Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. Have you ever gone to a funeral and noticed that as soon as you leave, you have this deep urgency. You're like, I have to allow myself to live my life. Or you go to a wedding and you are reminded of just how extraordinary it is to be in love. These moments, it's as if the force of life is moving through you. Well, that's going to happen to you as you listen to the conversation today. It will have a transformational and profound effect on you because you're about to hear the most important relationship advice. Our expert today is going to talk about love in a way that you've never heard before. He's also going to teach you the simple habits of successful relationships. For me personally, this This is one of the most impactful conversations I have ever had on this podcast, and I cannot wait for you and everybody that you love to experience it. Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. I am so excited that you're here. It's always an honor to be together. It's always an to spend time with you.
But today, I can't wait. If you're a new listener or you're here because someone shared this episode with you, I want to take a moment and personally welcome you to the Mel Robbins podcast family. Today, you're going to learn the best relationship advice that you will ever hear. Today's guest, James Sexton, is a world-renowned authority on relationships. But coming from a perspective you may not expect. He's the author of the best-selling book, How to Stay in Love. But he also happens to be one of the top divorce attorneys in the world, which means for decades, he has had a front row seat to the reason why marriages fall apart. He's going to tell you, most breakups don't happen because of something catastrophic. They result from the little mistakes over time that everyone misses. Today, he'll teach you what those mistakes are and convince you that a few small changes are the secret to creating lasting and loving relationships. Without further ado, please help me welcome James Sexton to the Mel Robbins podcast. James Sexton, welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. It's great to be here. I have so many questions for you, but where I want to start is this.
How could my life be different if I take everything to heart that you're about to teach me today and I apply it to my life and my relationship? What could change?
I think as a I've been practicing divorce lawyer for 25 plus years, I have a really unique vantage point. A lot of relationship advice that people get and people give, it's coming from a psychology background. It's coming from a hypothetical theoretical background. Again, it has tremendous value, but it's not in the trenches, and it's not this really raw, candid version, because I think people lie to their therapists all the time, but they don't lie to their lawyer. Your doctor and your lawyer are the two people you should never lie to under any circumstances. Everything we're doing is to protect you, and everything we're saying is subject to privilege. You can tell us the raw candid truth. I think that's created in me a unique perspective on... If you wanted to figure out how to keep your car in good shape, don't talk to the car salesman. All they do is deal with new cars. Talk to the mechanic. Talk to the person who's seen every way a car can break down. We'll say to you, Hey, here's the stress points. Here's where I find this model of car tends break, and here's how you could shore that up and prevent it.
A lot of what I try to give people, instead of platitudes, you need to maintain connection with yourself. What does that mean? I need to know what that means. If I'm trying to fix my relationship or keep my relationship on track and you say, Stay connected. Okay, do you mean a date night or more sex? Or should we go on vacation? Or should I be asking different questions when we're having breakfast together? Or should we be having breakfast together? What do you mean? I need practical things. Because as a lawyer, it doesn't matter what I know, it matters what I can prove. I don't just have to think in these broad ways that maybe a researcher or a psychologist can. I have to think, Okay, what can demonstrate something? What is evidence to support what it is that I'm putting out there. I think what you could walk out of this conversation with is a feeling of, I have practical, specific things that I can now bring to my relationship that aren't complicated, that don't require me to buy anything. They just require me to buy into a task or a routine. If you can bring that to the table after this conversation, I think you'll actually see challenges in your relationship potentially improve.
Or if you're fortunate enough to be in a place where your relationship is strong, you'll find yourself maintaining that because it's a whole lot easier to maintain fitness than to let it fall apart and then try to get back on track. Those first miles are so hard. And that's really what the goal is, is to help people by learning from the mistakes I've now seen thousands of people make. Just keep their relationship in a good place.
I am so excited you're here because I don't want to make those mistakes. And what's interesting about that example of fitness, as you said, it can be easier to maintain it. I think it's almost equally easy to let it fall off as it is to maintain it. It's really whether or not you understand those little levers when you to fall off. Because just like fitness, there are probably areas in your relationship right now where you are falling off and you don't even realize this is a major mistake that will land you in front of somebody like you, James. Yeah.
Falling feels like flying for a little while. What do you mean? It feels good. When things are coasting, you go, because there's just so much coming at us in the world. To go, all right, I got my person. I got that locked down. I I can worry about all this other stuff, the kids, work, what's going on in the world, everything else, because I have this. I'm good. We have each other. We're wearing a ring. We're doing the whole thing. We're in. We don't have to worry about that anymore. And meanwhile, no, you got to water that plant. That's a relationship that when you were looking for it, it was so important. And when you found it, you were so happy that you found it. We make the mistake of thinking love is permanently gifted to us. It's Every marriage ends. It ends in death or divorce, but it ends. It's one of those weird things to say to someone, I hope it ends in death for you. But it's the truth. I hope your marriage ends in death because the other way that it's going to end is divorce. The majority of marriages end in divorce.
Over 50% end in divorce. That's just the ones that catastrophically failed. Think about how many people succeeded in marriage, meaning they divorce, but they're unhappy. They never really become the most authentic version of themselves. They stay together for the kids because they don't want to give away half their things. What is that? Another 10%, 20%. Now you have something that fails 70% of the time. And yet, We are like, let's do it. We got to sign people up for this. It's a great thing. Even if someone says, I'm getting married, if you were to say, really, why? It would be rude. That's a rude question to ask. But meanwhile, you're doing something that fails roughly 50 to 70% of the time. It's not unreasonable to say why. I think the big issue is, and that's why I say, falling feels like flying for a little while until you hit the ground. Because sometimes by the time you realize, oh, this marriage is not a good place anymore, It's real far gone, and it's real hard to come back. That's why when people say, What's the number one cause of divorce? It's like, Disconnection is the number one cause of divorce.
But there's a whole bunch of other symptoms that come from disconnection are easy to point to and say, Well, that was the cause, but it wasn't the cause. The cause was the disconnection. No single raindrop was responsible for the flood. But the flood's nothing but little raindrops.
Do you believe in marriage?
I do. Yeah, I do. I think that's an individual question. I like to look at relationships, romantic relationships, as chapters in a long book. I think like any chapter in a long book, there's some chapters that are tragic and some chapters that are sad and some chapters that that are just filled with nothing but joy. I think Orson Welles said that whether a story is a comedy or a tragedy depends on when you end it. I think a lot of relationship stories that we sell to people, rom-coms and things like that, they're the relationship equivalent of pornography. They're just a stylized version of what actual relationships look like without any of the complexity, with just the good part. I think I don't think I can learn everything I need to know about myself from myself. I think I need someone who'll see my blind spots, and I think I need that person to be someone I can be really fearless around. I think at its core, marriage should boil down to four words that I think are potentially the most beautiful words you could say to someone and mean, or have someone say to you and know they're true.
And that is, your You're my favorite person. What could be more beautiful than being told and knowing that when this person says it, they mean it. You're my favorite person. And to say to someone back, Yeah, you're my favorite person. What would be better in the world than having that? I like to think about the end of things and then reverse engineer. To me, at the end of your life, if you could look at another person and say, You helped me become the most authentic version of myself, and you're still my favorite person. That's the greatest wedding toast you could ever have. That's the greatest blessing you could have in your life, and I think it'd be the greatest asset you could have in your life. But having represented cops, teachers, firefighters, CEOs, elite athletes, celebrities, we are all equally terrible at this.
What do you wish every couple understood before they got married?
So two things, and they're contradictory. So I say that out front because as soon as I say it, I know it's going to sound like a contradiction. But I think you'll, as long married person, I think you'll agree. I think they make two contradictory mistakes. One is thinking that marrying this person will change them. So he leaves his socks everywhere, but if we get married, he'll stop doing that. Or he drinks too much, but if we get married to somebody, She's not very fiscally responsible, but if we get married, she'll shape up and get that together. So thinking that if you marry somebody, they're going to become a better version of themselves and they'll definitely change. This is not a great idea. You're not buying a depressed company that you're hoping the stock will go up. But the contradictory thing is also thinking this person will never change. If we get married, that it'll prevent them from changing.
Oh, I see exactly why these are the same things.
Because it's the feeling of, Hey, this is so good. The sex is so good, and our companionship is so good, and our conversation is so good, and our whole vibe together is so good. If we get married, it's like building a wall around this thing, and it's going to keep it amazing. This is what we have to do. We'll shore up all the defenses against the world, and nothing will change. We'll just be happy and having sex and having a great, just like we are right now, forever. That's just ridiculous. There's nothing, there's no way to have it. Maybe When people died in their 30s and 40s, that was possible because you had a short window of time. But the truth is, to say, Hey, I'm going to be with somebody 30, 40, 50 years in this very intense, intimate relationship, and it'll never change. That's insane. Our bodies change, our goals change. The pressures were... The society around us is constantly changing. Technology is changing. So how would you think that a contract we sign with the government about our relationship relationship is going to prevent it from eroding or having any of the natural things that happen to our bodies, to our lives, to every other relationship we have.
So is there a better question to ask yourself, knowing how much change is going to hit you? You know what I'm saying? So if you could grab every young couple by the shoulders who's in that moment where they're like, I think this is my person. You're my favorite person now. And I'm feeling the pressure, or I really have always wanted to get married, or all my friends are getting married, or I'm the only single one, or I've been divorced for too long and I want to try this. Is there a question that you wish couples or people personally would just stop and ask themselves the true question?
I think everything is, what little things can we do to stay connected? I don't think it's that hard. I think you can dedicate 10 minutes a week to the upkeep of a relationship and stay of my office a lot of the time. I genuinely believe that if you spent 10 minutes a week just saying to your partner, What did I do this week? Tell me three things I did this week that made you feel loved. I think you'd be surprised at the answer. I think you think you know the answer, but you'd be surprised. I think if your husband, if he said to you, What are three things I did this week that made you feel loved? The practical, actual answers, you might not be able to predict those. He might not have been able to guess in advance what they are because little things make us feel loved. And by the way, if you have courage and you go into this transaction saying, Hey, we're going to not hear this defensively. We're going to speak honestly and we're going to hear in a non-defensive way. Then you can ask another question, which is, Where did I miss the mark this week?
What are three things I could have done better this week? What were three things I did this week that made you feel less than loved or less than seen? You can have fun with it and say, What are three things I did this week that made you want to have sex with me? What were three things this week that I did that turned you on? By the way, the answer is bonkers. Absolutely bonkers. What? As a heterosexual man, when I've asked that question, it's the weirdest things. It's like, Oh, the dogs came in from outside and you were like, you know, towel them off in the way they were looking at you. And like, That made you want to have sex with me?
Where are the dogs? I'm trying to get eight pack abs.
And meanwhile, this is what makes you feel. But it really... The things that make us- I understand.
Because honestly, when you said what makes you feel, I was thinking to myself, Well, Chris asked me that. While I was here working, he was with his friends skiing, and he took our two dogs. And so he spent the day hiking up the mountain and skiing down. The dogs were chasing him. He sent me photos, and I felt so He loved that he remembered me in the middle of that and sent me that in the middle of the day.
And see, and you identify what that really was, which it wasn't just the thing, it's what's underneath it. Yes. Like that he thought, Oh, this is so good. I want to share this with her. Yes. And that's what I mean about you're my favorite person. All that is, is just staying a little bit connected and conscious. What did that cost? Nothing. Nothing. It cost nothing. And we get so fixated on these grand gestures. Like, Oh, love is about these grand, I'm going to plan a birthday party, I'm going to make it huge. Listen, there's value in grand gestures. But day to day things like that, that's the thing. By the way, it works in both directions. I guarantee there's some little thing you do that you may not even think is that big of a deal, but that's the thing that makes him feel deeply connected, valued, seen, understood, safe, like emotionally and Even just the fact that you know he loves the dogs as much as you because the shared connection of things you love, whether that's your children, whether it's companion animals, whether it's an activity, whether it's a friend group, there's something about knowing like, Oh, this person feels this as deeply as I do.
This person feels this depth of love and connection for... I mean, animals for me is a big thing. I'm a dog person. But there's something so beautiful about sharing that with someone and knowing, Oh, it's okay I'm away because this person loves the dogs as much as I do and panders to them as much as I do and will send me photos and will do all the little things that I do when I'm out so that I know that the dogs feel safe and loved. To me, that is so easy to just articulate to each other and remind each other. I don't think it takes the magic away to know that and to hear that. I think if Chris heard you say, Do you know how special that made me feel? Do you know how beautiful Do you know how much more that makes me love you and feel seen by you when you did that? I think you'd be like, I was just taking a picture of the dogs. But meanwhile, it's not the thing. It's what's underneath. It's what it's emblematic of. I feel like so many of us have so many of those things.
But we don't say it.
They're good and bad. If you're the person like me, I like all the dishes out of the sink by the end of the day. I like doing dishes because unlike the practice of law, there's a middle and end and you're done. It's a goal. Everything's clean. Whereas with cases, it's like I could work 24 hours a day and there'd still be more to do. It's not about leaving the sink full of dirty dishes. It's about what are those symbolize? That symbolizes You know that I like things a certain way, and it's not that important to you. You assume I'm going to take care of this thing and that you don't have to. It's always the thing under the thing. If early on in a relationship, when there's still all this abundance of goodwill and connection and optimism, if that's when you say, Hey, let's figure out how to keep this here with these little tiny practical discussions, communications, again, whether it's an email we send each other once a week with that list, or whether it's we go for a walk and it's our walk and talk once a week and we do this. I think those kinds of practical little things are the way you stay connected, period.
Well, just to make I'm not sure as you were listening or you were watching here on YouTube that you got just those two simple questions. The first one was, what are three ways that I made you feel loved? Made you feel loved. Yes. And the second one was, what are three ways where I missed the mark? Yeah.
That's it. And you might want to throw in, here are three ways you made me feel loved this week. Because, again, I'm a believer in that positive reinforcement.
Well, you don't beat your dog into becoming well-behaved. You love them into it. You reward good behavior. This is the basic stuff, but we don't do it. We start with, This is what you did wrong. You know what I mean? You're like, Ah.
Right. And the entry point in the conversation is so important because there's so many couples, for example, that there's something I hear all the time, particularly for men is like, Oh, we don't have as much sex as we used to. We used to have so much sex. Okay, so if you walk into your wife and say, We're just not having sex as much as we used to, you know the response. Well, you're not here. And when you're here, you're in a terrible mood. Well, I'm in a terrible mood because now where are we going? We're going nowhere good. No one's walking out of that conversation when let's have more sex. Everyone's walking out of that conversation going, Yeah, this is exactly why we're not having more sex. Whereas if you entered that conversation with, God, I was driving down the street the other day, and I remember when we were first dating and we went away to that cheap B&B that we didn't have the money to afford. We were supposed to go to it, and we ended up staying in bed the whole day. I was just thinking about that day. When we were so connected physically, I just love that about, Okay, now Now?
Now you're like, let's book the hotel.
Let's book... Right. Because what am I doing? I'm talking about something we did. This was us, and it's a version of us. Let's visit it for a second. Wasn't it great?
What are we doing different? Here's what I love about that. Here's what I love about that. You can use nostalgia and going back to a better time as a reference point to remind both of you of what you miss and something that's underneath all these things that have led to all this discontent and disconnection and what therapist Terry Reel calls normal marital rage and hostility, I think. What's he call it? Normal marital hostility? Yeah, it's called normal marital resentment. That is just about the disconnection because I think the resentment comes from knowing deep down you started in a different place. I think for a lot of people, you just don't know how to get back. You think since it feels so off, what's right in front of your nose is what you're pointing out.
Well, we've been told it's supposed to be easy, too. I think that we're constantly barraged in media with examples of just effortless love. I think that there is an aspect of love that's utterly effortless. Love is an emotion, but love's a verb.
What does that mean?
Love's a verb. I mean, love is an emotion. It's a feeling, but it's a verb. To love someone is to act with love for them. It's a verb. It's a thing you It's not just something you feel, it's something you act upon and to act with love towards someone. The acting with love towards someone, loving someone, actively, the act of loving them requires, A, some understanding of them and their blind spots. What would be wrong with sitting down with your partner at the start of a relationship and saying, Look, we're going to get in a fight at some point. It's probably going to be my fault. I'm going to say something stupid. I say dumb things all the time. We're definitely going to We have an argument at some point. When we do, what person are you? Do you need a minute? Should I let it air out? Because if I try to force the conversation, we're going to have a big argument. Or are you the like, We cannot go to bed angry We got to work this out. We have to talk about this tonight. Because the time to learn that is not when you're in a fight.
The time to learn that is when there's this abundance of connection and optimism between the two of you. Then when that moment comes to have the presence of mind, when you have a conflict to go, Okay, we knew this was going to happen, and this is how we talked about we're going to try to navigate this together. Again, everything I'm proposing anybody do in their relationship is free, and it usually doesn't take more than a few minutes. And by the way, what you said about nostalgia. I think nostalgia is a powerful tool. But it's not just nostalgia, it's also framing. Because there are ways to effectively manipulate the emotional state of your spouse for their benefit.
Please tell us.
How do I think of as a lawyer, my job is to manipulate people's emotional state. That's my job. I want the judge to like my client. I want my client to feel safe. I want the other side to feel scared. I want the court reporter to like me. I want the court officer to like me because they're going to go back in chambers with the judge and I want them to go, Sexton is a really good lawyer. I don't want them to go, That Sexton is so arrogant. So I got to be real. I want everyone, not everybody can help me, but damn near everybody can hurt me. So I'm going to do my best in that courtroom to manipulate everyone's emotional state and have no one I think I'm doing it.
Well, here's the other thing, though. When you're doing it, you're very authentically intentional.
100%.
Because that's what you actually want. 100%. And by the way- Because people hear the word manipulate, but what you're actually being is you're being super strategic because you do want the court officer to think you're an excellent lawyer.
Listen, I manipulate the screw because I want the thing to be screwed into the wall. Manipulation is not in and of itself anything nefarious. Yes. An example, I I've given before is, I'm a trial lawyer, so I try to be clean-shaven. I don't get to have that, like, Oops, I didn't know I was sexy, double that's so popular. So I have to be clean-shaven. But on the weekends, I like to not shave. It's a couple of days off from it. I don't have to be in court. So it's great. I don't wear a tie, and I don't shave on the weekends. By the second day, by Sunday, I have like scruff and it's coarse. I was dating a woman who had very sensitive skin. Any time I would go to kiss her, she would go like, Oh, God, your beard's so scratchy. Immediately in me, I went in my head like, All right, so now I got to shave on the weekends, too, when I see you? That relationship didn't work out. Not surprisingly, not for that reason, but it didn't work out. My next relationship, she had the exact same issue. She had sensitive skin.
But her response, her way of handling it was, I would shave, and she would invariably come up and go, God, I love it when you're clean shaven. You remind me of John Ham, like a Don Draper in Mad Men. Dude, I would shave three times a day. I would constantly, I would shave, and I'd be like, Oh, I just shaved today. And she'd be like, Oh, my God, I love it. Okay, what did she do? What did she do but manipulate me in a positive way? All she was doing was in Instead of framing it as something I'm doing wrong, she framed it as, Here's this opposite thing you do that, Oh, I love it. And now I want to please my partner. I want my partner to feel good about me and think I'm sexy and I'm going to want to move towards that and not pull away from it. A lot of it is about framing. Nostalgia is a very powerful tool, but it's really like, how do we frame what it is we're trying to accomplish here?
Really focusing often on the things that are going well and that you like and tripling down on what they're doing well.
Because, let's be honest, the world is constantly criticizing us. Even constructive criticism is criticism. It doesn't feel great to have this person who's supposed to be your favorite person, and you're their favorite person, and they're criticizing you. Everything is criticizing you. What's right in this connection, very often is the cure for what's feeling wrong in it. Criticism is rarely the path there.
If you really think about all those little mistakes, like a mechanic that can tell you what's going to go wrong with the car, what What do you feel are the list of mistakes that people make in long term relationships that lead to divorce or lead to all the problems that we may not realize? I realize that you've already said that underneath it all is disconnection. But what are those mistakes that we need to really know about?
I think if you start with, where are we when we meet and fall in love? We fall in love super fast. I mean, we really connect with the person so instantaneously. Then we fall apart the same way we go bankrupt, which is very slowly and then all at once. It's like this little tiny, little bit, little bit, off the cliff. I think it's the same thing with falling out of love. The big relationship killers are infidelity, financial impropriety, outright deception. That's huge. I would say a good 85% of divorces that I'm involved in, infidelity has some role in it.
Why do you think that is?
Because I think we have a human... The same reason why so many people want to get married. We have a human desire to connect to another person. I think we're social creatures. This is something in us. We want to connect with another person. We need desperately to be interested and interesting, and we want to feel loved. We want physical connection with another person. We want the attention that comes with physical connection. We want I think we, whether it's marriage and the early days of marriage or dating or the early days of infidelity, it's not just the other person that we fall for, it's also who we feel like when we're with them. You stand a little taller when someone sees you as so beautiful or so handsome. You feel like a version of yourself. Everyone I talk to in my office who's had affairs, very often they'll say, Look, I love my spouse. I never stopped loving my spouse, but my spouse doesn't find me beautiful or handsome anymore. And then I met this person and I'm fascinating to them. They tell me how beautiful I am or how handsome I am. And I actually feel that.
I feel that way because it's so lovely to be told, You're so wonderful. I'm enjoying being... Even just the two of us right now talking to each other, there's something so beautiful about, Oh, what you're saying is so interesting. I'm enjoying talking to you. That's such a lovely exchange. It's a natural human... If you think about the seven deadly sins, all they really are is seven very normal human things taken to the wrong level. We want to eat, okay, gluttony. We need intimate connection with another person, lust. We get angry when someone hurts us, wrath. If you look at those things, all it is a normal human thing weaponized. I think that's where we lose the plot in that we just forget. The most common thing, again, is just that disconnection. That disconnection can be in the form of, I'm disconnected from the me you made me feel like, which is a me problem, by the way.
Which typically, by the way, I'm sure you see this, is that when you have a relationship where there's been infidelity and the person who's is feeling seen and feeling like they can stand taller and feeling like they're interesting, the person who's being cheated on is like, Well, I wanted that, too, in our relationship, you asshole. I was I'm noticing that, too. And so you can see that the disconnection and the lack of feeling cared about is happening for both of them.
It's happening for both of them. And there were all of these moments where you had a last clear chance to steer out of that. But there's an opportunity for people if they'd communicated early on Hey, I'm not feeling... I feel like my eye is wandering. I don't want my eye to wander. I want to be good at this job. When you marry someone, you're signing on for a job. It's wonderful, it's bliss, all this things, but it's also a job. It's got a job description. And by the way, it's an insane job description. You're going to be my best friend, best best co-parent, best roommate, best travel partner. Wow, really? That's a big list. You found one person that can do all of that? We've convinced people that, no, this is your person, and they should be the best at everything. And if they're not, by the way, maybe your soulmate It's out there and you missed the boat and you got to go find that person because life is supposed to be like a Hallmark movie.
I feel like anybody that's in a relationship right now is leaning in because it's easy to feel like roommates. It's easy to fall into a lull. There's other For people all around you, you actually have a chapter in your book, How to Stay in Love, Chapter 19. If we were designing an infidelity-generating machine, it would be Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, social Social Media. This is page 114. If you're vaguely unhappy with your relationship or marriage, and especially if you're more than vaguely unhappy with it, stay away from social media. The The vast majority of what you'll find there is unhappiness, mast as happiness. It will fuck with your head, your heart, and your relationship. You talk all about how social media is a single greatest breeding ground ever for infidelity. Nothing that has come before, not swingers clubs, key parties, chat rooms, workplace temptation, Ashley Madison, Tinder, Grinder. No, not even porn. Comes within a thousand miles.
Yeah, I stand by that.
Why?
Because it's just a perfect storm of attacks on the institution of a monogamous marriage. A, you have a innocuous reason you should be using this technology.
Oh, meaning you got to cover. You're like, I have all the time for work or whatever else.
I have to be on my for work or I wanted to see what this person's up to or the Facebook group of blah, blah, blah is for our kid's thing. There's a million reasons you'd be on your phone that are totally innocuous.
Right. Unlike a strip club.
Unlike a strip club. Or if, for example, I think that one of the moms at my son's soccer practice is attractive. If the only entry point I have for talking to her would be walking up to her at practice, it's not as threatening because you can't really do that without it being... But now, while we follow each other on social media because we both are part of that group that is a group chat, and now I also see her vacation pictures. And now I might innocuously say to her, Oh, I saw you guys went to Tulum. Where did you stay? We're thinking about going. And now I'm talking to you. And I'm talking to you, by the way, privately. I'm in your DMs. We're talking. So it's not only It's not like approaching you at the soccer game. It's like approaching you alone in a restaurant. And we're just the two of us talking and no one can see what we're saying. You're just creating this perfect storm for people. And by the way, the performative self. All anyone posts is the best pictures of themselves. When are you on your phone looking at social media?
Is it when you're having the greatest day or the greatest moment? No. You're on the subway, you're on the toilet, you're bored. You're just bored. You're living your gag reel and you're looking at everyone's greatest hits. You're supposed to walk out of that transaction feeling deeper connected into your real-life relationship? No, it's a total distraction. But it's a distraction that is going to create all kinds of enticements and connections that really are not going to be good for your marriage. And you have total plausible deniability. If your spouse has any question about why are you on your phone. There's a million reasons we'd all be on our phone. So, yeah, it's a perfect story. As divorce lawyers, we owe the people who made these platforms a debt of tremendous gratitude because they have given us job security.
So if you're in a committed partnership, what is the ground rules around social media for yourself and for your partner?
I like how you frame that question because I think a lot of this has has to do with what are you doing? Because I think most people who are married would like to have a happy marriage. Just like most people would like to be in good shape, the question is not, what do you want? It's, what are you willing to trade for it? What are you willing to give up in exchange for that thing? I think the first question we have to ask ourselves is, am I using this technology in a way that if my spouse was standing here, I would use it differently? Would I be following these people if my spouse was watching who I follow? I'm not suggesting we have to monitor each other's social media. That's, I think, a very personal decision couples have to make. But I think the best entry point is yourself. Because I have much more control over myself than anything else. So I think starting with, would I be having this communication with this person in this specific way if my spouse was part of the conversation? Sometimes it's very obvious that the answer is no.
I genuinely think the cure for the entry points of infidelity is monitoring your own behavior. If my spouse was standing next to me, would I be talking to this person this way? Would I be looking at them this way? Would my body language be what it is if my spouse was standing here? And if the answer is no, then just notice that. Notice that. I'm not saying you have to do it differently, but notice that because you realize, Hey, this is a problem. I know I keep bringing things back to food and fitness. But I can control my food environment better than my brain. If there's potato chips around, I'm eating them. So I know, okay, I can't have that in the house. Or if I have it in the house, it's with the understanding that, oh, yeah, I'm going to violate those potato chips at some point in one sitting. And that's okay. Listen, life is to be enjoyed. But if you... Because discipline is trading what you want now for what you want most. And so what do I want most? I want a long term satisfying relationship. I want to be happy in this relationship.
I want my partner to be happy in this relationship. I want both of us to feel fulfilled. I want both of us to feel loved. That's what I want.
James, I am so grateful that you're here. I have so many more questions. I could listen to you all day, but I want to hit the pause. Because if you're like me, I just want to send this to my husband, Chris. I want to send this to every one of my kids. I'm sure there are people in your life that are coming to mine, and I want to give you a chance to share this extraordinary conversation with people that you love. So take a listen to our amazing sponsors while they share a few words. Do not go anywhere because James Sexton, he's just getting started. And coming up, he's going to tell you the three specific things you need to do if you're in a relationship that's starting to have a downward spiral. There's so much more we're going to cover. Stay with us. Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins. And today, you and I are going to spend time with the incredible James Sexton, who is sharing the best relationship advice that you're ever going to hear. So James, the next thing I want to talk about is this. Let's say that you're at that point in your relationship where as the person who's here with us right now is listening and having a panic attack because you realize you're in that phase of the relationship that every long-term relationship goes through.
You've had the fairy tale. Now you're in maintenance. Now you're noticing the resentment is hitting. You're disconnected. You're not having sex. You're annoyed at your favorite person all the time. You're wondering if there's somebody better. You wish it wasn't this way, but it started to feel like, Will we ever get back? What are some of the things that you should do immediately?
I mean, I think in 25 years of practicing matrimonial law, what I'd say to you is you're where most people are who are married. That's where you are. You're where most people are. You probably got there by this succession of small choices that created this, what I would call a downward spiral. This spiral where, well, why should I do that? You don't do that. Well, why should I do that? She doesn't do that. Well, why should... The good news is wherever you are, whether that started just recently or whether you are down in the valley. It has just been, I don't remember what it was like and what it felt like when we were in that great place, you can reverse that spiral. It works the same. It works the same in the opposite direction. How is the same way that it went wrong? Small, small actions. Start small. Start with, leave a note. Leave a note. You're leaving in the morning for work, leave a note. It was really fun hanging out with you last night. I married the prettiest girl in the world. Or, Hey, thanks for taking care of that thing for me yesterday and calling the cable company.
It really means a lot when my big strong man does things like that. Whatever. Some little courtesy or kindness. Costs nothing, takes five seconds to do.
You know what you also did? Because you're really good at manipulating and being strategic. You reminded me in that note of how I felt when we first met. Yeah. Pretiest girl in the world, strongest guy, best person on the planet.
Why not? That's so easy throughout the day. I tell a lot of my male friends, If you text your wife in the middle of the day with a song that was a song important to you and you send a link to that song and you go, I heard this song in the coffee shop today and I thought of you, that's an incredible feeling. It's an intoxicating, wonderful feeling. It doesn't take much to just bring someone back to that place. By the way, the person's initial reaction might be, What inspired that? Because if you're down far enough in the valley, you go like, But it's not hard to just say, You know what? I feel like I have to do a better job of telling you these things. I think of it a lot, but I sometimes don't say it out loud. Who would not want to hear that? How much would it take and how much would it cost? Nothing. It would cost nothing. To write your spouse an email, Here's 10 things I love about you. Ten things. And by the way, it's not just for them. They'll love reading that, but also it's for you.
Remind yourself, Why did you choose this person? There's still so much beauty in this person. There's still so much beauty in you. Why wouldn't you take a moment and just enjoy the warmth of that? It's right there. No No one's going to advertise this to you because it's free. You don't need to buy a book to learn it. You don't need to take a course. There's nothing I can sell you here. You have it. It's right there. It's right in front of you. You have to actively steer away from it at some point. Again, it's never too late to change that cycle.
I'm thinking about the person who hears that, the writing the email of 10 Things, and I think we can get so sequestered in our corners that your immediate reaction is either, I can't think of 10, or, Why aren't they writing it to me? Or, What if they don't respond?
Those are three separate great questions, and I think I would answer them separately. The first one is, what if I can't think of 10 things I love about this person, then maybe you should consider getting divorced.
What?
I mean, if you're telling me you're married to a person and you can't think of 10 things you love about them, there are 8 billion people in the world. Maybe you're married to the wrong one. Sometimes happily ever after means happily ever after separately. I'm divorced. My ex-wife is one of my favorite people. She's amazing. I love her very much. There are a lot of people I love that I wouldn't want to be married to. Actually, all of them. All of them, right? Because it's a very specific relationship. If you're telling me, I can't think of 10 things. This person I I chose, out of 8 billion other options to be my most intimate partner in life. I can't think of 10 things I love about that person. Maybe you should consider a divorce because that's an insane reality. And by the way, okay, maybe you've grown so far apart. My ex-wife has been remarried for 15 years to an amazing guy who's absolutely nothing like me personality-wise and perfect for her. And I have to tell you, I love her. I love him. We're like a weird family. But the truth is, God bless.
God bless. She found the lid for her pot. Amazing. Amazing. I'm so glad. I have to tell you something. I could tell you 10 things I love about my ex-wife. She could tell you 10 things she loves about me. I could tell you 10 things I love about almost anyone in my life. If you're in a place where you're looking at your spouse and going, I can't even think of 10 things, then I think, go to therapy and really try to answer that question, and then try to answer the question, why would I be married to a person I can't think of 10 things I love about them? That's question number one you asked. Question number two is, what if they don't do it back for me? For me, what if it has... Okay, that's where it's scary. But what's scarier than that is, well, we just won't even try. I understand so well as a human being how vulnerable it feels to express need. It's hard for me, I don't know if it is for you, but it's hard for me being that person to say, I really need help. I can't do this myself.
It's humbling. It's getting easier as I age. It's one of the things I actually like best about is that it's okay for me to say, I need some help with this, or I'm not so good at that. Are you good at that? Can you help me with that? Maybe there's things I'll be able to help you with, which, by the way, at its best is what marriage is. So true. It's about, Hey, how can we become complementary pieces to each other and to create this beautiful hole together. I think that's an amazing opportunity is to really say to yourself, Hey, I'm going to try. I'm going to try. It's brave to try. It's scary. But if you're not scared, it's not brave. It's only brave if you're scared and you do it anyway. I think that most of us, if love is on the line, if our marriage is on the line, we can be brave. You believed in Santa Claus for seven years. You can believe in your sofa 15 minutes. Just really 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Go. Just do the thing. I think try. At least that way, you'll know where you stand.
Because if you've now made a concerted effort where you've tried a few times to really reach out to this person in a consistent way and create some connection between, and it's been rebuffed every time, then I think you're going to have a much clearer understanding of where you're really at in that relationship. That might guide you in a direction like my office. I believe some marriages need to end. I genuinely do. I've seen some people very successfully divorce, many of which then go on to find love that is more deep and connected for them and real joy. They're and they're better parents after their divorce. I think we do the world a disservice to view all divorces as failures. I don't believe it's a failure. I don't believe my divorce was a failure. It produced two amazing children that are now amazing adults. I became a better man by virtue of my connection to her. I'd like to think she would say the same about herself. She went on to find tremendous love in her life. I have, too. There's tremendous value in connecting well, disconnecting bravely and maturely, if you can do it.
What did you learn about yourself and about relationships by going through your own divorce?
My divorce was very boring because we're both very reasonable people who concede the possibility of our own error, and we fell in love as teenagers, basically. We met in college and we got married at 22 and had a kid at 24, so we were babies. What I learned is that there are a lot of people in the world that I love that I wouldn't be appropriately married to. I also learned that the job description of a husband and of an ex-husband are two different things. I'm a really good ex-husband. I'm a really good father. I'm not a great husband. I don't have the patience. I don't have some of the skills that I think are really good in a husband. I think a husband is very comfortable accommodating their will to that of the other and their patient in some important ways. As an ex-husband and a co-parent, I was great at it. I was consistent, reliable, dependable, good communicator. I'm a good dad. I put my kids first. I always like, still, even as adults, I love them and I make time for them and they're always my priority. I always, as an ex-husband, had a tremendous love and respect for my co-parent.
Every mother's day would make sure my kids had gifts for her. Every birthday, every Christmas, I'd make sure they had things for their mom. Then when she got remarried, I sat down with her new husband at the time and said, Okay, do you want to get her birthday gift for the boys now? Because I don't want them empty-handed. They're going to feel self-conscious, but I also don't want to overstep. I'm going to still do Mother's Day because that's what she is to me for my sons. But maybe you'll get the boys' Christmas gifts with her. We had this discussion. He was a divorce guy himself, so we were like, it was this really lovely, like, oh, how are we going to shapeshift this dynamic? I learned a lot about how you can disconnect in a very beautiful way and have a nontraditional family that is joyful. I learned a lot about how divorces don't have to always be the kinds of things that I was handling even at that time. I was already a divorceler at that time. I really thought divorce was always this knock-down, drag-out battle that you need someone like me. You can do it with a scalpel.
You don't always need a chainsaw. I'm a chainsaw. It It was really lovely for me to learn. Because if you think about divorce, the ones you hear about. If I go to a cocktail party, I don't go to a lot of cocktail parties, but if I went to a cocktail party and somebody said, What do you do for a living? I said, I'm a divorce lawyer. They go, Oh, my God, you must have stories. I said, Oh, my God, if I got one. There was this couple and they got married when they were quite young. Then the Venn diagram of their interests didn't intersect as much, and they grew in different directions. Then they amicably divided their property, and they continued to co-parent their children that both love a whole lot. You'd be like, That is the most boring story ever. I've talked more about my divorce in this conversation than I probably have in the last five years because it's not that interesting.
It's two people. I actually think it's super interesting because it shows that there is a different possibility in terms of how you can conduct yourself, both during it, during the marriage, at the end of the marriage, during the divorce.
It's all about normalizing. So much of what I think has gone right in our culture in the last 10 years is normalizing certain things, like normalizing therapy, normalizing mental health issues. We need to normalize prenups. We need to normalize what a civil divorce can look like, what a cooperative co-parenting relationship can look like. It does not have to be because the people that talk about their divorce constantly are people who were terribly wounded by it. I understand. It became a formative trauma in their lives, and it became something that everything comes back to. I I've seen a lot of people who've been victimized by that a divorce. But that has now become culturally what we think divorce looks like. That is the unbelievable minority of divorces.
Wait a minute. The The majority of divorces are the high conflict. People are destroyed for years after. What is the majority?
The majority is two people that at some point were deeply connected to each other, lost the connection, and now have usually children in common or extended family in common, and they need to end the relationship, but they don't hate each other. Or if they're angry at each other, their love for their children is much greater than their dislike of each other. I always tell people, a divorce is like a table. It's got four legs. There's you and your lawyer and the other side and their lawyer. All you need is one of those legs to be off. Doesn't matter how nice and straight the other legs are, that table's fallen down. One irrational person or one person with bad faith intentions is going to make this into something much uglier than it needs to be.
I want to finish up the topic of the signs and really giving the person listening the just resources or the awareness so that if there's a chance for this to spiral back up, you can. Based on all your experience, what are the signs that you are headed for a for a breakup or for divorce? The ones that you actually see. Because I bet you go to a party or you can walk into a room and you can literally be like, in a year, five years, they're in trouble.
What you have to do first is look at your baseline. Look at what it was you did when you were still connected to each other. How did you interact with each other? How often did you have physical intimacy? How often did you spend time together, just the of you? What did you do separately and what did you do together? Because until you look at your baseline, you won't know how far you drifted from your baseline. Relationships change, people change, their bodies change, everything changes. But the question is, did it change by default or by I design. Have you ever thought or talked about as a couple why it's changed? And are we both okay with that? Or is it something that one or both of us feel like, Hey, we might have lost something in that process? So I think, again, baseline is a really important thing to be thinking about. Then one of the first things I observe when I'm seeing the cracks in a couple, like when I walk into a room or I'm watching one of those housewife shows and I'm like, Oh, they're definitely getting divorced. They're definitely getting divorced. I often tell people, to me, the surest indicator of a divorce is not anything anyone says.
It's a sound. It's this sound. It's just that... When the other person is talking and there's just this... Yeah, what Yeah, okay. Why are you bothering me with what you're saying? Or that eye rolling. It's just those subtle discourage and disrespects. It's the tone, it's the body language. That's a huge piece. When you're looking at signs, look at how you physically relate to each other. I mean, you've seen couples, I'm sure, where it's like- I'm like, why are they married? Even when they touch each other, it's like when you're first together, you touch your skin, and it's like an electric bolt through you of like, oh, my God, this person touched me. It's like, oh, my God, our legs touched. It's just that. I mean, and thank God that passes or we just never get anything done. But it's supposed to pass and become still something comfortable and connected because all that person, maybe you don't like holding hands. That's okay. But maybe they're trying to connect with you. Do you want to connect with them? If it's that I don't like sweaty hands, okay, so put your arm around me. Lean in and something.
Meet each other halfway. There's a lot of these little tiny physical and verbal disconnections. Even just the act of when your spouse is talking to you, if you are on your goddamn phone, That to me, watching couples sitting there, one of them is talking and the other one is going through the phone and you see them doing that. All I'm saying to you is you're not important. You're not important. You're not as important as this. Then what do you meet that with? Very often people meet it with, they'll either keep going and condone that behavior or they'll stop and go, Well, I'll let you finish. Go ahead. No, finish what you're doing on the phone. Now that feels accusatory because that person's like, Well, no, I was trying to look at this thing. They weren't trying maybe to insult you. The two things I say that everybody accuses me of being unromantic that I actually think are two very romantic sentiments is, one, marriage is a job. It has a set of roles and responsibilities. You signed up for it, you didn't have to take it. There were other positions available and you chose this one, and you can quit if you want to.
You can go get a different one if you want to. It's a lot like a job. It's a job that, theoretically, you want to be good at because you want happiness in this exchange.
James, you are incredible. I bet you're thinking the same thing. James is not only incredible, the timing is incredible. This is exactly what you needed to hear. It's what you needed to be reminded of. It's so hopeful. It's simple. I'm sure you're thinking of your favorite person. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to share this episode with them because this is something that will make your relationship better. It's something that's going to expand love in your life. Go ahead and share this. Take a minute to listen to our sponsors, and don't go anywhere because we will be right back. Stay with us. For the past two years, I have been using work and a busy schedule as my number one excuse to not put my health first. I bet you can relate. Even when I was being consistent with the gym or I was squeezing in workouts, I was seeing little to no change. Why? Because I didn't change my diet. Well, now that I understand all the research from the experts on this podcast, I see how critical protein is for me. Based on what my doctor is recommending, a daily goal of 125 grams of protein per day, I can't get there on Meal Prep alone.
I needed something on the go It tastes great. It doesn't sit in my stomach like a brick. That's why I co-founded PureGenius Protein and developed this product with a team of doctors, some of your favorite world-renowned experts. Puregenius Protein shots are 100 calories, zero sugar, zero fat, no artificial flavors or sweeteners, no dyes, just delicious. And this week, save 20% on your first order at puregeniusprotein. Com when you use code Mel. Plus, there's a 30-day money-back guarantee. Cheers to your health. Welcome back. It's your friend Mel, and today, you and I are getting the best relationship advice. I think you're ever going to hear from the incredible James Sexton. Thank you for sharing this with people that you love. James, let's get back into this. Is there something that you recommend in the middle of an argument to just diffuse it or diffuse as yourself?
I think the worst time to learn how to fight is when you're in a fight. I think in advance, there should be some... It's almost like, what's a safe word? There should be a word that we've agreed in advance is we're ejecting from this conversation and we'll continue it at another time. We both know where the other one lives. We'll find each other. If you have a phrase, How about them met? Something that just has nothing to do with any discussion you're having, that should be the phrase that, I don't think this is productive, and I think we're going down a road that's dangerous. You should agree on it in advance, and you should make a commitment to each other that, Listen, I'm not saying that that ejects us out of this conversation for good, because that would be a great way to just... It's like you get a hall pass in the conversation will never bring it up again. What we're saying is, listen, this will be deferred for 24 hours, or this will be deferred for a maximum of X number of hours or days or whatever it might be, because the corners you back yourself into, you got to figure out ways to get out of.
I mean, think about the commitments you've made to this person. I'm going to love you, you, and only you for eternity. You can't make the commitment of, Hey, listen, if we're in an argument and one of us feels like this isn't productive or we're feeling really hurt, we're going to say this phrase, and that phrase will I mean, we have to call a time out. Two, you can't really love someone, and more importantly, you can't really feel someone's love until you show them a really honest and vulnerable version of yourself. I'm a great performer in a courtroom, and I can present however I need to present. But if in my relationship, I am playing the character of the best version of myself, and I don't let this person see any of my soft spots or any of my vulnerabilities or any of the shit I need to work on, any of the things I get wrong, the things I'm afraid of, I'll never feel their love. I I'm depriving myself because I'll always have in my head, Oh, no, no, no. If they knew me, they wouldn't love me. They love me because they bought the character I'm selling them.
I'm depriving myself by not showing this person these weak, difficult, challenging parts of myself. But here's the thing. If someone is brave enough to show you those things in a fight, if you weaponize those things, that is a and almost irreparable thing to do to someone. Because really, what is divorce at its worst, but intimacy weaponized. Because intimacy is not sex. Intimacy is the ability to be completely yourself with another person. You're honest, authentic self with another person. To take the vulnerability and the soft spots that a person has shown you in good faith so they could feel connected to you and you guys could trust each other and each feel like you can show each other, the soft spots, in a fight, in a moment of anger, to weaponize that is a really, really awful betrayal. I would always tell people, have some ground rules, no low blows. Listen, I like the UFC. I like a good fight. I've trained Brazilian jiu-jitsu for 20 years. Most of my best friends have broken my nose at some point. I'm telling you, have a fair fight. If you have to have a fight, have an ability to call a time out, and keep it a fair fight.
There's a couple of sentences you have somewhere in the back of your head that you know if you said them out loud to him, you would reduce him to a pile of tears in the corner. He knows those sentences, too, about you. He has some sentences he could say, that are all of your scaredest, most vulnerable pieces of you. I know that because you love each other and you've been together a really long time, and you can't love someone for that duration with that depth and with that much affection with without having been vulnerable to that person.
Or shitty to them. Right.
But the truth is, is having knowledge of what that is, having that ammunition, is an incredible responsibility. It's like having the nuclear code of the relationship. Keep them locked. Don't use them. Because just like nuclear weapons, you get to use them once and then the whole world blows up. I've seen people who in a moment of anger, let that fly. You can't take that back. You can't bring that in. Really give more thought in advance to when we disconnect. We do, we disconnect. As a parent, you Who do you love more than your kids? When they're in middle school, you're telling me you didn't want to kill them. I tell my sons all the time. I'm like, I never disliked anyone as much as I dislike both of you in middle school. And by the way, I know you disliked yourself more than anything in middle school. You'll never I need a human being in their life who goes, The best year is my life for middle school. It's always the happiest person in middle school is miserable. But the truth is, you love your kids, but you also are like, Okay, I have to have some ground rules in how I'm going to interact with them.
Moments of love, it's easy. It's moments of tension that you have to think about in advance and figure out how to not back yourself in the corner.
That's a great framework thinking about kids or even work. There are those days you want to just go on a tear, and if you did, you'd get fired or you'd cancel yourself.
But isn't it funny how many things about marriage... We put marriage in this weird category, and it's just really another relationship. It is. I often use the analogy of dogs because I love dogs, but I have two senior citizen dogs. I have a 15-year-old and a 16-year-old dog. I know I'm playing with the house's money at this point. I'm on borrowed time with these guys, and I've had them since they were babies.
Receipts are due. Yeah.
I'm enjoying every minute I have. But I have to tell you, I've never once looked at my 15-year-old dog who's deaf and thought, Dude, I got to get a puppy. These are this dogs so old and it hardly can hear, and I got to carry it downstairs now. Puppies are so cute and they're fun, and they run around, and when you play ball, and they can jog with me. This dog's so old. Dude, I love this dog more than every day. The scent of the dog. But yet with love, our romantic partner, it's this constant feeling I'm thinking of like, Oh, well, there's a younger model out there, and there's a more compelling model out there. How you do anything is how you do everything. If somebody said to me, I'll give you... You have dogs. You have two dogs? . Okay, so two. All right, so let's try this. All right. If I told you, I'll give you $100 million for your dogs, you would say no.
No. Okay. Well, I can pay my bills right now. I applaud you. So there's that baseline. I applaud you.
If I said to you, God forbid, not going to happen, but you have 30 days left with one of your kids no matter what. You only have 30 days. Would you take $100 million then for those 30 days? You're going to lose them in 30 days anyway. Would you give me $100 million if I give you for that?
No.
Because why? Because I'm offended. You even asked me. Because the time would even be more precious knowing That's what I'm saying that it was so short. Okay, that's love. That's as good of a definition of love as I could ever come up with. That there is something beyond any other value that you attribute to the connection you have to this, no matter how finite it Because 100 years from now, no one you love will be here, and no one who loves you will be here. So this is finite. We're losing everything all the time. I say that as a divorce lawyer for 25 years, and I say it as a hospice volunteer for 20 years. We're losing everything all the time. That's what makes it precious. That's what makes it beautiful. That's what makes it worth paying attention to because I don't have unlimited time. Guess what? We don't have unlimited time with anything in our life. Why wouldn't we just commit to this much preventative maintenance?
Well, you do have this really beautiful chapter later in the book, How to Stay in Love, that's all about writing a letter.
Oh, okay.
This is on page 238. You talk about the power of writing a letter to the person that you're in a relationship with, a really deep personal letter. Would it be weird to write a letter to someone you've shared a bed with for years, whom you see and talk to dozens of times a day, even for those who can find the right words when speaking, writing things out may help you to better organize. Why am I getting emotional? To better organize and hence understand what you really want to say. Even if you end up not writing the letter to your partner. I know mediators who encourage their clients to come to the first meeting with a letter to their ex to be because it, quote, lubricates communication, as one put it to me. If at least some people in the midsts of divorce can do that, it should be way easier for those in love knowing that their partner is receptive to, maybe even hungry for communication and intimacy. Anything that might ease communication in a divorce should apply far more effectively in a loving relationship. Write a letter to your partner. List at least five things they do that you appreciate.
Tell them a few things they do that upset you. Tell them what you are craving but not getting from them. Tell them a few things you are getting and are incredibly grateful for. Tell them a story from your shared history in as much detail as you can that you remember fondly. Maybe write a mini chronicle of your marriage. It's been said that the unexamined life is not worth living. My experience has taught me that the unexamined marriage is not sustainable. So write your spouse a letter. Make it simple or make it detailed, but make it authentic and honest. You love him, right?
Yeah. I stand by that. What I didn't say in there, and I think is worth saying, is even if you don't give it to your spouse, it's worth writing that letter. I'll share with you when my mom passed away 10 years ago after a long battle with cancer, we had a complicated relationship. I remember talking to my therapist about it and saying, There's so many things I wanted to say to her that I didn't get to say. Because it just wasn't... I don't know, it just wasn't... She was so ill and there was just no opportunity to have that conversation. He said, Write her a letter. Write her a letter and say all the things that you needed to say. So I did. I took the time. I wrote this long letter saying all the things I needed to say. I brought it into therapy and I read it out loud weeping. Then he said, I'm going to give you another piece of homework. I said, Okay. He said, Write a letter back from her and say all the things you needed to hear. That was much harder because it forced me to think about, what is it I needed from this person?
What is it I needed to hear it to heal? Even though she never got to read that letter, and even though the letter I wrote from her was from an imagined version of her, it was one of the most powerful exercises I've ever… I've since then used that technique in my life when I'm having a really difficult time with a person in my life, where I'll write a letter of all the things that I feel like I needed to say to them, often not that I would ever give them. Then I'll write back, what is it I needed to hear from them? What is it I want to hear from them? What would be their perfect response to this? And very often, it reminds me that the answers to these things are sometimes inside me. The wisdom you find on mountaintops is the wisdom you brought up there. Because sometimes you just find yourself thinking like, what is it I needed her to say? Because I don't have to hear her say it. I knew it. When I wrote the letter back from my mom, a lot of it was, Hey, I wasn't mad at you.
I've been sick for a really long time. I was in pain and it wasn't you. Even though she never got to say that, I thought, Oh, you know that. You know that. Or you couldn't have written it if you didn't know it. But just writing it, the act of writing it and giving it voice and reading it out loud, even if there was no one else in the room. Writing a letter to anyone in your life you're having a challenge with, writing a letter back from them with what it is you need to hear from them, even if you never do anything with that, you never edit it and give it to the person or anything like that, you're just framing in your head what's really going on here inside of me because I'm in here. This is what's amazing to me about marriage is I feel like after 53 years of walking around on this planet and 20 in therapy, I get myself 75%, okay? And I'm in here. I'm in here and I get about what hope do I have of understanding 100% of the person sitting across the table from me or laying in the bed next to me?
I'm in here and I get 75% of it. I'm going to get mad at myself because I don't understand this person 100% and get them what they need 100%. I don't get me what I need 100% of the time. I don't get me what I need 50% of the time. I screw it up constantly and then go, Why did you do that to yourself? Give ourselves and each other some grace and just realize that, listen, this is just about understanding ourselves, what we need, what we want, this person, helping them understand what they need, what they want, and then figuring out how to do that dance.
If you had to save a marriage with one thing, what would it be?
I think the most important way to save a marriage is to pay attention. I think we just stop paying attention. Like whoever discovered water, it wasn't a fish. When you're in it, you just stop seeing it. I think there's so much going on that you just don't see. I think if you paid attention, you might see. You might step out of the water and see. I think because marriage is very often about this deep proximity, it becomes the water. It just becomes this thing that's around you all the time, and you stop seeing it. I think if you paid attention to what's going on inside of you and to what's going on with this person, I think most things, the solution comes from that first step.
That's, I think, the most beautiful answer I've ever heard about a marriage. And of course, I love David Foster-Walace.
Yeah, so good. I actually reread that essay.
I do Quite often.
I do, too. Because I actually think it's fascinating how often I have to be reminded of that.
If you don't know the essay we're talking about, which became this very, very viral graduation speech that David Foster Wallace, the writer gave before he died.
At Kenyan University. It's out there. I think it's called This is Water. They published it as something called This is Water, but you can actually watch a video of it.
There's this poignant moment the essay hangs on where two fish are swimming and they pass another fish, and one of them says the other, Hey, how's the water? And he says, What's water? Then it unravels into this unbelievably profound essay about how much of life you're missing because you're just not present.
The thing that was beautiful about that essay is I think he realized something that maybe not every person who's writing the story in their head realizes, which is you could just as easily cast the characters as villains or heroes. He talks about in the essay how the person in line in front of you who's in a bad mood, you can just say, Oh, they're an awful person, or maybe they have a sick relative at home, and this is the only minute that they manage to get out, and they're so stressed. He's like, And if you just reframe... It's just as easy to tell yourself that story as it is to tell yourself the story where they're the villain you're the hero. If you judge me as a parent by my greatest moment of parenting, you're giving me too much credit. If you judge me as a parent by my weakest worst moment as a parent, you're not giving me enough credit. I'm really the aggregate of all of those things. Well, that's a lesson to bring to your marriage, because in your marriage, anytime someone tells me the story of their life and they're the hero of the story, I'm instantly skeptical.
Well, that's a really good insight because we all have that friend, particularly the one going through a divorce, where the is evil, evil, evil, evil, evil, evil, evil, evil, because you're hurt. Of course. And there's no self-awareness to say, Well, I haven't met affection in three years, so I can see how the door opened up for them to walk away or find somebody else, or I really have some reflect. Just going back to that essay and the moment in the essay of not seeing the water, and also you can choose to write a story about the rude person. It goes back to the original thing that you said. You always have the opportunity to remind yourself that a really good relationship is one is where you can be in the narrative, this is my favorite person. Even if they're pissing me off right now, even if I have a lot of evidence for the things that have gone wrong, even if I'm scared we're headed for divorce, I can still stand in a narrative that this is my favorite person. I at least remember a time when they were.
What are the core components of that beauty that you saw in them that are still there? If they've changed, what changed them? Because it's rarely a nefarious thing. If I let myself get out of shape, it's not that I was like, Oh, I really want to be in bad shape. When my mom was actively on hospice, I gained 30 pounds because I took such pleasure. Everything hurt, it felt like. I would eat dinner every night, and I would just eat anything. I would eat delicious because it just gave me a moment of sensory pleasure. I remember people who I knew but only knew casually through work being like, Oh, Jim, you've been putting on a couple of pounds. I just remember it hurt so badly because I wanted to say to them, Do you understand this is the only thing I have right now? Is that food tastes Everything else hurts right now. I feel like if we looked at our partners and went, Okay, even if they're not currently my favorite person, they were.
I think it's a really important tool that I want to make sure as you're listening and watching, you land the plane on that one and understand that it's a tool, which is if you're in a patch in your relationship where things are really challenging, or you hear that phrase, You're my favorite person because I ran to the bathroom and bumped into somebody that was coming out of the bathroom and like, Oh, my God, James sex is unbelievable. And he can boil relationships down to one sentence, You're my favorite person. And the person coming out of the bathroom looked at me and said, Oh, my God, that's hard.
I think it's hard because I think it's scary to think that no one could love us that way. And it's also scary to think that anyone could. I think those are equally terrifying. As a human being, I find both of those things terrifying. I find the prospect that I could ever feel that way about another person, and I would know I'm going to someday lose them is terrifying. To consider the possibility that someone could actually know me, all of the stuff in me, and go, No, you're my favorite person. To me, me, there's nothing more incredible than the possibility of that. When I look back at my life, every single thing that meant anything was some connection to another person, someone I loved, someone who loved me. A moment where I felt loved truly and deeply for who I am, where I felt joy for being in the presence of someone who loved me or who I loved, when I felt joy of just being in the presence of love. As a hospice volunteer, I will tell you, nobody I've ever done hospice visits with wants to talk about the fact that they're dying. It's not that interesting.
It's something that they're confronting all the time. They're aware of it. They don't want to talk about it. They don't need to talk about it. It's their present reality. They want to talk about their life. They want to talk about the people they love. They're not that interested in the things they owned. They're interested in the connections they made, the impact they made, and when they were loved. Feeling loved, I think, is the most powerful thing in the world. There are a lot of people who don't feel loved ever in their life. Sometimes that's their circumstance. Sometimes it's that they haven't had the real courage it takes to let someone see the truth of you.
From your best-selling book, How to Stay in Love, this is page 248. When is the last time you and your spouse discussed what it specifically means to be happy and how you How do we each define that term? When was the last time you discussed in specific terms what a satisfying sex life is for each of you? These should be conversations you look forward to. They're about being happy and about fucking for fuck's sake. You're married. That means you're in the same car, driving on the same road. Logic says you should be headed toward the same destination. Are you? Who selected that destination? Is it where you both want to get? Is it one of you crawling out the back window while the other one plows ahead blindly?
I think we don't ask enough questions about what's going on in our relationships. I mean, in terms of where are we going? What's the story we're writing together? I live in New York City. You'd never get in a cab and just go drive. You say where it is you want to go, and then you can have a conversation about what's the best way to get there. But to some degree, we learn learn about relationships by watching our parents or the environment we grew up in, and by watching popular media, and now by watching curated images on social media. Those are the three ways to do it. I don't think any of those is a particularly honest or great teacher necessarily. You know, marriage is very much rooted in tradition. And tradition, I think, is really two things in varying measure. It's the wisdom of the people who came before us and what they have to teach us. And it's peer pressure exerted by dead people. When you're doing something because it's tradition, like Why did you get married? Well, my mom and dad got married, and my grandparents got married, and my great grandmother got married.
And by the way, the reason your great grandmother got married is because her mother got married. So your great, great, great grandmother got married. Okay, your great, great, great grandmother used a buggy whip. Do you have a buggy whip? Are all the technologies that made... Did she have the entire sum total of human wisdom available in a device held in her hand that comes from the sky? Because that's incredible. She lived in a different universe than the one you navigate on a daily basis. Why would you think the technology of marriage that worked for her will work for you the same way with the same tools? All you need to do is watch how this was done in this apprenticeship model of figuring out what marriage looks like. You're Your relationship, your rules, the two of you. The only two people that matter is the two of you. Are you happy? The two of you. Do you have a rhythm that works for you? I posted something a couple of weeks ago where I was talking about how I personally don't understand why people sleep in the same bed. Just for me, I just don't get it.
Two adults and two dogs, it's a lot in a bed. I'm not saying- Well, you also have a broken nose.
You probably are a big snorer. I'm not sure I want to be in that.
I'm not saying I'm a big-time snorer. I'm not saying you do not want to in that bed. The truth is, if you think about it, listen, spend time in bed, have fun in bed, all those things. Then go sleep in your own bed like a civilized person. Now, again, this is my personal feeling. People had a lot of feelings about this. It had hundreds of thousands of comments.
Why do you think people had a lot of feelings about that?
Because I think people hear anyone saying, Here's what's important in my relationship, as you're doing it wrong in your relationship. All I'm actually trying to get anyone to do is just let's all come out of the closet a little bit. Let's all come out and say, My spouse and I do this. It works for us. Because once you start doing that, every Everybody at the table starts to go, Oh, yeah, we do that, too. To me, that's the best stuff in life is that intimacies, those little tiny shared private joys. That's the coolest, most wonderful thing. We don't share that with each other. And by the way, it's not for public consumption necessarily, but just sharing that, give it a shot and see that might be the cure for the disconnection between the two of you is to be silly sometimes together. Or maybe it really is like, Well, we have to sleep in the same bed. Who told you that you have to sleep in the same bed? Maybe you are the people that would be more comfortable sleeping in separate beds. Or maybe one of you or both of you think it's really important to be in the cave together, curled up, holding each other.
All that matters is the two of you coming up with rules that make sense for you. Who cares how many times a week I have sex? How many times a week did the two of you feel satisfied with having sex? If it's good enough for the two of you, no one else's business. It's no one else's business.
Well, I think the reason why people get so offended by that opinion is that if you're honest with yourself, you're clinging to very surface-level pieces of evidence of connection. Yeah, we're doing great.
We're in the same bed.
That the ring on the finger or the fact that we're in the same bed, that that means you're connected. When somebody erupts, it's because you're showing us all that connection is actually something else.
And again, I love that because the truth is we live in a symbolic world. As humans, we're constantly making meaning. We live in a symbolic world. Why do I wear a tie? Why do I wear a suit? Why couldn't I just I always go to court in jeans and a T-shirt? I wear this suit for a reason. Why do you wear a suit to a job interview or a funeral or a wedding? Because you're saying this suit is a statement. The statement is, I take this seriously. This thing I'm doing, I take it very seriously.
What you taught us today or what you taught me is that the symbols of I'm sleeping in a bed or I have a ring on my finger or we've been together for 32 years, that's actually not the symbol of connection. No. It's do you show up and treat somebody as if they're your favorite person? Favorite person.
Yeah. Because here's what I'll tell you, and it's a hot take and it's an unfulsifiable premise, so it's safe. I genuinely believe that the connection that you have with Chris and that many of the very happily married people that I know, if you took off the ring, if you took away the government's involvement, they would still be two people who were each other's favorite person and loved each other more than anything and wanted to stay together forever, not because they were afraid of giving away half their things, but because their life is better, because this person is next to them. To me, that's worth fighting for. That's worth building. That's the thing worth protecting if you're lucky enough to have found it. I say sometimes, marriage is like the lottery. You're probably not going to win. But if you win, what you win is so fantastic, why wouldn't you buy a ticket? Why wouldn't you try? Why wouldn't you... And unlike the lottery, there are very specific practical things you can do that will increase the chances of you succeeding at this thing. And they're not difficult. They don't require you to buy anything. They don't require grand gestures, which is, by the way, why you're not hearing about it from advertisers, because there's nothing to buy.
There's no course to take. There's nothing. It's all stuff you already naturally know how to do and what to do, because it's all the same things that if someone did it for you, it would make you feel seen and loved and heard and important.
James Sexton, what are your parting words?
Oh, my gosh. You need to be speechless. I think my parting words are, love each other fearlessly. It's the bravest thing in the world. It's the bravest and best thing in the world. I genuinely believe that we're worthy of love. I genuinely believe almost everything we do every day is to find love, be worthy of love, and keep love. I think it boils down to two words and four words, Pay attention, and you're my favorite person.
I cannot tell you how completely I am. Thanks. By you. I feel so grateful that you are doing the work that you're doing. I'm so moved by everything that you shared and even just pay attention, and you're my favorite person, those are two things that are going to immediately improve and deepen my relationship with Chris because it's a skill that we have to continue. It's the rep That you do in a relationship.
But I think what you're standing in awe of and moved by is what's inside you. It's the feelings inside of you for Chris and for the people in your life that you love and the love of theirs that you feel towards you and how that makes you view yourself because you know it's authentic and real, that love. If you can love yourself the way that those people love you, that's the greatest superpower ever. I think this is just what love is supposed to be, is that we bring this out in each other. We bring out in each other what's in there. That's all.
Well, thank you for absolutely everything.
Thanks for having me. It's great to see you. It's great to stand in the presence of it when people... There's so much that I have to learn from people like you and Chris who have maintained that connection. I feel like for me, there's tremendous value when I get to talk about these things because I'm learning it. It's moving me in the same way. I could say this every day, and I would still lose the plot sometimes.
Well, I'll tell you, one thing that really struck me is when you said, Ask yourself, if you're in one of those moments in your relationship, what's changed? If I look back on the period of time where Chris and I really struggled, and you can point at the stress of life and the financial pressure we were under and just everything that was going on. But what we've now really realized is that a lot of what changed was that his father died in the middle of it. It's only recently, and this would have been 19 years ago, that he really understand how that just changed him, and I didn't see it.
Yeah, and grief sneaks up on you. Yeah. Especially, too, when Chris, you navigate terrain of that, it's a familiar terrain. You feel like, Oh, I'm exempt from it. Like a physician who's like when they get ill. But it's like, No, no, no. This is different. Like experiencing it outside of the connection of self and family. It puts yourself in where you stand in the history of things. It's all impermanence at the end of the day. But I have to tell you, I think, again, if you pay attention, all of that is there. I've learned firsthand as a divorce trial lawyer for almost three decades now, how much ugliness and anger is in all of us. I've also learned how much beauty is in all of us. I try in my relationship with the world to bring what I think people bring in a good marriage, which is they cling to the possibility of the good in us, and they try to overlook the possibility of the fool in us. There's nothing to me beautiful than that.
Well, James Sexton, thank you for showing us what to pay attention to. Thank you. So we can experience all the possibilities that love and relationships have for us. I also want to thank you. Thank you for making the time to listen to or watch this conversation. I know you feel so moved. I hope you will share this generously. I hope you've already shared it with your favorite person. In case no one else tells you today as friend, I want to tell you that I love you and I believe in you, and I believe in your ability to create a better life. I know based on everything that I was reminded of, everything that James taught us today, that I have tools to create a better life because this is going to lead to more love, better relationships, and we all deserve that. All righty, I'll see you in the very next episode. I'm going to welcome you in the moment we hit play. Okay, are we ready? Okay, here we I want you, as you're listening, to notice who popped into your mind. Is it your favorite person? What do we do? Okay, I'll hunt.
And one more thing, if that subscribe button is lift up, if that subscribe button is lit up, please help your friend Mel Robbins achieve the goal of having 50% of you be subscribers to this. Should we do it back there? See, I'm such a workaholic. I have to live three and a half hours from here.
Yeah, that's good though. I'm serious.
Yeah, that's good though. Can you imagine, Tracy? If I was... Tracy is a block from here. Sure, whatever they need. What is it? No, it's I'll get it. What's it on this one? Wonderful. That looks amazing. Oh, my God. Good.
Awesome.
Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language. You know what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist, and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode. Serious XM Podcasts.
Mel calls today’s episode one of the most moving, meaningful, and transformational conversations ever to happen on the podcast.
She says it is THE most important relationship advice that she has ever heard and you will ever hear.
Today’s guest, James Sexton, is a world-renowned authority on relationships, but coming from a perspective you may not expect.
He’s the author of the bestselling book How to Stay in Love. But he’s also one of the top divorce attorneys in the world, which means for decades he's had a front-row seat to what makes marriages thrive – and the reason why marriages fall apart.
He’s going to tell you most breakups don’t happen because of something catastrophic. They result from all the little mistakes over time that everyone misses.
Today, he’ll teach you what those mistakes are and convince you that a few small changes are the secret to creating a lasting and loving relationship.
And unlike most relationship advice you’ll hear, his advice isn’t theoretical. It’s built on what he’s seen thousands of couples do when it’s working… and when it’s not.
You’ll learn:
-How you can save (or strengthen) any marriage in 10 minutes a week
-The #1 thing that leads to infidelity (it’s not what you think) and how to avoid it
-How to tell if your marriage is over
-The reason relationships and marriages fail
-How to argue in a productive way
-How to tell if you’re in the wrong relationship
-The habits of all successful relationships
If you’re single, this is what sets the foundation for a healthy relationship.
If you’re in a relationship, this is what allows it to deepen, strengthen, and evolve with you.
If you’re suffering from a breakup or a divorce, this will not only make you believe in love again, but it will also give you the road map to create it.
This is one of the most important conversations that has been had on this podcast to date. Mel cannot wait for you and everybody that you love or have loved to experience it.
For more resources related to today’s episode, click here for the podcast episode page.
If you liked the episode, check out this one next with Mel and her husband Chris: How To Create Better Relationships: 6 Surprising Lessons From 28 Years Of Marriage
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