they used to I think the start that”

always kind of shocks me is the fact that around half of Gen Z my generation say they don't want to have children and a lot of people trying to figure out why is that we believe that it's mostly to do with financial anxiety but I guess my question as someone who is literally a practitioner of marriage and divorce how would you say that the digital age has changed marriage and are there anyways I mean I guess how is it changed marriage as an institution for the worst and perhaps

has it maybe changed marriage for the better it is not changed marriage for the better it is changed it for the worse I think unequivocally there's a chapter in my book called if we were going to invent an infidelity-gening rating machine it would be called Facebook I would probably change that now to meta or because I think Instagram and TikTok are better but look I think you know add your two young to remember the song part-time lover by Stevie Wonder but it was

this song about a man who's having an affair and he's singing to his mistress and he says you know a call-up ring once hang up the phone to let me know you made it home so then my wife won't suspect you know and the whole song is about like if there's an emergency have a male friend call and ask for me now which is me I'm going to text you don't worry I'll slide out the MU like we we have created technologies that are wildly antagonistic to monogamous parabons because a you're watching everyone

comparison and by the way I cannot tell you how many people celebrities because there are

“a lot of athletes celebrities that I see them on social media hashtag blast greatest husband”

ever and they were just in my office they were just in my office for a concentration they've been living apart for the last two years like this is this is an absolute but again we don't show that to anybody and then what happens is one day they just go it's with great pain we tell you that we're separating we'd like some privacy during this difficult time as we navigated and move on on our relationship we'll grateful for the gifts that we gave each other in our conscious uncomfortable

like and this is but but meanwhile the rest of us the civilians are looking at this and going like my relationship doesn't look like that they're so happy look at how happy they're and by the way at

the same time while we're again when when are you looking at your social media like when you're

bored when you're on the subway around the toilet it's not when you're having like great moments so you're watching everyone's greatest hits you're sitting in this bored sad moment of your

“own and what are you looking at everyone's curated wonderful life and you now have reasons”

to communicate with people you have absolutely no business communicating with like in the past if you wanted the flirt with a woman who was one of the moms on your son soccer team you would have had to like slide up to her in person at practice which is pretty obvious whereas following her on Facebook or Instagram because there's a group where you guys share information about who's doing rides and who's doing snacks well that's perfectly harmless and now you're

seeing your vacation pictures with her and a bikini and and you have a message oh we where do you guys stay in to loom we're thinking about maybe going our cell well you look great you know did it now we're talking and we're talking privately by the way like if if at the soccer practice I grabbed that mom's like let's go over here behind the bleachers and talk everyone would look like what are you doing man whereas if I'm doing that on the couch next to my wife she

doesn't even know I'm having that conversation so there there is so much coming at marriage right now that I I am shocked that the divorce rate isn't higher than it is and that the marriage satisfaction rate is going to survive this at all because there is just such an endless progression of comparison and false performative things I want to believe the optimist of me wants to believe the part of the popularity of my work is how honest and blunt I am about the challenges we're

facing but how it has not taken my optimism and belief in love and how ultimately

“the most important thing in life is to find deep connection and to feel loved and to feel worthy”

of love I think our greatest fear is that if people knew us the real us they couldn't possibly love us and I think that real romantic love is about someone looking at you and seeing I see you I see the good the bad the fool in you the hero in you and I love you I love the whole thing of you and I'm cheering for you and I believe in you to me that's the most worthwhile beautiful sentiment in the world it's a super power if you find it and can keep it but I like everything that has value

it requires an effort and I think we're not doing anybody any favors by pretending that it's effortless you know we make these romcoms and it's like everything's fine they live happily or after right because you end the story you know but if Jack had survived the Titanic eventually Kate wins let's character would have been like dude what with paint in the French girls are we gonna get a real job what are you doing you know and it we're not doing people a service by showing them

like only the greatest hits and not the day-to-day maintaining of connection part. James X and has been an attorney in New York since 2001 he holds a lot of grief and for them law school and a master of arts degree from NYU where he focused his graduate studies on persuasive speech and propaganda after nearly two decades of refining his skills as a lawyer and the courtroom's Manhattan Brooklyn Rockland Westchester and Orange County's James

earned a place at up one percent of family law attorneys practicing in New York James is the best selling author of if you're in my office it's already too late how to stay in love and how not to fuck up your marriage he's also the host of the podcast better call sexton. James this was entertaining and meaningful very much appreciate your time and good work. Thank you as a pleasure Scott I'm a fan of I'll be a work for many years now and if I had a dollar for every person

that said to me you would Scott Gallo I should chat some time and and I do have to say I owe you a bit for the same thing yeah I owe you a big one too because you you got me through the pandemic I jokingly say that you and Cody Rigsby were my two best friends in the pandemic because I listened to pivot constantly during that time and it was like a lifeline and I remember and I

not thrilled we finally intersected we have a lot of people in common

and I'm glad Ed that we got to meet as well and and it's always fun I like Scott I I really

share Scott's passion enthusiasm for men connecting with younger men and us trying to sort of collaboratively share our life experience and wisdom and share from you and get from you you know all the the different perspective that you bring to to the older guys like us so I think we're we're all really lucky to have each other and really glad we chatted and I hope we'll connect again. Really appreciate it James thank you so much she's a blast good to see you guys.

[Music] Scott reactions.

“So I really enjoy James content because just as we had normalized I think it's important we”

normalized talking about cancer before you didn't talk about even when my mom got cancer I remember you like you only told your closest friends because it was somehow embarrassing

then we normalized mental health struggles you never said oh my kids starting with anxiety or

I'm in a relationship with someone who's bipolar and we'd normalized that which is really healthy or made it a topic of conversation which is an acceptable topic of conversation and I think divorce is finally an acceptable topic of conversation outside of kind of TMZing and it's something I consider one of my biggest failures you know I had a wonderful relationship with my ex and and I'm still very fond of her we still speak pretty regularly and it's just I find his

I find his content comforting because I think I mean I actually don't think it's a divorce attorney I mean he may be in practice during the day but on TikTok he's basically a marriage counselor

“he's basically saying these are the these are the it's like if you want to understand how to”

be a good pilot you should go to airdisaster.com and listen to every black box recording of every crash in history so you know how to avoid air disasters and I think he's very instructive and informative for people your age around how you what are the red flags how do you set yourself up for success so I really like his content I also appreciate I think he's a fantastic communicator he's sort of again I said this he's kind of tailor made for TikTok your thoughts at also tailor made

for podcasts I mean I always just grip the entire time yeah I found it really interesting

the thing you said about pre-nups the fact that you're signing a pre-nup either way and it's either you sign it with your spouse or you sign it with the government and it just kind of got me thinking I mean it reminds me of our conversation that we had with remit sati where remit was talking

“about this cult of home ownership this idea that everyone believes that you you have to own a home”

and so we'll kind of do whatever we can just to make sure that we can say yes I am a home owner and then we forget about all the fixed costs some we just completely disregard doing the cost benefit analysis of could I be renting versus owning and it it makes me think that marriage is kind of one of those things that there's almost a cult of marriage where we're so obsessed with the precedent we're so obsessed with what you're supposed to do that we refuse and get anxious

at the concept of just thinking for ourselves and the pre-nup is almost the perfect example of that like his point is exactly right you're signing a pre-nup either way but it's up to you on whether you want to negotiate the terms of your own relationship or if you want to outsource those terms to someone else so I guess my big takeaway from him is I think he's really empowering people to think about the institution of marriage one he's promoting it because he believes that it's a good

thing which I appreciate I think it's a good thing too but he's kind of encouraging us to rethink the terms or at least view it from a more first principle's perspective and think okay what are we actually trying to do here what is the goal of this and that's a far more powerful and wise decision versus just doing things because that's whatever when else does so that's kind of what resonated for me. I always talk about it I always say I was when I meet women that I'm attracted to I'm like number

three and now the part is ruined. Oh my best line you could be the future ex Missus Galloway. Zero lessons learned. This episode was produced by Claire Miller and Alson Weiss and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our video editor is Jorge Carty our research team is Dutch Lahn is about a cancel Kristen O'Donnell Hugh and Mia Salvario. Jake McPherson is our social producer true barriers

is our technical director and Catherine Dylan is our executive producer. Thank you for listening

for a fresh take on markets on Monday. [Music]