Transcript of The Ultimate Guide to Divorce (For You & The People You Love) New

Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I am so glad that you are here with me right now because this conversation is a conversation that I've been wanting to have ever since I started this podcast 4 years ago. This episode is the ultimate guide to divorce for you and the people that you love, and we are creating it With the world's number one divorce attorney, James Sexton. I am so excited that he is here in our Boston studios because he is going to break down what he calls the 6 stages of divorce. He's going to walk you through every stage, what to do, what not to do. And he's also going to make this point: divorce impacts every single person you know. Maybe you're going through it. Maybe you're thinking about it. Maybe you're struggling to move on after one, or maybe someone you love is going through a divorce right now. No matter where you are, the more informed you are, the better equipped you are going to be, the better you will navigate it yourself or be able to support the people that you love who are going through it.

I am so excited for you to have this life-changing resource as a free guide for the rest of your life, and I cannot wait for you to experience this conversation. Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I am absolutely thrilled that you're here today. It's such an honor to be together, to spend this time with you. If you're a new listener, or you're here because somebody shared this episode with you, I just want to take a moment and personally welcome you to the Mel Robbins Podcast family. Today, you are getting the ultimate guide to divorce for you and the people that you love with one of my favorite guests that we have ever had on the Mel Robbins podcast, the one and only James Sexton. For over 20 years, he has been one of the top divorce attorneys in the world. He's helped couples deal with the reality of a marriage ending practically, emotionally, and legally. He's a graduate of Fordham Law School, holds a master's degree from NYU in persuasive speech and rhetoric, and you're about to experience that today. Today, he is going to give you a comprehensive guide.

He's going to share all the advice that you and your loved ones need to know before you get a divorce, what to do during a divorce, and how to build your life afterwards. So please help me welcome back James Sexton to the Mel Robbins Podcast.

Thank you. It's so good to be here again.

I am so thrilled that you said yes to this because when I first had you on the show and you and I had one of the single best conversations about relationships, you taught me 4 words. And those 4 words are, you're my favorite person. And those 4 words are the secret to having lasting love. And I'm celebrating my 30th wedding anniversary this year with Chris. And we say, you're my favorite person every single day to one another. And it has really improved what was already a really great marriage. And so I cannot thank you enough for not only making a difference in my life, But after that conversation, I said to you, you are the number one divorce attorney in the United States. If Chris and I were getting a divorce and I found out he hired you, I would need a diaper. Not because you're mean, but because you're exceptional. And I said to you after our first conversation, would you come back and do a comprehensive guide on divorce and cover everything? Because most of us, if we go through that or if our loved ones do, would never be able to hire you.

And you said yes.

Yeah.

And I would love to have you speak to the person who's listening and share with them, what are we going to cover today and how do you want them to think about this conversation in terms of it being a life-changing resource for them or people that they love who may be going through divorce or may be considering divorce or may have gone through one and still can't get their power and their life back?

I mean, I think our first conversation was more the physics of things, and this one's more the emergency room. Divorce is so common, increasingly more common in terms of the, you know, what we'll talk about later as being sort of the passive divorce where people stay married, they don't do the paperwork, but they just have checked out of the marriage. So Really, what I hope you know everyone will walk out of here with today in a very tangible way is the realization that a if a marriage can be saved, that there are some points where that can happen early on in the process. But if it can't be or it shouldn't be, and those are two different things, that there are ways that we can manage what's happening here. A lot of people treated divorce. like the weather, like it's something that happened to them. And that's not true. It's a process, and it's a process you have a tremendous amount of control over. So hopefully people are going to walk out of this conversation with real clarity as to the levers that they have control over and the things that they should be looking at.

And if you're thinking about it, I think you'll see the distinction, a key distinction between Is this broken or is this unattended? Because those are 2 different things. Is my marriage broken or is my marriage unattended? Because they're not the same and they require 2 different skill sets to deal with. If someone's in a divorce, meaning they've started one or they're right in the thick of one, I think at the end of this conversation, they're gonna spend less money on that divorce. They're gonna hurt their children less. They're gonna do less harm to themselves, and they're gonna work better with the counsel that they have. have. If someone's been through a divorce and they're listening, I think it's going to help them frame where to put that in the Wikipedia page of their life. And where does it fit in their self-narrative and in their sense of who they are? And what second-order effects has it been having? And what second-order effects in a positive way could it have? What are the lessons that they learned from it? What are the scars they carry? And how do we see that? How do we notice it?

And how do we use it for our benefit and the benefit of the people around us. And if someone's listening who loves someone who's divorced or going through a divorce, or their parents have divorced, or one of their children is divorcing, or one of their friends is divorcing, or someone who they're in a new romantic relationship with went through an ugly divorce— I mean, I think I've now just described the entire world, right?

Yeah.

But I think those people, it's going to be, how can you be part of the structure of this person you love's life? How can you be a support to them? How can you be? Because, you know, it's a table. There's, there's this person and their spouse and the lawyer, and then there's this other leg— your friends, your family, your community, the people around you. And the thing about tables is if one leg is off, doesn't matter how nice and straight the other 3 legs are, that table's going to fall down. So I guess when we're thinking about divorce, what I want to say to people more than anything else in this conversation is The pain isn't optional. Like, they're going to either be painful conversations to avoid divorce, or there's going to be painful steps you have to take to make it through a divorce, or how to place it in your life afterwards. But the damage is optional. The damage is optional, and there's a lot you can do. So hopefully we'll walk out of this conversation with a feeling of a little more control.

Well, I have no doubt that we will. That's why I wanted you here. And I want to read to you from your first mega bestseller, How to Stay in Love. This is page 261. And you say, sometimes getting divorced is the best thing to do. Sometimes it's the kindest thing to do. Sometimes, at the risk of seeming profane, it's the loving thing to do for yourself, And for your spouse. What are the biggest signs that you've seen that divorce is inevitable?

There's 2 ways we can look at it. When is a divorce necessary and when is a divorce likely? And those are 2 different things. So sometimes happily ever after means happily ever after separately. So I'm a fan of that. I think there are times where divorce is likely. And it's really worth thinking about, where am I in that timeline of the likelihood of divorce? But I want to say right at the outset, there are times where divorce is necessary. I actually think there's 5 times, 5 specific categories where divorce is necessary. One, abuse. Okay? Abuse. Physical, emotional, financial threats when it comes to the children and their care. You can't be loved if you're not safe. So situations where there's abuse, divorce is likely necessary. The second one I call the false self, and that's when there's like one person in the marriage and one costume.

Hmm.

Like there's one person being themselves and there's one person who's just pretending to be something that they're clearly not. Right? They're pretending to be a good husband, pretending to be a fidelitous person, pretending to be a reliable per— and in fact, They're just not. And there's some revelation that happens where you realize, wait a minute, I'm not actually married to this person. There's one person in one costume in this marriage. Okay? The third I call the stolen reality. And that's where someone has decided they're gonna author your life without your consent. Like, that's the— you find out that the entire 401 was liquidated for their gambling debts after it's been done. It's when you find out that they have a second family. It's when you find out that they've been in a relationship with another person for the last 3 years. Like, that's a situation where you go, okay, what I believed was my reality was a fiction, and now I'm just getting caught back up to speed as to what's going on in my own marriage. And you'd be shocked how many times that actually happens to people. And I have a ringside seat to it when it does.

The 4th one, it's kind of like an unrepentant repeat. Like, somebody cheats, somebody has said something terrible in the middle of a fight. You know, anybody who's been married to someone for more than 5, you know, 5 months, they have what I call the nuclear codes. They have like a sentence they could say to their partner that they know would reduce them to tears. And like the nuclear codes, you can't use 'em more than once and you shouldn't use them at all. Like the only way to win that game's not to play. But everyone, you've been married 30 years, there's some sentences you could say to him, he could say to you that would just hit all the soft targets. You can't love somebody and not let 'em see where your soft targets are. So it's like weaponized intimacy. So when I talk about like the unrepentant repeat, it's someone who has just engaged in some awful behavior, but the apology has become something they're fluent in. Like it's just something that they, you know, I can't believe I did this. I'll never do it again. 6 months later, I can't believe I said that.

I'll never say that again. And it just becomes a cycle that it's not ending anytime soon. It's just going to keep happening. And the 5th type of marriage that I think needs to end is, I would call it the shrinking marriage. And that is a marriage that forces you to just become less and less and less of who you are until there's almost no sense of who you are left anymore. Like a marriage that requires you to be smaller, quieter, and less of yourself. The other thing I said in our first conversation was, The 2 wonderful things to say at the end of a marriage, when hopefully it ends in death, is to say, you helped me become the most authentic version of myself, and you're my favorite person. And I think a good marriage is one that helps you become who you are. So the opposite of that, one that requires you to be something other than who you are in a real and increasingly frequent way, that's a marriage you need to have an end to. But see, leaving a marriage that can't be made safe isn't failure. I think it's, it's not a failure at love.

It's defending love. It's defending the love you have for yourself. It's defending the love that you have for your children. And it's defending even sometimes the love you have for this other person who may not realize that they're not the most authentic version of themselves either, by virtue of this connection that isn't working anymore.

You say there's 6 stages, James, to the whole divorce process. Can you list out the 6 stages? Yeah.

Yeah. So the first is what I would call the pre-contemplative. You know, that's— I'm less happy, but the thought of divorce hasn't entered my head yet. And I kind of haven't connected the two. Like, I don't know what's going on in me, but I'm just like, not happy anymore. Like, things just feel heavier than they used to. And I haven't connected yet that, oh, it's my marriage. Like, it's this fundamentally important relationship in my life, in the ecosystem of my life. And you haven't made that connection yet. So that's stage 1. Stage 2 is the contemplative. That's when the word divorce starts to enter your brain, where you start to go, huh? And the danger of that is it's a private trial that happens at 3:00 AM with no defense counsel present. Like, you're just laying in bed going, you know, maybe— I mean, he really did do that. That was really unpleasant. And, you know, I did really enjoy it when he was away that one week. And it's, it's a trial you're having in your head with no defense counsel present for the other party. But it's real. It's, it's where you start to make this connection between, hey, my unhappiness and the status of my marriage might be tied to each other in some way.

The third stage is, I think, where you decide, okay, this is it. Like, I think this has to happen. Like, I would call that the moment of decision. And that is where the deciding I'm gonna do this is over. Now it's like timing, logistics, and fear. That's all. Like, when will I do it? 'Cause, you know, we, my business has a busy season, like busy season.

Yeah.

is right after the kids go back to school and right after the holidays, like January 2nd, gyms and divorce lawyers' offices are full because everyone's going to lose 200 unwanted pounds this year in the form of their spouse or at the gym, one of the two. And so I'm going to reinvent my life again, as if you couldn't reinvent your life on the 15th as easy as you could on January 1st. But this is a moment of decision. Now, again, also the holiday ceasefire is over. Everyone's kind of had to keep it together. Sometimes even the happiest marriage can be strained after having family over endlessly and the company holiday parties and all the stuff that you had to do and all the debt you accumulated buying your children whatever the latest gadget is and trying to get your spouse the thing that you thought they'd like and then they didn't like it as much as you thought they'd like it. And even if they did like it as much, you didn't feel as good as you thought you would. So it's one of those things that everybody's feeling not great January 2nd. And that's a time where a lot of people come in and when the kids go back to school, there's a summer ceasefire that seems to happen where everybody's like, all right, listen, the kids are home.

It's kind of a quieter pace. Now the kids are back at school, structure's coming into play. We got to get moving here. Then there's the, like, actually taking steps stage. Like, the 4th stage is taking steps. You're actually doing the thing. You went and went to talk to a lawyer. You've hired a lawyer. Like, the private thing becomes public.

Right.

Like, you're starting to let people know, yeah, the marriage is ending. The marriage is over. We're in a divorce proceeding. The 5th thing is you're in it, solidly in it. Like the real deal of divorce, the meat and potatoes of it. A process that makes otherwise logical people sometimes unrecognizable. Like you're really in the thick of it. Walt Whitman called the hour of lead, where the heaviness of reality is on you and you're just trying to get through it. And then the 6 stages just got out. You just got out. It's over. The paperwork gets done faster than your nervous system. I think everybody has this attitude when they get divorced of, well, I've been going through it for a year and a half, so yeah, I'm over it. It's like, no, when the papers actually get signed and everything's officially done and you paid that last bill to the lawyer and now you close the door to the thing, that's when grief begins. That's when healing really begins. And that's the part where a lot of people just want to move on to the next thing. And they'd rather get a dating app before they get a therapist.

And that's backwards. So those are really the 6 stages.

I want to go through them one by one. So let's talk about the first one, pre-contemplative. You haven't put the word divorce in your mind yet, but you're starting to feel unhappy, heavy. Something's off. Yeah.

The hard part about this is it looks like nothing.

Yeah.

It just doesn't look like anything. That's the problem. It's just nothing. There's just a malaise kind of happening. It's not fighting. It's not anger. Anger still implies priority. Like, it's flatness, right? It's not a marriage that's broken. It's one that's been unattended for so long, it doesn't look like a marriage anymore. It's like roommates running a daycare center. Or just roommates with a dog in common, or it's just people that are just— it's a machine running a program that doesn't make sense anymore. But this is the program that we picked. And I said it in one of our other conversations that a lot of people get married because marriage is a tradition. And to some degree, tradition is the wisdom of the people who came before us and the things, the lessons they had to teach us about what has value. And tradition is also peer pressure exerted by dead people. So if you're married because, well, yeah, we're married, that's the thing you do. We're married. Okay, but are you paying attention to this anymore? Does this have value to you anymore? What do you do to add value to it? What value do you derive from it?

Is it by default or is it by design? What is this marriage? The precontemplative stage for me is like nobody's asking questions of each other anymore with an actual question mark in it. The conversations are all about logistics of the day and nothing to do with each other. Like, if you sat down in front of your partner and said, for 10 minutes we have to talk, but it can't be about our jobs, our kids, or something logistical related to our house, would you just stare at each other with the sound of crickets happening? Like, is there anything really between you? Because when you met, there was you and me and then we. And then sometimes the we becomes everything, and the you and the me is completely gone. So the question is, when you're sitting across from this person, what's still there? And to me, the most divisive sound starts to appear, and that's this sound.

What?

Or, all right, yeah. Like, it's just this sense of contempt, this sense of, like, your partner's an inconvenience here. What are you saying? Yeah, all right, whatever. That's, to me, the sound of the smoke. It's not fire yet, but that's the smoke. That's the precontemplative stage.

So if somebody's in that stage right now, yeah, what do you want to tell them?

You can have 10 awkward minutes or so of conversation with your partner, or you can let it start to become a flood, and then you're going to end up with therapists or mediators or lawyers involved. So I think there is value in looking at your marriage, sitting down with your partner and saying, hey, can we have a conversation about this, about us? Like, let's look at what we do. Because what— look, you've written books. I've written books. What's a book? Books is like people doing things and saying things, right?

Okay.

So this is a story we're writing as a couple. What do we do every day? Why do we do it? Why do we do it that way? Why do we put the mugs? in the cabinet where we put them? Is it just because the first day when we moved in, we just put them there and then we just left them there? Because it was like, oh yeah, that's where the mugs go. Or was it like, oh, why are the mugs there and the coffee maker's over there? Like, we never stopped and just went, yeah, because your brother put the mugs up there when he helped us move in 5 years ago. Because it's just, oh, that became where the mugs go. Like, there's so much of that in people's marriages.

So true.

Like, why don't we eat dinner in this room instead of that room? Why don't we put our phones over here when we talk to each other? Why don't we go on Saturdays anymore? to the farmer's market together? Why did we stop having sex on the couch? Why did we stop? Like, why did we stop? Again, there might be very reasonable answers. There might be really good, but just would it take that much to stop and go, hey, let's look at our life together, our day-to-day? Because again, doesn't matter what I know, matters what I can prove. I wanna see the evidence. Let's look at our day-to-day life. Let's take a week in our life. Why do we do this? This way? Is it by default? Is it by design? If it's by design, great, you're a step ahead. If it's by default, should we maybe do it different? Would it feel different? Would it feel better? Would we feel better? Would it maybe put us in a better place together? And I think there's tremendous value in that. There's an invisible contract that happens in marriages. Why wouldn't you say it out loud? You're bound by it already.

Why wouldn't you say it out loud and decide? We're the 2 people to this contract. We can renegotiate at any time we want to if it's not working for either or both of us. So that's what— when you take action in the pre-contemplative stage, you can actually do something worth— the conversation you're avoiding is the cheapest today it will ever be.

What do you mean by that?

The price tag of silence in a marriage. Can be my bill. It can be millions of dollars, or it could be 10 uncomfortable minutes with your spouse, or one uncomfortable afternoon. Like, the price of that conversation with your spouse is the lowest today it's ever gonna be. Just say to your spouse, hey, are you happy? I wanna do a good job of making you happy, and I feel sometimes like we're kind of passing each other. Or, you know what, I heard this idiot divorce lawyer talking on Mel's show the other day, and you know what, he said something about how, you know, people don't talk about like why they do what they do. Like, and I thought, you know, I really want to do a good job of being married to you. Like, I really do. Like, I, I know, you know, you do a really good job sometimes of being married to me, and I just thought it'd be really good for us to have a conversation about that sometime. Like, I don't know a lot of people that would go, I'm not doing that. I got something else to do. Like, okay, by the way, If your partner would say that, I'd like to know that.

I'd like to know. It's worth knowing if your partner says, yeah, I can't spare 10 minutes for this marriage. I'm sorry, I got the games on. Like, okay, if that's how you feel, divorce is necessary. Divorce may be necessary at that point. Yeah. So the conversation is the cheapest now it's ever going to be. So have it now. Have it while it's raindrops. Don't wait till the flood.

Well, I love that you said that because I do see a lot of people writing in from around the world saying, I want to go to therapy, I want to work on it. And My spouse won't go to therapy. My spouse doesn't want to talk about it.

Yeah.

Yeah. And that in and of itself is more evidence about where things are. Let's move to phase 2, contemplative. This is when somebody actually thinks the word divorce. Yeah. And what do people ignore when they're contemplating divorce?

So when you're contemplating divorce, there's a list in your head of the problems in the marriage. What I would say is take some steps when the list is at like 3 or 4. Don't wait till it's at like 32. That's what a lot of people do. Like, a lot of people wait until this thing is like bleeding out before they go past the contemplative stage. Contemplative stage is where you're really taking a fearless inventory of what's really going on in this marriage.

Hmm.

Like, what are the problems that we're having? What impact is it having on me? What impact is it having on this person? What impact is it having on our children? Let's be really honest with ourselves about what's going on here. And I think having that conversation with yourself is important because sometimes there's an element of grief happening that people don't look at. So things change in marriages all the time. We talked about this last time, how I said one of the 2 biggest mistakes people make is thinking Oh, nothing's ever going to change. Things are so great. We're getting married and everything will stay the same now because marriage is going to be the moat we dig around this relationship that protects it from the world and the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. And then the other mistake they make is saying, oh no, like, this person will change. Like, they drink too much now, but now that we get married, they're going to get it together. Or, oh no, this person's like really inattentive, but once we're married, they're really going to pay attention to me. Or they have a wandering eye, but once we get married, they won't have a wandering eye anymore.

So these are 2 mistakes. that seem like opposites, but they're both legitimate mistakes. Now, the truth is, I do think sometimes change happens, right? In 30 years of you and your husband being together, think of how many— Oh my God. —losses, how many victories, how many little deaths, and how many huge changes, physical changes in both of you, your children, everything, your environment, where you live, economics. So many things. And by the way, Some completely forces beyond your control— pandemics, economic crisis, all kinds of things happening. Right. Okay. So if you're in the contemplative stage now, I just want you to pause for a second and think about the last 18 months. What's happened in the last 18 months that you're feeling this way that could be impacting? Because here's the thing, like, when someone is grieving something, The loss of a parent, a child going off to college, loss of a pet, a change in their employment situation. Sometimes it resurfaces 18 months later in a different costume.

Hmm.

Like, you just start blaming because who's around you all the time but your spouse? And your spouse is a whole lot easier to get annoyed at than, like, fate or God. Like, who am I mad at? Your dog dies. Who are you mad at? God? Like, it's hard to be mad at God. You don't have anyone you can yell at, really. Right? But your spouse not being supportive of you, not helping you through this process, just not being there for you, not creating an environment where you can feel like you can cry if you need to, or making you feel self-conscious, or feeling like you have to carry the emotional load of their life and you have to keep their chin up because they're not going to be able to handle— okay, again, look at what's going on and say, okay, wait, how much is the marriage? And how much is— because, man, the answer might be, yeah, marriage. Like, but look at that 18-month lead-up period and pay some attention to what's gone on in your life that might have impacted what's happening.

Who should you confide in if you're contemplating divorce?

Well, I'll tell you first who you shouldn't confide in. Not social media. Run screaming from social media. Don't lean on the group chat. Do not lean on your kids at any age. I don't care if your kids are 8 or 15 or 40. Don't lean on your kids when you're in that stage. Don't say to them, do you think I should get divorced? Do you think that— like, these are not the people you should be talking to. So I would say, one, a therapist individually. Get a mental health professional. Hire a therapist. Again, one that genuinely challenges you. Anytime I meet somebody and they're like, oh my God, I love being in therapy, you're doing it wrong. If you love it 100% of the time, you're doing it wrong. I'm not saying you shouldn't every once in a while have one of those sessions where you go like, yeah, I've made some progress. This is good. We're doing a good job. But a lot of the time it should make you kind of uncomfortable because the only question worth asking when you go into therapy is, what is it I'm afraid to feel? What is it I don't want to feel and why am I so afraid of it?

And what would happen if I felt it? And what is it I don't want to look at? And why? Why don't I want to look at it? Why is it still there? Why is it still carrying around? Why has it become a backpack that's holding me down? So the first thing in this situation, in the contemplative stage, get a therapist. Get a therapist who's going to get to know you and get to give you a very honest perspective on things. And then I think you need one friend, one, but it's a person with no skin in the game and who's proven that they can keep their mouth shut. You want that one friend and then a lawyer. Go see a lawyer. When you go see a lawyer, you don't have to hire a lawyer. I can tell you how many people come in and they meet with me and they go, okay, I'm ready to hire you. And I'm like, okay, I'm not retiring anytime soon. You come in for information, learn about your rights and obligations, potentially learn about how the law— because most people, by the way, like, again, you, you buy a house, you get a HUD-1 lead paint disclosure, all these things.

You get married, you don't get a pamphlet. Most legally significant thing you're ever going to do in your whole life other than die, and you don't even get a one-sheet. You got nothing. Like, the first time people learn what happened legally when they got married is in my office when the whole thing's falling apart. Why not go to a divorce lawyer sooner rather than later? Attorney-client privilege attaches. No one can know that you saw me. If I see you on the street, I'll pretend I never met you. Like, go talk to a lawyer and just say, hey, listen, things are kind of, uh, I just want to know, like, what would this look like? What might the issues be? Mm-hmm. And then you can give me the ingredients. Tell me, here's what's going on. This is what we have. These are the accounts. This is our day-to-day routine. This is who takes care of what with the kids. And I can say, okay, Here's the different paths you might take. Here's the different— like, good lawyers, experienced lawyers. I want you out of my office. I do not want to make money on you. Like, I want to send you to a therapist.

I want to send you to a mediator. I want to send you to a process that is going to not be me because I'm a weapon. I'm a weapon. They're going to do it with a scalpel. I'm going to do it with a chainsaw. Don't do it with a chainsaw. There is nothing you can do with a scalpel that you should do with a chainsaw. That's insane. So a good lawyer is gonna explain to you upside, downside, all the different paths. So again, what is all this? We have, we have the psychological ingredients with our therapist. We have someone we can confide in, in the form of that one friend who's a vault for us, who's gonna be able to listen, and they've proven to us that they're trustworthy. We have a lawyer who's gonna tell us what's going on. And then the 4th most important person to talk to Your spouse, potentially. Like, your spouse. And that's the scariest conversation, but it's actually sometimes the cheapest way to do things. Like, sometimes people don't realize, okay, we had the pre-contemplative conversation. What's going on in the marriage? How are things? Maybe now is the time where we start to have the, hey, listen, I'm really feeling like something's gonna have to change.

Maybe we don't have to say the word divorce yet, but we can start saying, I feel like this is either the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning. And we still have a chance. So what can we do, if anything? Because what outcome do you want? That's counsel. The friend, the lawyer, the therapist who says, when you say, I'm thinking about getting divorced, and they go, okay, what do you hope to get from that? What's the outcome you want? That's counsel. Take him for everything he's got. That's entertainment. That's entertainment. That's someone just using your life as their entertainment or to work their stuff out.

James, hold that thought. I hate stopping you, but I need to take a quick pause so that we can hear a word from our amazing sponsors. And I want to give you a chance to share all of this information that James is pouring into you with people in your life who need this. And don't go anywhere, because after the break, James Sexton is going to share something he calls the 48-hour plan. And exactly how to ask for a divorce. Trust me, we're just getting started. Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.

I think a good marriage is one that helps you become who you are. So the opposite of that, one that requires you to be something other than who you are, that's a marriage you Welcome back.

It's your friend Mel Robbins. Today, you and I are here with the world's number one divorce attorney, James Sexton. And he is giving you and me the ultimate guide to divorce for you and for the people you love. So let's just jump right back in. Stage 3 is it has to happen. How do you raise it with your spouse? Because I've been shocked by the number of people in my life that told their children before their spouse.

That's insane. But people will come into my office, they'll do the consultation, they'll retain me, we'll file the papers, their spouse hires counsel, and then they'll come in and they'll say, yeah, so we're gonna sit down the kids, uh, tomorrow night and we're gonna talk to them. And I go, why? And they go, well, you know, we just wanna let them know. I'm like, okay, so, um, so I'm your 10-year-old. Where are you going to be living? Where is mom going to be living? Where's the dog gonna live? When am I going to see you? What days will it— this— are we still going to have the house? Are we still going to go to Cape Cod in the summers? Are we going to do that? Guess what? You don't know the answer to any of those questions yet. Not one. So if your job as a parent is to— one of your jobs is to help your children feel like there's some sense of control in the terrifying world. The worst thing you can do is say to them, Mom and Dad are splitting up. We kind of don't have more information than that for you at this point, but we'll get back to you.

You know, in the next couple of months. Like, that's, that's a cruel thing to do. So realistically, can you start shaping your family dynamic in a way that might transition more easily to divorce? Sure. Start spending some more time with your kids separately as opposed to together. Maybe going away for the weekend with the kids for vacation separately. So it's not as foreign. You can say, well, remember when we went and that was, you know, it'll be like that from now. Or, oh, remember when your dad was away for work for that week? You know, remember that was, well, dad was, and he comes back, you always see him.

How do you tell your spouse?

Well, I like the way you parse that, which is tell your spouse, because people often say to me, how do you ask for divorce? And I always tell them, you're doing it the wrong way if you're asking for a divorce. I would say, one, be certain because you can't unring this bell. Like, once you tell your partner we're getting divorced, you can't really unring that bell. So don't say it on a whim, right? Don't have that conversation at night. Don't have it when anyone's been drinking. Don't have it on a holiday. Don't have it at a restaurant. People think that having it at a restaurant's a good idea. I don't know what movie somebody said, oh, when you have a difficult conversation or break up with someone, do it in a restaurant because they can't make a scene. No, what they have to do is like publicly keep their act together because people are watching. It's cruel. It's cruel to do it in a restaurant. So don't do it in a public setting like that. Again, don't do it when anyone's been drinking, using cannabis, anything like that, any altered state of mind. Don't do it at night.

I don't think that's the best time to do those kinds of things. Don't do it on the holiday. Say it in the first 10 seconds. No preamble. That's it. Like, don't have a preamble. Like, say it once and clean and then stop talking. I have given this a lot of thought and our marriage needs to end. Okay? That's hard. Those are hard sentences to say, but they're clear. They're not a question. I think maybe we need to— I understand you're trying to be compassionate. There's nothing compassionate about giving someone false hope. If you've decided the marriage is over, the marriage is over. So say it in the first 10 seconds, no preamble, then stop talking, because reasons invite rebuttal. So don't give a bunch of reasons, because if you say, well, listen, we don't talk like— well, we don't talk like we used to because you're never home and you're working all the time. Now we're having a debate, a debate about the demise of our marriage. We should have had that already. We could have had that in the first 2 phases. If we've decided now, if you've decided now this is over, it's over.

By the way, own your share first.

What does that mean?

It's like the movie 8 Mile with Eminem. That scene at the end where the final rap battle and he gets up and he is like, yeah, I am a bum. I do live in a trailer with my mom. He says all the bad things about himself and he goes, here, tell these people something they don't know about me. I love that. I do it in the courtroom all the time. Same thing in this. Own your part first. Listen, I'm not a good husband to you. I'm not doing a good job of it. I don't feel I can be. It's pretty clear to me. It's become increasingly clear to me that I'm just not who you need to be married to, and I'm not capable of making you happy in a way that you deserve to be happy. Own your piece of it first. Apologize for your piece of it first. I know I never meant to hurt you. I'm certain of that. But I also know that I have hurt you, and for that, I am profoundly sorry. But I'm not going to double down on that pain by continuing to hurt you. Like clear, concise, precise, honest, even if it's a little painful.

And then I think, you know, have a 48-hour plan. I know that sounds kind of cruel and tactical, but like know where you're going to stay. Maybe if this person needs space, give them some space. Know where the kids are going to be. Make sure they're out of the blast radius. Like try to give thought to the fact that you're about to have a big moment. And I think it's smart to plan about that. Like, it's page one of what your children's memory of this is going to be. So I think it's really important if you have kids, and even if you don't, like, how things end sometimes can shape how we remember them in their totality. I don't think that's always fair, but I think it's true. So I think clear, clean, precise, but don't invite reasons. Don't invite rebuttal. You can't unring this bell, but this is not a request. This is not a negotiation. I'm telling you a decision. That's it.

What are some of the things to think about? Because you live together. Yeah. You have kids. Maybe. Maybe they're at school. You're doing this in the morning. I love that you're telling us, do not ask for one. Yeah. I love the 13 words you used. I have given this a lot of thought. Our marriage needs to end. Yeah. And then stop talking. Stop talking. And then your counsel is own your part of it. I can't be the person that you deserve. I am going to make this worse if I double down. I apologize. I never meant to hurt you. How often do you think people don't know this is coming or they get, quote, blindsided? Or if they're blindsided, are you like, you've been asleep in your marriage?

Yeah. There's blindness and there's willful blindness. There's the blindness of, oh my God, I had no idea. And then there's the blindness of, I would have if I was looking. And I intentionally didn't look because I didn't want to see what I knew I would see if I looked. So I think those are different things.

I want you to say that again, because I think you or the person that you love needs to hear that.

Well, blindness really is that I just didn't see at all any of this. And I think that rarely happens in marriages. I think willful blindness is I wasn't looking. And I wasn't looking because some part of me knew what I would see if I looked, and I knew it was something I didn't want to see. I knew if I checked your messages, I would see messages I didn't want to see. I knew that if I looked at where the money was going, I wouldn't like to see where it was. I knew that if I asked, are you happy? Do you really love me or not? I've shared this before. My ex-wife and I, our marriage ended Because we were sitting at the kitchen table together. The boys were very little boys. They were 4 and 6. They were upstairs asleep. And we really cared a lot about each other. And we were sitting at the kitchen table, and I'd made her a cup of coffee and myself a cup of tea. And I looked at her and I said, can I ask you something? And she said, yeah. And I said, are you happy? And she just looked at me and she went, Do you really want to do this now?

And I said, I don't know. I think it's as bad a time as any. And she said, not really. And I said, I'm not either. And she said, well, what the hell do we do? And I said, I have no idea. I said, I know I love you. And she said, yeah, I know I love you too. And I said, but I don't think this is working. And she's like, I think if sheer power of will could make 2 people love each other, we would love each other. forever. But yeah, I don't think this is working. And it was the start of a very difficult chapter and moment. A lot of tears, moments of anger, moments of regret. But it was also the start of something that needed to end.

Hmm.

And it ended. It started. That end started with a question. Are you happy? And I think I knew I was asking that question because I knew the answer. You know, and she knew I was asking that question cuz she knew I knew the answer. And the answer, if she'd asked me, was, you know, yeah, I'm not happy either. And she said to me, she's like, I'm Irish, I'll stay miserable forever. But the truth is, like, I was gonna be the one to ask it cuz she wasn't gonna be the one to ask it. So I would say that I think blindness to it is sometimes a very convenient lie that we tell ourselves that there's nothing to look at.

All right.

But anytime somebody says to me, don't look in that drawer, that's the only drawer I wanna look in. Because that's the drawer there's something interesting in.

What about the idea of staying in a marriage for the kids?

So staying in a marriage for the children isn't something people are actually doing a lot of the time, you know, because your children are in the marriage with you. And the question is not, are their parents divorced? They're not going to remember whether you stayed or not. They're going to remember what your marriage looked like. Like they're watching everything you're doing. Like, my dad sat there when I was a kid telling me, you definitely shouldn't smoke, it's bad for you, while smoking a cigarette. And you will be surprised to learn in high school I started smoking cigarettes because I could hear him. What he did spoke so loudly I didn't have to listen to what he was saying. And I think that's what you're doing. You're modeling for your children what marriage should look like. Would you want your children to have your marriage? That's a very hard question and a really important one for the pre-contemplative and contemplative stage. If my daughter's marriage looked like this, would I be happy on her wedding day? If I could look at a crystal ball and see this is what my son's marriage was gonna look like 10 years in, would I want him to get married?

Or would I say, hey, maybe you should rethink this? Okay. You do that for your kids cuz you love them. Well, love yourself. Love yourself enough to look at it and to say, is this what I want to model for my children? Is this how my husband is treating me? Is this how I want my daughter to believe a man should treat a woman? How my wife speaks to me, is that how my son should think his wife should speak to him or how she should relate to him? Is this the love we want our children to see? Because the truth is, what am I modeling? And can I change it in this marriage? Is it possible to change it? You're not protecting your children by not getting divorced. What you're choosing is what lesson they're going to learn. So can they learn the lesson that 2 people can end a marriage and still have affection for each other and still love their children and co-parent in a productive way? That's a valuable lesson to teach someone. That things end and that sometimes when they end, it's okay because things are supposed to end and make room for new things.

Because every new beginning came from some other beginning's end. Like, isn't that a lesson worth teaching children? So high-conflict family dynamics, whether they end in people staying together and gutting it out for the kids, or whether it's a conflict-filled post-divorce life where people have a contentious co-parenting relationship. Yeah, it's bad for kids. It's bad for kids to have loyalty bonds and parents who hate each other and who weaponize their affection for the children against each other. Yes, terrible for children. That doesn't have a lot to do with divorce. That has to do with how you approach divorce. That has to do with how you approach your co-parenting relationship. But staying together, quote unquote, for the kids is very often, yeah, I just don't want to do this. I don't want to go through the pain of this. There's never a good time to do a really difficult thing. But the question becomes, do you want to wait until your children are teenagers, until your children are already dealing with their own challenges there? Or do you wanna do it earlier on in the process when, again, we don't know who discovered water, but it wasn't a fish.

Like, talk to somebody whose parents got divorced when they were 3. They're like, yeah, I don't know. My mom lived here. My dad lived there. I don't really remember my parents being married to each other.

Mm-hmm.

So I, I think that divorce is never free for children. Ever. But the question of what relationship you're modeling for your children, I think, is the key question. More important than is divorce good or bad for kids?

Well, the measuring stick of stepping outside your marriage and saying to yourself, would I actually be excited if my daughter was in this marriage? Yeah. Or would I want her out of it? Yeah. Would I be excited if my son was married to a person that treated him the way I'm being treated? Yeah. Or would I want him out of it? That's your answer. I want to go back to that 48-hour plan. Can you just tell us what are the things on the checklist as you're thinking about, I'm going to say the 13 words. Yeah, I'm going to make a decision and say, this is my decision. I'm not asking for a divorce. What is the 48-hour plan? Because you're about to drop a bomb.

Yeah, it should be where, first of all, where are the kids and where are they going to be? Are they at Grandma and Grandpa's? Are they someplace that they're out of the blast radius? That's ideal. Because no one's going to be feeling great after this conversation, and it's good the kids are out of the way of it. 2, you don't necessarily want to go back to the same location with this person. You are the least qualified person to help someone navigate you breaking up with them, ending that relationship. You're not going to be able to do that, so don't try. And putting yourself in physical proximity to that person is inviting more conversation. So again, don't kick them out of the house. Stay someplace else. Maybe they don't want to be in the house because it's going to make them think about you and the situation. No problem. I'll stay in the house, take care of the dogs. You can go to a hotel, like create options for a person.

Okay.

Now, what are some things logistically you should have done before this? Make copies of some of the important financial documents, or at least know where things are. Like, consider the possibility that this person might react poorly. And if they did, what would you be cut off from access to? So do I have some money, some access to money either to get counsel or if I haven't already, ideally talk to a lawyer before I drop that bomb. What do I have available to me? And also, again, get yourself out of this person's path. Like, let this person calm a little bit or fester a little before they calm. And it should be very logistical, that 48-hour period. It should be very much about how do we keep the kids and each other out of the blast range for everybody to start internalizing that this thing just happened. Look, there's punctuation marks in life. Your kid is born, you get married, some big thing. This is a punctuation mark. Everything that comes after this is everything that comes after this. So everything that happens is from now on at that point. So you have to really see it as that and treat it with that kind of reverence.

I think it's incredibly important that you said make sure you have copies of financial documents, that you have logins to things, that you have backups. Yes. Because you don't actually know how somebody's going to react.

No, no. And it's very rare in a marriage that both people have equal access to the financial information and equal interest in it. You know, it's very often that like, oh yeah, you know, she likes doing the investment stuff and I don't really— I'm not into that. So I just put my checks in the thing and then she does all that. Okay. You don't know where any of your money is then, you know? And again, I'm a fan in marriages. Like, I don't think marriages should be We have to do the exact same things. Like, if I love to cook and you don't love to cook, I'm not going to say, well, I'm going to give up cooking half the time, which I love, and you should have to cook half the time, which you hate, so that we can be equal. No, I'll cook. I love to cook. Like, that's great. But there's something else. Like, you should know how to cook something. Like, if I go away for a weekend, you shouldn't be like, well, what do I do now? Like, there has to be some sense of, okay, you might not be like really into how do we do our trades and what's our exact asset allocation.

Where is our money? Roughly how much of it do we have? Roughly how much is retirement? And roughly how much is liquid? Like, what's the name of our financial planner? Do you have life insurance? Who's it with? There should be some basic snapshot that you have so that if something— again, even if you're happily married and never going to get divorced, your spouse could die. So you, you need to have a general sense of where your assets are and what they look James, you have such a way with words.

I love how you're both tough, and you also, like, are giving us a hug. I mean, this is not only the ultimate guide to everything about divorce, but I feel like you're also in our corner, cheering us on, and supporting the people in our lives who are having to navigate something like this. And if anything that James is saying is making you think of your friend, or your sister, or your brother, or one of your kids, who is going through a divorce or recently got out of a divorce, or, you know, maybe needs a little guidance in finding the courage to tell the person they're married to that it's time for a divorce, send them this episode. I mean, this is a life-changing resource for them. And don't go anywhere, because when we come back, James will give you advice on how to navigate and rebuild your life after divorce— co-parenting, friend groups, and dating again. We'll be right back.

Would you want your children to have your marriage? If my daughter's marriage looked like this, would I be happy on her wedding day?

Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins. You and I are here today with the world's number one divorce attorney, James Sexton, and he's giving you and me the ultimate guide to divorce for you and for the people that you love. Thank you for being here with us, James. I'm so glad we are back because I have so many more questions that we need to dig into. You said stage 4 is taking steps. Tell me about it.

Yeah, so look, a divorce ends a marriage. It, it doesn't end a family. And you're restructuring a company that you're gonna co-own for the rest of your life. So the sooner that you think about that, the better. I, I often will tell clients, like, even if they have a 2-year-old, I'll say to them, listen, there's going to be a wedding. It's probably like 20-plus years from now. And what we do at this table is going to dictate what that wedding looks like. Like, we're going to create the architecture of that wedding. So, like, not every hill should be the hill you're willing to die on. Identify pretty early on in this process what are the goals. Write them down. Give them to someone you trust and have them read them back to you when you lose sight of that, because you'll lose sight of that from time to time in this process.

I don't think I've ever heard anybody say that you should write down your goals for getting divorced. Well, I mean, I think it's a really important thing because I think having not gone through it, yeah, I will just tell you my impression. No offense to you.

No.

Is that there are divorce attorneys that seem very much like, let's come to an agreement, let's work this out. There's a Messy way, there's a brutal way, there's a collaborative way. And I would think that the vast majority of divorce attorneys are probably wanting to try to help a couple sort this out. But I think the thing that most of us think, if we've never been through one, is you get the attack dog, you frickin aim it at the other person, kill, kill, kill.

So what you need is a very interesting and prodigious amalgam. It's kind of a unique—

I don't even know what those words mean.

So what you want is you want someone who is capable of legal violence, basically. Like, you need someone who's very good in a courtroom at doing what needs to be done in a dispassionate fashion. I've been described as the sociopath you want on your side because I will take a person apart in court, no problem. That's the job sometimes. But what you want is someone who has the ability to do that and wants more than anything not to have to. See, many of the divorce lawyers that are out there that advertise themselves constantly as, I will help keep this friendly, I want your divorce should be a friendly divorce, they're afraid of court. They've never heard the 6 magic words, please call your first witness. And if they heard those words, they don't know what to do with themselves. And I know because when I have cases against them, I make sure they hear those words because then they're going to play Let's Make a Deal. So what you do is people make the mistake of thinking, if I hire a litigator, I'm going to end up in litigation. And the answer is actually no.

If you hire a litigator, the chances of you going into litigation get exponentially smaller.

Why?

Because when you put me up against another skilled litigator, we both know at the start of this thing what it's going to look like. I know every argument they're going to make. They know every argument I'm going to make. And we look at it and we go, All right, look, you're gonna do this. I'm gonna do this. We know this judge. This judge is gonna do A, B, and C. Let's just get there right now. I had a case recently, $8 billion marital estate. We settled it in like a month with 4 phone calls because my adversary is a lawyer named John Teitler. I consider probably the best divorce lawyer in state of New York, and he's very, very skilled. And we both know what the other one could have done, and we both just went, all right, look, you're gonna do this. I'm gonna do this. Let's save everybody the trouble. Now, if on the other side of that case there had been someone who doesn't know what they're doing in a courtroom, either he or I would have eaten that person alive. There's a school of thought that says cops carry guns so they don't have to use them.

You want to hire someone who is capable of making it through an ugly divorce and protecting you, but who is not going to do anything to increase the chances of this thing getting ugly. Like, who takes it as their task to not use this. I will beg people, don't make me do this. If there's a way to avoid it, don't make— because my feeling has always been when it comes to violence of any kind, and I've been training Brazilian jiu-jitsu for 20-plus years. I love to fight. I fight for fun. I fight in a courtroom for a living, and then I fight on a mat for fun. And what I tell people all the time is, listen, don't fight. Don't hit people. Apologize. Lose face. Who cares? Don't worry about it. Walk away. But if you have to hit someone, hit 'em so they don't get up. Don't hit 'em softly. That's stupid. You're just gonna make 'em angry. Don't tell 'em, I'm about to hit you, cuz it's gonna give them a chance to run away or hit you first. Like, so the truth is like you want to hire counsel. All of these attorneys that do all this advertising of, you know, divorce doesn't have to be difficult.

If one person in the ecosystem of your divorce has decided this divorce is gonna be difficult, Your divorce is gonna be difficult, so you want to have a full toolkit. So that's why a lot of people, I'm their second lawyer, cuz the first lawyer was like, we're just gonna hold hands and sing Kumbaya. And by the way, it'd be great. It'd be great if you could mediate your divorce successfully. You should. There's no question in my mind. But that's not how it works. It's not the right tool for a lot of situations. And again, you don't get to make that decision yourself. Because the other side, your co-parent, your spouse, they get to decide if they're going to be as reasonable as you are too.

If you're writing out your goals, if I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of somebody getting divorced and I don't want to blast them into hell. Yeah, right. And just like, yeah, yeah. Spend all the money just torturing them and dragging this out. But there's a lot of people who do. Yeah. But if you were to write the goals, for me, it'd be like amicable split. Kids are okay.

But see, what you're describing right there is emotional states and feelings, and that's great.

Those are really important. That's not really surprising either.

But yeah, that's real. Those are really important things. Okay.

But what are the other goals?

Where do I wanna live? What resources do I need to have to be able to maintain a life that's gonna be safe and comfortable for me and for my children? Where are our children going to go to school in proximity to where I live and their co-parent lives? What should the rotation of our time with our children look like realistically? Economically, what do I need and what do I want? Which, by the way, what do I need? What do I want? What am I entitled to? 3 different questions. You know what you need? Most of us are gonna have what we need. Food, shelter. It does not take as long as it used to to meet those needs in a particular day, and it doesn't cost quite as much. So what you need, you're gonna be all right.

You're gonna be all right.

What do you want? There's no limit to what a person could want. So what you want should be informed by what you're entitled to. And lawyers are exceedingly good at explaining to someone what they're entitled to.

Mm-hmm.

So once I've explained to you what you're potentially entitled to, there's certain aspects of it that's crystal clear what you're entitled to, and there's certain that there's discretion, but there's a range. I can explain the range. I can tell you what the range roughly is. Maintenance alimony's gonna be about this long, this little, this much. Could be around this amount, like, but it's a range. I can explain the range. Make your goals early on. Write them down. Lock them in. There are people in divorce who will spend $10,000 in legal fees arguing over an $11,000 bank account. And guess what? If you won, you didn't win $11,000, you won $1,000. And if you lost, you didn't lose $11,000, you lost $21,000. Like, this has a price tag, and you got to figure out what's that price tag. Frontload that. Think about that from the beginning. I tell every single client in every single consult I have ever done since the first consult I've ever done. So this is now Thousands of consultations, I say to everyone, I would rather you pay her than pay me. I would rather you pay him than pay me. I used to say, I'd rather you put your kids through college than mine, but now my kids are through college, so I can't use that one.

A good lawyer is gonna tell a potential client that from the jump.

How do you manage your emotions when you are dealing with somebody on the other side? who is nasty and is just out for war? How do you stay grounded knowing this is a person who is going to just drag this out?

Yeah. So it's really important to remember that a divorce is the architecture of your post-divorce life. It is not the final argument in your marriage.

Wait, what does that mean?

It's not the final referendum on who was right and who was wrong in the marriage. Who was a good person and who was awful? Whose fault was it that this didn't work out? You're not going to have a Perry Mason moment where this person realizes, oh my God, you're right, I was a terrible husband, or I was a terrible wife. Like, this is not the final act in the play of your marriage, and you want to be the hero in this chapter or this scene in the play. Like, that's not what this is. This is logistics. This is who gets what, when do they get it, how do they get it, where are the kids going to be, when will they be there. Like, this is logistics. This is not the committees on fellowship and reconciliation where people get up and announce their pain and they hear each other's pain. And they— again, do I think there's value to that? I think there'd be tremendous value to people telling their stories and listening to their spouse's story. I think it'd be amazing if lawyers were free, I'd be like, yeah, let's try every single case so that people can be heard and tell the story of the marriage from their point of view.

But that's not how it works. So the sooner that you approach a divorce as the logistics of uncoupling, undoing the legal status that was done on the day you said I do, and thinking about the architecture of your post-divorce life, the happier you're gonna be.

I think that's really helpful. Extremely helpful. That you could remind yourself, this isn't right or wrong. The marriage is over. We're arguing about logistics. That's it.

Yeah, it's a business transaction. It's so hard to say that to people because I am not minimizing the emotion of a divorce. I'm not at all. I understand the pain of heartbreak deeply. You know that I was crying. How many things have I cried at? I'm very emotional. I'm very sentimental. There is a time and a place to mourn the beauty of love and how it fades and goes away. Like, there's so much value in that. The legal process is not the place for that. The legal process is a place for the logistics of it. It's for the architecture of it. It's for the architecture of your post-divorce life. And the sooner as you start to look at it like a business transaction, the better.

Stage 5 is I'm in it. What is the most common mistake you've seen people make who are in the middle of a divorce?

The biggest mistake I see people making when they're mid-through it, stage 5, the I'm in it stage, is trying to get a feeling out of a system that doesn't generate feelings. Like they're trying to get a feeling of vindication. They're trying to get a feeling of closure. They're trying to get a feeling out of a system that doesn't produce feelings. The legal system produces outcomes. If you're looking for a judge to vindicate you in the history of your marriage, it's not going to happen. Like, a judge divides property, sets a schedule, and then goes to lunch. Like, this is their job. This is what they do. Like, if you treat it as the last round of the argument of your marriage, you will be disappointed. And that's something I think sometimes people don't realize until after they're through the process. And I also think, you know, one of the biggest mistakes people make when they're in it is deciding on a timeline of how they're going to view this divorce by everyone's worst moment, like their worst moment, their spouse's worst moment, and decide that that's going to be the defining moment of our marriage or our divorce or both.

If you judge my parenting by my greatest moment as a parent, you're giving me way too much credit. And if you judge my parenting by my weakest, most impatient moment as a parent, You're not being fair to me.

What separates people in post-divorce life who navigate it well versus those who don't?

So I think unattended sorrow is very toxic in every setting, and divorce is no exception. I think you have to attend to your sorrow. I think you have to grieve. I think that grief isn't evidence that love failed. I think that grief is evidence that love matters. And I think it's really important for people to let it have been real. Like, don't rewrite the history of your marriage to, I never loved this person. I never cared. It never mattered. I know that feels really good sometimes. It makes you feel empowered, but it's dishonest for most people. Like, you felt what you felt with this person. You loved this person. You thought that they loved you, or maybe they did in fact love you. But the marriage ended. And so now you have to grieve that marriage, and you're not doing yourself any favors by just ignoring that and pretending that it didn't happen and pretending that it didn't matter. I think that there's tremendous value in letting yourself feel the pain of loss in a meaningful way. It's so much easier to be angry than it is to be sad. I find that all the time.

Like, I find in therapy, most of the time what I'm saying to my therapist is, I just want to be mad. I want to be so mad at this. Why? Because it's so much easier than being sad. It's so much easier than saying, yeah, that hurts so bad. Like, it's so much easier to just get angry. And so resist that. Like, let yourself feel the pain of that. I've talked before about when I was grieving the loss of my mom. How something a therapist said to me that was really helpful was that I should write a letter to my mom with all the things I needed to say to her that I never got to say. And I did. And then I read it out loud through tears, and it was really useful. And then the harder thing is the therapist said, okay, now write a letter back from her.

Oh.

And have her say all the things you needed to hear. And that was much harder. Because I sat there and I wrote all the things I wish she'd said, all the things I wish she knew. And what I realized is, yeah, I knew what I needed to hear from her. And a lot of it, I knew she knew. I knew a lot of it was stuff that she knew but never said out loud to me, but that I know she knew, that we just never had that conversation. Maybe she didn't have the insight. Maybe she hadn't done the work. But So I think there's value in that in a divorce or in any breakup, or even a breakup that you were adjacent to, like the son-in-law that you really loved, and now they're not your son-in-law anymore. They're your daughter's ex-husband, and you loved them. Write a letter. Don't ever send it to that person. You don't have to. Just say all the things you needed to say. Write a letter back from them where they say all the things that— we live in imagination. Like, so much of the future is an imagination. So much of the past is some recollection of what happened, but it's infused by our imagined, you know, way of viewing it, our subjective experience.

So why not embrace that about ourselves? Why not put that to work for you? Like, why not use that in divorce? Why not write a letter back from your spouse where they go, yeah, I cheated on you. I was weak. I was a coward. I should have been honest with you, and you deserved that. And I didn't. And I'm really— I will, I will spend the rest of my life wondering why I did that. Okay. You may never hear that from them.

Probably never will.

But you know what? It would have value to know what it is you wanted to hear.

What do you say to the person who's listening right now who is on the other side of divorce, but they just can't move on? Like they're still struggling?

Yeah, I think I think struggling is a feeling, and I think the solution to feelings sometimes is structure. So I would say start making some rules for yourself. I think the secret to healing is structure. So, one, what are some things you gave up in the marriage? Put some of those on a list. I used to go to yoga classes. Okay, go back to start going to yoga classes again. I was really interested in art. I used to go to museums. Cool. Go to some museums. Put it in the calendar. Next 2 weeks, put some things on the calendar that you gave up during the marriage. Do some things that remind you who you are. Like, we were the you and the me and the we. The we got undone. Who's me? Who's me? Like, make some dates with yourself. Like, spend some time remembering who you were and who you are and who you still have the possibility to be. There are pillars in all of our lives that hold us up. Like, none of us are just floating. They're pillars. There's community, there's family, there's our faith community, there's our pets, there's our hobbies.

There's all these things. Like, avail yourself of the pillars. Identify them. Be grateful for them. Go out and volunteer somewhere. Be of service. Remind yourself how much value you've been of service to this marriage for an extended period of time. Be of service to people who genuinely need and deserve it. Like you will feel of use. There is value to feeling of use, and you are of use. You are needed. Every single person listening, we need your help right now. Somewhere less than a mile from where you are, someone needs you. Go find them and help them. I've seen amazing resilience from broken people who were weeping at my conference room table, and now a year, 2 years, 3 years later, Are just unbelievable in the gifts that they're giving to themselves and the world. You're going through a divorce. You're going to have moments where you feel really sad, sad for the marriage that you thought you had, sad for the life you thought you were living that you're not going to anymore, like the future that you imagined that isn't going to be your future anymore. I think make an appointment with grief.

Like unattended grief takes all day. Unscheduled grief will eat your whole day. Like I think give yourself a chance. Say you know what? On Sundays at one o'clock. I'm gonna wallow in the self-pity of this thing. I'm gonna listen to Pink Floyd, The Wall, or Ray LaMontagne's first album. I'm just gonna be sad. I'm gonna sit and I'm gonna cry. The reality too is, I said it earlier, get a therapist before you get a dating app. Like, too many people go from one relationship to another relationship very, very quickly.

Why do you say that's a bad— I mean, I see it too, and I'm always like, oh God, here we go.

I get it. I get it. Best way to get over someone is to get under someone. I've heard all the jokes. I get it. But the truth is, you are really not doing any of the repair or the grief if you're jumping right into something. Of course, it feels warm and wonderful to be loved and desired. And if you've been in a relationship that had grown cold and you didn't feel beautiful or handsome or sexy or loved and you didn't feel passion or desire, so human to want those things. But here's the thing. There's a whole architecture of your post-divorce life that you just have to start putting together. And putting that together with another person as a variable in there, it's not going to be as pure and as honest as you need it to be. It's why the divorce rate for second marriages, third marriages, particularly when people marry people who they got involved with while they were married— there's an old saying, a man who leaves his wife for his mistress just creates a job opening. Because what's happening is that a person's not really repairing their instability in relationship. They're just diving into another one.

And that's a dangerous thing to do. Get a therapist first, and then the time will come where a dating app might make sense or getting back out there might make sense. Doesn't have to be long. It might be a few months, might be a few— might be a few years. Who knows? But work with someone about that.

At the beginning of the conversation, you talked about framing the Wikipedia page of your life. Yeah. And that divorce isn't the entire story. Where does that idea of the Wikipedia of your life play into your self-narrative post-divorce?

I think it feels because it's one of those punctuation marks, it would make the Wikipedia page of your life. Like, don't let it be anything but what it is, which is a piece of who you are and a piece of your journey. It's a punctuation mark. Stop chasing who you were before. Chapters are sequential. Like, relationships are chapters in a long book. And if you chase the person you were before this chapter, you'll never get there.

Hmm.

Like, just become who you're going to be now. You have so many ingredients now. And Cormac McCarthy, in one of his novels, I think it's No Country for Old Men. He says that people reach a stage in their life where they've lost so much that they focus on it and they don't see what else is going out the door. And I see people going through divorces do that all the time, that they're so caught up in what they've lost that they just completely lose sight of all the other stuff just going out the door behind them because they're so fixated on what they've lost, as opposed to thinking of what do I still have left and what can I do now with what I have where I am?

For the person who is in that space, what is still there? You.

You without the weight of this other person's expectation that maybe you couldn't fulfill, or your expectations of yourself and your life that you couldn't navigate. There's an authentic, real version of you there. There's a version of you that has the opportunity now to make different choices about who you are, what relationships you want. Like, I know a lot of people, myself included, whose relationships post-divorce were much more fulfilling.

Hmm.

Because I know what I don't want. I still am not quite sure what I want, but I know what I don't want. You know, my mom used to say, it's hard to define intelligence, but I can spot stupid a mile away. So maybe what intelligence is is just the absence of stupid. Like, so I don't quite know what I want in a relationship, but man, I can tell you all the things I don't want, many of which I've lived through. I don't want myself to turn into X, Y, and Z. I don't want a partner who does A, B, and C. Like, so you've got a much better sense now of what works and what Doesn't. And I think that that is a superpower if you let it be. And it can create for you opportunities to become the most authentic version of yourself and to find someone who helps you become the most authentic version of yourself and who appreciates the most authentic version of you. You don't have to do it the same way you did it in that relationship. And the sooner that you get in touch with that and realize you have that in the pantry of your emotional life, like you can start cooking with those ingredients.

I love that, that there is something so much bigger and cooler and more satisfying to discover about yourself.

And more authentic. Yeah, because it wasn't by default, it was by design. You know, you'd never get in a cab and just go drive, like, unless you're in a movie. Like, where is it you're trying to go? Most people, like, they feel like it's weather. Their life is just something happening to them as opposed to something that they have any real design on. And I just think divorce is an invitation to approaching your post-divorce life in a different way.

If one of your kids is divorcing, or a friend or somebody that you care about is currently going through a divorce, what is the best way to show up and support somebody in the middle of this?

So the first thing I would say is stop being useful the way that you want to be useful.

Now, what does that mean?

Like, stop giving them what you think they need. Figure out what they need. Like, you want to show up useful in a certain way. Like, you want to, like, be their compadre in this, or you want to, like, tell them, like, yeah, you're right, he sucked. Like, first, just stop and don't worry about how you want to show up. Worry about how they need you to show up. Try to Go in and get a sense of where is this person at. Okay? So rather than bringing your set of stuff to this, your divorce, your frustration in your current relationship, your, you know, like vision of, oh my God, if it was me going through this, I would feel this, this, and this. Meet this person where they're at first, first and foremost. Also be specific, like saying like, hey, Let me know when you want to get together. Like, hey, let me know. I want to be here for you. Let me know how I can be here. That is too vague. Like, hey, do you want to have dinner on Thursday? Do you want to get together? We don't even have to eat if you want.

We just go for a walk. Do you want to just— let's get together on Thursday. How's 6? Be tangible with this person. Because when you say to someone who's in pain or grieving, whether it's from death or divorce, oh, I'm here for you. I want to be here for you. It's too vague. Like saying to this person, hey, can I come over on Thursday? And by the way, if Thursday morning comes, you don't feel like seeing me, that's fine. I'll come over Friday. But let's put something tangible in the book with this person and make yourself present for that person. Offer them a menu. Hey, listen, I'm coming over on Thursday. We can talk about it if you need to. If you don't want to talk about it, I can just tell you about all the crazy stuff going on at work right now. Or I can tell you knock-knock jokes, or I could whatever you want to. We don't have to talk about anything. We go to the movies and just be entertained, and we'll get a large popcorn and split it. We can go walk around, go shopping and get some retail therapy.

If you wanna cry, you can cry. If you want me to cry, I'll cry. If you want to not cry and you want me to just make you laugh, we can do that. Just offer this person a menu and then say, by the way, if you pick one of those things and it doesn't feel good when we're in it, we can change.

Hmm.

You know, one of the things I've been doing lately when I have a friend who's grieving, Is I say 2 things to them. I say, I wish I knew the perfect thing to say because I would say it right now. Because I'm pointing out something about the inadequacy of words. All I'm saying then is, I love you. I love you. And it hurts that you're hurting. And then the other thing I really try to do now with people who are in my life who are struggling, Is I try to remember and I say to them, can you let me do something for you? Like, let me come over and mow your lawn. Let me take the kids for the day and take them out someplace to Legoland. Let me cook you dinner. Not for you, for me, because I feel out of control in this and you're hurting and I love you. So could you do me the favor of letting me do something for you?

Hmm. So, James, one of the things I'd love to have you speak to that I've seen personally happen to friends and family members, and that is after the divorce, the absolute shattering of the social network.

Yeah.

And how friends pick sides.

Yeah.

How you're not invited or you're no longer a member of the club, or pickup line is weird because you're now the newly divorced wife and your friends don't invite you over. Can you just talk a little bit to that piece of it? Because I don't think a lot of people see it coming.

Well, first, I think there are some things people can do to be proactive about preventing how deep that goes, because I think the more that you invite people into the discourse of your divorce in your worst moments while you're going through it, the more that people rightly feel, okay, I've got to pick a side and I've got to be a buffer. where I've got to keep these people apart from each other. Whereas if you do have a script that you both can try to stick to of, listen, the marriage ended, but we're both still co-parents and we both really want to raise our kids together in the right way. And there's no sides to take. You know, and the best thing you can do for me, if you want to be loyal to me, is to still treat her with civility and respect and vice versa. Make that your status. Both of you should at the same time put something on Instagram that says, you know, yes, our marriage has ended. We both asked for some privacy in this. We're focused on our kids and we ask that you just treat each other, both of us, with love and support, because we will always continue to be co-parents to our children.

Someday we'll be grandparents together, and we ask that you have respect for that. So there are—

Really? On social media?

Oh yeah. Why not? Why not? Why don't we say the quiet part out loud? Like what? People didn't notice you got divorced? Like people did? Like, of course. Why not? Why can't 2 people decide they're going to put out a press release? I mean, it's the modern equivalent of a press release. You posted what you had for breakfast today. You're not going to mention the fact that you got divorced? You don't think people are going to ask the question of, hey, are there sides? And if there's a side, whose side should we be on? So why not say that part out loud of just saying, hey, there's no teams. There's no teams. It's just a family. It's just a family that's changing shape. And we ask you to just still love us and still love us together, love us separately. But there's going to be separateness. Like, there's no way to not have that be. You're going to want to bring your new boyfriend or your new girlfriend or your new husband or your new wife to things. And the question is, is Will this make an uncomfortable dynamic, or is this a dynamic where people have some ability to behave themselves and conduct themselves in appropriate manner?

And again, not everybody's created the same level of maturity. So you do the things that you can do.

James, what are your parting words?

A friend of mine says to me quite often, my friend Mark, he says to me, don't worry, nothing's under control. And I always really like that because I'm someone who really loves to have control, you know? And he's the therapist, and he's like, yeah, don't worry, nothing's under control. There's no way to control all of it. But there are pieces of this we have control over. And the more that we remove ourselves from the abstraction of ourselves, our marriage, our parenting, our divorce, the divorce of the people around us, like, you're either getting divorced Someone in your family is getting divorced. Someone in your family has been divorced. Divorce is like cancer. It's something you don't want to say out loud, but I guarantee it's going to touch some part of your life. Someone you know is going to have it. Someone you know is going to go through it. Having a toolkit on how to do that for yourself, for the other, for your family, for your children, for the people around you, you will do yourself a favor. It's like having a first aid kit around the house.

When you look out to the future, what is possible for a person post-divorce? Like, what do you want somebody to hold on to? Because I know that this episode, much like the first one that we did together— share, share, share, share, share. People are going to find this for 10 years. Yeah. And when you're in it, you don't believe.

Yeah. I think the thing that 10 years from now, I think the thing that anyone who's going through a divorce or just been through a divorce should be focused on is the fact that it is never too late to become who you are. It is never too late to become the person you were meant to be. You are actively becoming that person right now. This was part of the Wikipedia page of your life. It's nothing to be ashamed of. You're in the majority. And that it's something that can be part of your definition of yourself. All the things you learned from it, all the aspects of self that you got to put through the test. All the lessons you learned about what you don't want and who you don't want to be in relationship, they can all be powerful ingredients for an amazing post-divorce life. And we can all show up for each other when we're navigating those endings and help each other see that those are really just beginnings.

James Sexton, I just have to tell you, I am one of your biggest fans. Thanks. I love you, and I love the way you think about the world and relationships. And I want to thank you because you gave us the ultimate guide to understanding and navigating divorce, whether it's you that's going through it or it's somebody that you love who is. You really helped us understand what is in our control. And what is not in our control? What is the juice that's worth the squeeze? And what are the coals that are gonna burn your hands? And how to be smarter about this. You know, interestingly, I think whether you are going through a divorce or you're sharing this as a resource with somebody that you love, I also appreciate how much I learned about my own relationship, and I learned how I can show up better for people in my life when this inevitably happens. So from the bottom of my heart, on behalf of people around the world who will listen to this and watch this and share this free resource with the people that they care about, thank you.

Thank you. Thanks for having me. I always love our conversations. It really means a lot.

Means a lot to me too, and to the person listening. And I also wanna thank you. Thank you for making the time to learn and to listen and for being so generous. With the wisdom that is James Sexton. Everybody that you share this with is gonna thank you and their life will be better because of it. And in case no one else tells you today, as your friend, I wanted to be sure to say that I love you and I believe in you and I believe in your ability to create a better life. And everything that you and I just learned is going to help you do that. Alrighty, I will see you in the very next episode. I'll welcome you in the moment you hit play. I am so glad right now that I brought you back on this podcast because I knew that you would give us an incredible guide to divorce. But you are like, what did I say out there? So let's talk about the first one. Pre-completive. Today, he's gonna give you the most comprehensive guide, and it's something that you need because he's gonna— please help me welcome back Oh, God.

Okay. You are so good.

Yay!

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.

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