Blocks w/ Neal Brennan - James Sexton

Episode Date: November 27, 2025

Neal Brennan interviews James Sexton (Attorney, Author, Sexton Show) about the things that make him feel lonely, isolated, and like something's wrong - and how he is persevering despite these blocks. Subscribe to James Sexton:  @sextonshow  00:00 Intro 1:30 Fame 10:21 Childhood 14:29 Debate Skills 17:10 Trauma, Growth & Divorce Clients 23:47 Sponsor: FitBod 26:06 Sponsor: Aura 28:11 Tactical Mind vs. Emotions 35:12 The 8 Mile Strategy 41:27 What All Divorce Cases Have in Common 43:56 Social Media & Relationship Dissatisfaction 55:48 Sponsor: SuperPower 58:15 Sponsor: Mando 59:45 How to be vulnerable in relationships 1:05:00 Offense vs. Defense in Relationships 1:20:00 Why Most People Shouldn’t Be Together 1:31:28 F.A.P. ---------------------------------------------------------- Follow Neal Brennan: https://www.instagram.com/nealbrennan https://twitter.com/nealbrennan https://www.tiktok.com/@mrnealbrennan Watch Neal Brennan: Crazy Good on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81728557 Watch Neal Brennan: Blocks on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81036234 Theme music by Electric Guest (unreleased). Edited by Will Hagle ---------------------------------------------------------- Sponsors: https://www.fitbod.me/NEAL for 25% off your subscription https://www.auraframes.com promo code NEAL for $45 off! https://www.superpower.com promo code TAKE20 for an additional $20 off https://www.shopmando.com promo code NEAL - new customers get 20% off sitewide Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest today is, are you getting divorced, dog? You a high net worth individual? Is it over for you and the fella or the lady? And you need a guy who's, I'm assuming, is a really good lawyer and a litigator will call him. And also has an online presence. It's growing every day. Before we begin, remember to like, subscribe, hit the notification bell, all those things. It really helps the channel.

And check us out at sexton show.com. This is James J. Sexton, Jim, I'll call you Jim. Yeah, Jim's good, yeah. Is that, that's pretty much. That was an excellent promotion. I mean, that was, I think it speaks for yourself. I mean, if I just can, you know, bring you on as a sponsor now to just deliver something with that eloquence, we're gonna. I, why he's, you'll learn about him today, but I, I, I became aware of you through different interviews, different, you have a book, which I haven't read, um, but I feel like I've watched enough videos that, like, do I really kind of have, because people ask me questions that's basically like, so what are four things?

I'm like, well, I wrote a whole book about it. Yeah. How has the online presence helped or hurt the practice? It hasn't really touched it. It, it, you know, I was already a full-time divorce lawyer for 23 years before I ever did any kind of media work. And so, and I already had a full roster of clients. It wasn't like a situation where I didn't have clients.

Yeah, you know. It really was just something I did to use like a different muscle in my brain and, and to, to, because I enjoyed it. and i found it kind of more invigorating like doing the same things over and over in court i still love the job i still love being a divorce lawyer and a trial lawyer but i just you know it was a different experience the the biggest change it's had is that now people recognize me and people my peers make fun of me left and right they're like oh it's the celebrity you know because divorce lawyers in you know there's a lot of lawyers in new york city there's

only a small subsection that are matrimonial lawyers and there's even smaller subsection that are the ones who represent like the wealthy celebrities, things like that. So I was already in that small subsection, and so they think it's quite hilarious because most of them, you'd pass them on street, you never know who they were. And yet their clients are billionaires

and they're very well known, you know. So among the matrimonial circles. So now I get recognized like on this, I live in Manhattan, so I get recognized on the subway. When I walked, anytime I stand still anywhere in New York City, people are like, you're the divorce letter. You know, so it changed that. But other than that, it hasn't really changed anything.

Do you judge yourself, do you judge yourself for liking it? No, because I think I'm in an interesting level of, if you want to call it fame. Yeah, I'm in an interesting level of fame. I call it NBA referee level. That's the level I'm probably similar. That feels good. Like, I know you, in my case, it's like, I know you were a lot of black guys. Right.

So there's the, there's the weather metaphor works, but for me, but it is that thing of like, yeah. And I don't know what to make of you. I like, I like you. I mean, in my case, it's like stand up. Well, for me, what, you know, my public facing persona is in, like, my conversations like this, that's authentically me. So, like, they, I'm not playing a character in any way.

I'm not doing an act. It's, it's me. So I feel like the people that meet me, they actually, like, know something of me. So if they like me, they like me. Yeah. And I could never say that doesn't feel great. I mean, I actually understand my celebrity clients

a bit better because I've often wondered, like, like why some of them are so you know eutistical or why they're so they're so shocked when i tell them things that they don't want to hear but they need to hear and and you know your lawyer is often giving you bad news you know not because something went wrong but because we'll know this is the rules like you have to give this this is what the law says and they kind of are shocked that someone's disagreeing with them you know i have a theory why every musician's third album sucks because the first album is just raw talent with no production values the second album is like amazing raw talent with some production behind it and the third album is what starts to happen when no one around

you is telling you yeah that's a bad idea like so that's why it's like you know what i think i'm i'm through some banjo in and like i literally am doing it over now that this is trump's second album yeah i have a different metaphor but it's like surround of mine entourage it's a second season second album second it's a sequel yeah it's just not as good bad ideas no one no one's checking him and no one and and we really need like we need people who see your blind spots and who like care enough about you to go dude just shut up and play the but you see how it happens a hundred percent and you see i you work with your son right i do yeah i mean so right there like there's a in everyone becomes an employee and but then you don't want to work with strangers

It's just, you see none of it's easy. What's nice about having my son around, though, I will say is that he is always as unimpressed with me as anyone is with their parent. Yeah, yeah. And so that actually keeps me very grounded because he's very humble and very, like, will say to me like, yeah, that's so cheesy

or oh, that's so cringe. And I like that, I appreciate that because I like for now, for now, son. But I will tell you the positive part of it is, you know, anyone who says that there isn't something incredibly gratifying about strangers walking up to you and saying, I love your stuff. Yeah.

And I love, like, how do you get those, that little dopamine hit five, six times a day. Where it started to scare me is when I walked from my apartment to my office, which is only a couple of blocks, and no one stopped me. And I went, oh, wait, why didn't anybody, like, what did I, you know, like, do you guys not see? And I was like, maybe if I stand still for a minute,

So, and I found myself going, oh, wow, no, don't start, don't start. It's the difference between like, I had a drink last night and A, like, I need a drink. Yeah. And I started to go, okay, this is, if you start letting this be something you need, it's going to change. But it's, you, I will, I can cut this because it might be nauseating. But you, once you, you notice, you do know, I mean, human beings were social animals, so we're constantly attuned to what is that person recognizing, uh, uh, uh, what sort of treatment am I gonna get and it's very hard not to fall into it I mean I this could

comfort you but there are and I talked to buddy mind about this there are low fame days yeah like I'm just not very famous today yeah and then there's other days where you are and I don't know what the difference is or what the I think it might be life force based like how much life force are you giving off whatever you want to call it but I could be dead wrong I spend so much of my sort of inner life trying to, you know, and, you know, for example, even my experience with psychedelics has always been, like, in this pursuit of kind of ego death, recognizing, like, where I stand in connection to the universe. And it's very, um, the concept of fame is very much

about like, you know, connecting to self and then the presented self and then the other people's reaction to it. So in that sense, I don't always know if it's pulling me in the direction I want to go. I feel like sometimes it's not. Let me tell you. Yeah. Yeah. And I see it. But it's easier. It feels good and it's easier. And it's easier when everyone's, you got everyone's kissing my ass right now. Oh, okay. How hard are you going to fight it? If everyone tells you you're in great shape, how are I going to go to the gym? Well, and I represent, you know, I represent the wealthy and famous. Can you charge more just at a curiosity? No. I mean, you could, but I, you know, I charge the same for everybody.

It's like, that's what we all do. Well, no, no, now that you're, now that you're. Oh, every year my rates went up anyway. And every year my roster got a little more exclusive. Like I only take a certain number of cases. Got it. I like to have a firm that's designed that clients can get me anytime.

But I really do find that like when you're in the hierarchy of like what you should aspire to, I have wealthy famous clients. I have famous not wealthy clients. I have not wealthy, not famous clients, and I have very wealthy, totally unknown, unfamous clients. That should be the aspiration. Very wealthy.

Very wealthy and unknown. Because you have all of the perks and access that come with fame, with none of the invasion of your privacy. Like some of my clients who are worth $8 billion, $10 billion, they would walk past you on the street. You have no idea who they are. You would just would, you know. There's a little signals, though.

If they have one of those quilted hunting jackets, that's a good sign. That's a big thing where the Patagonia vest is a big. People wear the vest. But that's like usually I'm a hedge fund guy who wants to look like a hedge fund guy who's not all caught up in it. Yeah. No. But like these are dudes just walking around and like khakis and, you know. People will always want access to money and they will occasionally want access to fame.

Yeah. So I've had the same calculation. The fame is like they say, it's the mess that eats into the wearer. so you can't yeah you know once you've got it in there you kind of can't take it off you know all right let's go back to are you you grew up how'd you grow up i grew up just outside of new york city i grew up in rocklin county a small suburb i grew up uh my dad was a ptcd vietnam veteran alcoholic who you know i moved out when i was 17 what a combo it's a good combo yeah it's a common combo actually back then yeah um yeah because those guys came back and they were like all right buck up

you know get out there you be all right you know you know well like every every single person he knew was dead so he and he probably saw them die was a bunch of like oh did you hear he saw it yeah and he never discussed it he never processed it in any capacity so he just sort of pushed it all down and then alcohol kind of kept it down and um yeah i moved out when i was 17 i was unambitious i was were you what was the relationship you know he was a fun drunk okay so he wasn't like mean at all but he had he was a cutty sark in the coffee mug in the morning kind of drunk thick hands yeah big with a beat up looking hands too like like my hands look very soft compared to his but he was uh yeah we we we kind of avoided each other as much as possible my mom was trying

to sort of manage having this alcoholic dad you know husband who was similar to her alcoholic father you know she did what a lot of people what a coincidence yeah it definitely wasn't chance And yeah, I was really unsuccessful at adolescence. And like I wasn't good at sports. I was smart, but I wasn't a good student. I was just kind of dorky. I had big glasses. I looked like a serial killer.

And I went to Catholic school. And I just was not good at anything. And so I got used to being alone. I got used to, you know, we grew up without money. So, you know, when you're a kid, like having a lot is very fun of anything. of anything yeah but every store we left I I couldn't have anything because I didn't have any money so the library was my favorite place because you could leave

with stuff yeah like I would oh that's tons of yeah and my parents actually had one one thing that I really credit them for their attitude is if you can read it you can read it so any book in the library you can read so like I was probably the only 12 year old it was like jerking off to Danielle Steele rather than Playboy magazine because I I didn't have access to getting like play but I could get a Danielle Steele novel out of the library and read it and of course it had some sex scenes in it when you're 12 you know a strong breeze is going to be enough to make you excited also like I never found any of that or like his member but if it's

all you got I know it's all you got you're like you know it's like the Ritz Cracker like if that's all you've had you're like that's delicious you know so I would you know robbing and it probably taught me something about like oh the nature of like you know because those books were so popular at the time yeah taught me something about the the nature of female desire maybe. And it was, it taught me also to love to read. I mean, literally, you know, so I, that was helpful. But then I got to college, and I kind of came into my own.

I got tall, I grew my hair. And the fact that I was, I went to Ramapo College of New Jersey. It was like a dirt cheap school that I could go to. And, you know, I had no money, so it was like, I'd go wherever I could, and I was a waiter at night. And I think that was actually the most, being a waiter was the best experience ever for doing what I do because a anytime anyone complains about the job

I always say like I've done worse things for less money yeah because until you slung like prime rib for a $2 tip while people just verbally abuse you you don't realize how good you have it you know and any night that I go home and it's not 2 a.m. and I smell like prime rib like I'm good you know and and so I'm in the air conditioning in the summer I'm in the warmth in the winter I went to college think was going to happen to your life i really had no idea i really didn't think it would be no even vague no any sense of like i'm not destined but like may i kind of feel like you just i was utterly directionless darkness no yeah i just went i i don't think i'm good at anything necessarily i i got involved in the debate team my sophomore year of high school because

there was a girl on the team who i wanted to be near yep and so And so I thought, well, maybe I'd be good at this. And I actually ended up really good at it. Like, it was the only thing I'd ever been good at was debate. Did it feel good to be good at something? Yeah, it felt amazing. Yeah. It's still, and still my ability to sort of like verbally spar and my ability to like think fast on my feet and improvise

and extemporaneously speak and like think about things in a strategic way. It's probably my greatest blessing and gift and probably my greatest curse in my personal life. I it is definitely something that um you know it it set me apart really early on anticipating the argument and getting around did they work with the girl it did it didn't actually the girl I lost my virginity to nice yeah yeah perfect plan yeah it was you know I wish I could have said it was like a it was so methodically done but it really was yeah like said I got to get next to her it's like you're 9-11 you're been yeah it really really I mean what are the odds that it all happens it's just

all it was she was my first kiss she was my first everything Because before that, I couldn't get a girl to even talk to me. And you would now have a skill that you could build a lifetime. Yeah, it took me a while to figure that out, though. I'm talking about fucking. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You really made, you built a life.

I built a life. Theoretically, the desire to get laid gave me my career. It's every. It really is. Yeah. But I generally believe that's true about men. It's 100% for. We do, we do to get laid.

100% true. Yeah. Okay. So you get, you're good at debate. Then you go to college. You keep debating. Good college. No, I didn't debate anymore.

But I realized, okay. Like, that's my skill set. My skill set is I'm slow of study, but sure of speech. So I'm just gonna try to use that and leverage that. So I thought I'd become a therapist. And then I realized therapists have to listen more than they talk. And so I didn't think that was the best use of my skills. Not for me, go ahead.

But I got out of school still kind of no direction. I got a degree in psychology. And I worked in a community mental health center with chronic chronic schizophrenic patients. And what was your demeanor at this point? You're pretty happy. Did you feel the dad's an alcoholic Vietnam vet? This is a problem.

This is stunting me. Any of that. You know, whoever discovered water, it wasn't a fish, right? So like, I was just in that and I just was, okay, this is just how life is. I remember sometime after college stumbling on the book, Alonon, adult children of alcoholics. And I remember reading it, like I didn't even buy it. I was just standing in the store.

reading it and i remember going like have they been reading my diary like because it was all about control issues and all the things that come from growing up in alcoholic household that now looking back like are something of a superpower you know like the sensitivity of like okay wait let me tell by dad's eyes or by his voice how much drinks he's had and that connection and empathy and you know sensitivity turned out to be like something that makes me excellent at my profession because in a courtroom i'm watching the judge i'm watching opposing counsel I'm watching my client. I'm trying to manipulate everyone's emotional state based on those cues as best I can.

Because fundamentally, that's my job is to manipulate people's emotional state. I want the judge. And do you, do you, what's the hierarchy, judge opposing counsel, your client? What's the- I mean, it's an ecosystem. So it's like they're all, I mean, the client pays the bill, so you always want them to feel good. But sometimes what they're more, what they really want, even if they don't realize it is the outcome. Yeah.

So the judge determines the outcome. But, you know, what I do is full contact. storytelling it's like like if you're trying to tell a story and someone else is trying to tell the opposite story at the same time and i'm trying to take apart their story while they try to take apart my story and so it's it's very kind of like you know three-dimensional chess in that sense so everyone in that room is really even a court reporter like even the person who's the stenographer taking it down like they're listening to everything that's being said they're going to go back in chambers with the judge and i know they're going to have a conversation about like oh my god sex thing was so

annoying or oh i like jim he's so nice or well he made some good points so it's like everyone in there could hurt you and everyone in there theoretically everyone in there's an alcoholic everyone everyone there is my father that's i feel like i'm in a therapy session it's usually wednesday mornings i do that but yeah it it definitely um you know i i took a couple of turns that after college that i thought made sense and didn't i mean my life in retrospect like i'm very successful in my career but i always tried to tell my sons when they were sort of directionless and in their early 20s that like oh yeah like mine makes sense looking backwards but like the only life path is the one behind you like there's the one in front of you like it was just a

series of near misses that yeah did not make any sense at the time but like I went to medical school for two weeks and dropped out in two weeks you got into med school I got into med school I was to tests really well I could because I'm very disciplined so yeah like when I took the LSAT the law school admission test I knew I had to get a scholarship because I couldn't afford to go to law school. So I took every single L-SAT that had ever been released over and over under timed conditions until I could get all of the questions right. So I just for like two months pretty much.

But it was like a monastic discipline. And then I got to the point where I was like, and I scored the 99.9th percentile. I got into Fordham Law School and got a full scholarship. So I went to law school for free. So like I, it was always that I just had a work ethic that was unlike anybody's work. All ways from the beginning. Yeah. Like once I knew what I wanted, I always had a work ethic. I always had a really disciplined way of approaching things. How did you, did you instill that in your kids? Is it instillable? I don't think it's instillable. Yeah. I mean, like it's. I always say it's a talent. I had this conversation with my dad because he got sober nine years ago in his 80s. And all of a sudden, I had this totally different person. You know, I had this whole different guy, which was funny because my reaction to it initially.

was excitement and like, oh, that's cool. First skepticism, then excitement. And then like this really seething anger. Because I, you know, he all of a sudden had an emotional vocabulary because he spent all this time in the rooms. And all of a sudden he would be like, you know, I'm so proud of you.

Like, oh, you know, call me this weekend, we can chat. And I'm like, dude, where was this guy? Yeah. Like, where was this guy when I was eight? Where was this guy when I was 30 and getting divorced? Like, now you want to go out back and have a catch? Like, I don't, I learned how to not need this. Yeah.

Like, I'm not doing this with you, man. Like, I'm glad you have four. have free time i don't like i'm you know but then i also figured out in my own work that like yeah you know you actually do like it's nice it's very healing to have a relationship with him you know and to realize that i you do still feel a deep connection to a parent you know it's elemental but i have a question which is can you that thing of of not giving too much credence to i'm in this environment and i'm it's making me this and psychological the cascades I've been talking to my lady a lot about my girl, about not accepting necessarily what has to happen.

Like, I don't have to be traumatized by a thing everyone's, that was traumatized. It's like people want you to be traumatized now. And as somebody who doesn't mind fighting, is what I've always liked about you. It's like, oh, this guy before I knew, you're just like, you're voluble and you're, you're personable and you want to find is there something to be said it's beyond resilience it's just not even accepting what is supposed to be yeah see i i feel like i feel like it's very short-sighted to think you can understand the takeaway while it's occurring anyway because you know when my father got into his recovery i he did the thing that a lot of people do when they get sober

which is he had oceans of regret and he wanted to sort of make amends with people and and you know So he was very like apologetic in a lot of his conversation with me about like, yeah, I was really not there and I really could have been a better dad. And I was like, dad, like I love my life. I love it. Like I love my profession. I love my personal life. I love who I am in a very real way. I'm only who I am because of the conditions in which I existed. And a lot of those were born of the classic, you know, adult child of alcoholic stuff. And I was like, so. Like, if you wanted to create another me, I would have had to have, like, been an absent alcoholic father with no emotional vocabulary to my children. Instead, I was soft as wonder bread. Like, I gave them the total. I treated dandruff with decapitation. I went the other way.

And I really tried to be, like, very present. And even when I disagreed with them, I was like, well, I understand what you're saying, but I feel this way. And they're soft as wonder bread. Like, they're lovely. They're great boys, like, but they're not, you know, they're not, they're not, they don't have much. my like insane tenacity, my control issues. And again, their life may be richer for it or poorer for it. I don't know, you know, but like I tried to say to my father, and I think it relates to

what you're saying that while this stuff is happening, while the traumatic thing or the thing that you, the external forces are saying should be traumatic to you. Like I've had clients who their divorce breaks them. And I've had clients who their divorce breaks them temporarily and then creates room for this other growth and this next chapter. that it's like a transformative, amazing experience. Post-traumatic growth, is the thing nobody talks about. Yeah, yeah, and like that idea of like,

all right, the barns burned down and now I can see the moon. Like there's so many possibilities that open up, but there has to be disorientation for you to reorient. And so I try to say to my clients, like when they're saying, like, well, I'm so anxious, or I'm so stress, or this is so hard, without discrediting what they're feeling, I try to say to them, like, you know, let's just slightly change your

your vocabulary, because as a lawyer, I'm always thinking about words, like, what if you said, like, I'm really disoriented right now? Because my life is reorienting. And my way of relating to the world and who I am and who I am in relation to other people, like my husband's now going to be my ex-husband or my co-parent, you know, that requires disorientation so you can reorient. So why not just ride that disorientation and call it what it is, which is it's a call to this new opportunity to change. Guys, a couple things I don't like about two. TikTok and Instagram and is all the fitness tips and hacks and tricks. There's everybody's got a thing.

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it i like human beings but not all of them so this has been great and i don't i can just assume it's going well and i've never gotten injured it's all everything's been groovy you know what's interesting the only time i got injured exercising was with the trainer i that doesn't mean that's what's going to happen to you but that's what could happen here's the call to action level up your workout Join FitBod today to get your personalized workout plan. Get 25% off your subscription or try the app for free for seven days at FitBod. me slash N-E-A-L. That's F-I-T-B-O-D dot M-E-E-S-N-E-A-L for one free week and then and then you decide whether you're like or not.

You will. God bless. You want to get shredded? Guys, we're talking about aura frames. which you know why it's like the sort of video and it's the montage and video frame thing where you load in the photos and then they cue them up in like a slideshow pretty damn sweet you can time long how do you want how many photos you want et cetera et cetera are you into the holidays is there are there certain holiday memories you want to remember i remember me and my brother

danny got a video game from my parents did and i still can't believe they got us a video game And you can, I don't have any photos of it. We used to not take photos. Back in the days, you get like three photos of yourself per year. And two of them, your eyes were close. So here's the thing with Ori. You get unlimited free photos and video. Just download the Aura app and connect to Wi-Fi.

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to action. For a limited time, visit auraframes.com, A-U-R-A-F-R-A-M-E-S dot com, and get four $45 off or his best-selling Carver Matt Frames named number one by wirecutter by using promo code NEAL at checkout. That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com promo code Neal. This exclusive Black Friday Cyber Monday deal is their best offer of the year, so order now before it ends. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Let's go. I highly recommend these AuraFrams.com, genuinely. I have two. You know I have two. I've talked about him in the past. Promocode, Neil. See out there. Maybe throw a picture of me on there.

Are they like an old old one where I'm like gaunt, very pale? God bless. Are you a mourner or a silker or a self-pityer? I think that would be an attendant mourner. Like I try to be someone who's very in touch with the parts of me that are moved by sadness or beauty. I mean, that's why I get a number of my interviews. like I get teary eye. You're gonna try to make me cry again, Steven. This feels unfair.

I'm not really afraid of that. I'm very comfortable with that because I know that sense. I used to think in my brain there were these two warring forces, my like analytical, argumentative, tactical side. And then this like very soft, very emotional, very empathetic, like kind of like pink in pink Floyd the wall, like that little like very vulnerable thing. And I used to see that as like, okay, my life and my brain is a war between those two forces.

And I would constantly be like, no, no, you have to be heart and you have to be this. And then the party going like, yeah, but you become too much of a machine, you have to be softer. And I think only in my late 40s did I go, oh, no, those are like two aspects of self that I just have to learn to let them dance with each other. And like, sometimes one is leading and sometimes the other one's leading. And like, I've just come to embrace in my own therapy, my own work, like, just realizing that, yeah, I'm on all of those things and that there's, it's not even a polarity between them, like, because they're not necessarily opposite. They're complementary forces if you let them coexist peacefully. And that's been, I think, my challenge, even personally and professionally, because professionally, part of my job is to be tactician, you know, come up with strategy, execute, eviscerate someone on cross-examination, build up my client on direct examination, like B, come back. in a respectful way under a certain rules of engagement.

And then the other part of my job is to be, like, very sensitive and very empathetic and try to, like, have my client feel understood and help them tell their story because, you know, people have a need to tell their story. People have a need to be heard. And that's part of my job is to put myself in their head and help their story be heard.

Even if some of their behavior, like any of us, is awful. Like, I represent victims of domestic violence and I represent perpetrators of domestic violence. perpetrators of domestic violence i represent people married to someone with a terrible substance abuse problem and i represent people who've had a terrible substance abuse problem and you spend enough time with all of those varieties and you start to realize like there's no good and bad people there's just you know good and bad the line of good and bad runs right through the human heart you know and you just start to figure out okay hurt people hurt people and and nobody's

born like i hate the jews or i hate this like people are born very warm and loving well i mean listen i Maybe. But I really find myself looking at the people I represent and when you get to know them well enough, it doesn't excuse some of it, but it explains. How do you ignore that if somebody is a drug user or let's say the, well, probably a man is a spousal abuse. Yeah. And a drug user, right? 80% time probably man. What do you do as their lawyer? Just make it irrelevant? No. I think, you know, the saying, among lawyers is you explain what you can't deny and you deny what you can't explain, you know. But I think I tend to favor explanation. I tend to, I'm a fan of what, what at my firm, I've forced the lawyers who work for me

to refer to as the eight mile strategy, which is we just use the end of eight mile. I am a fucking, yeah, like I am a fucking, I do live in a trailer with my mom. You know, like it's the same. And I always say, now tell these people something they don't know about me. Here, tell these people something they don't know about me.

But my version of it is, now tell these people something I don't know about my client. Yeah. Like, because I'm watching opposing counsel cross out entire pages of their cross-examination, what they thought was going to be their Perry Mason moment. And you shot and you killed Roger Quigley. Did you not? Yes, yes, I killed him with Mr. Kane's gun. Isn't it a fact, sir?

Here's a text message. Isn't it true? I'll show you this text message. Do you recognize that yet? Did you send that to your co-parent? Yeah. Can you read it for the court? I'd rather not.

i'd rather you did could you read it for the court okay did you coach them to say i'd rather not no okay i don't often have to yeah i don't often have to i actually i tell them i'm gonna have you i'm gonna have you read oh yeah yeah yeah okay i tell them i'm gonna bring it up and they say really i'm gonna yeah i'm gonna trust me and i explain the eight mile concept to them generationally some of my clients are starting to get there he was right right and i try to do a few verses of the slim shady album i try to walk them through and i ask them to ignore some of the albums and then i just go forward i do a little d12 just so that they can take the turn not purple hills because i feel like that's the edited version it loses you know some context but we're

probably going off in tangent there i i really do try to to get the authentic self on the stand and i'll have them read it you know you you know uh stop texting me you stupid fucking bitch and i'm like do you think that was a helpful email to send to your co-parent do you think it did anything to improve your relationship with the defendant no why in god's name would you you send that text message? You know, she sent me 50 text messages before this and I never take the bait and I'm human and I took the bait. If you had the opportunity to do it over again, would you do it different? You know, I'd love to say to you, yes, but the truth is, like, I'm human. I probably would have like, I got pushed so far. I flipped down. While this is

coming on, I can just see opposing counsel crossing things out and it humanizes the client because anytime someone tells you the story of their life and they're a hero. It doesn't backfire sometimes? It hasn't yet. I believe it hasn't yet. I believe that it. Because I think a little humble goes a long way. And I think when you tell the story of your life and you're the hero of the story, you lose credibility. Whereas if you say, you know, here's what I do well.

Like if you said to me, tell me about you as a father, you know. If you judge me by my best moment as a parent, you're giving me too much credit. If you judge me by my worst moment as a parent, you're not giving me enough credit. So I'm kind of the average of these things. And so I really try, like, even in my own life, if somebody said, like, tell me about you as a parent, because I have to have this conversation with clients all the time when they're preparing for a custody case. And I'll say, tell me the things that you're good at. And I'll say, oh, you know, I love my kids. Okay, everybody loves their kids.

That's not special. Tell me, what do you do well? Like, love is a verb. What's the verb? How do you love your kids? How do you show your love? And then I'll say, okay, and where do you fall short? And that's when they'll say, like, well, I'm impatient and I'm, you know, I sometimes.

And that's, when you can bring that out on the witness stand, that's not only very persuasive. Yeah. I think it's actually helpful to a person, like, just even the process of preparing for a trial, because it forces you to look at yourself in a way that many people don't do unless they spend a lot of time. By the way, you mentioned the block special before we started going and three mics are that. Yeah. The middle mic and three mics is like, hey, yeah, I'm fucking mootched off Dave and I'm fucking depressed. and did it. I'm like, here's what, and even blocks, it's like, I'm not, I should be, whatever. Something's wrong with me. And I, it's a good, I can't say it was a strategy, really, but I think it's almost a good, and Rogan and Schultz made fun of me about it on, on Rogan Show one time.

Neil Brennan, he's got out of that vegan diet. Yeah, maybe that's it. What if it's just chicken is all he needs? Like, what if it's a rib-eye? He's down in Costa Rica, licking toads, and he really? For real. If I had that dude over my house and cooked him some elk steak, I'll change his fucking life. He takes one bite and he's like, I am worthy. Which I'm like, good. They understand that like, what's the worst thing you can say about me? And I also think it's effective in a relationship. Me and Lucy been doing a thing recently.

What are we afraid to say? Right. And it's kind of based on you talking about if you can't do a pre-up with someone. somebody you should not marry that person if you can't discuss money what then you can't discuss anything yeah why I'm afraid as a therapist and they said to me the the like single most important question that you should be asking in therapy is what is that I'm afraid to feel and and the best definition I've ever heard of addiction is anything you do to get away from what you would have been feeling

if you've done nothing at all if you don't tell on yourself in therapy you're wasting yeah but it's just it's i think that same that that relationship context i think you know that's what it's meant to be like i i'm fascinated by the answer or what are you not supposed to feel in a relationship because i i think the conversation worth having even for you and lucy for example is like when when do you feel loved by me like the most loved like because the answer is not going to be oh when we took that amazing vacation or you took me to this great It's going to be some dumb, weird little thing that you might not even notice you do.

Yeah. Like when we're walking down the street and you kind of move me to the side, so you're the one closer to the road. Like, because that's so much, it says so much. And it's not, you can't something you can tell your friends about, like, oh, you know what's great about him, he does that. But like, it's some weird thing.

And then if you can have that conversation, which I think is a wonderful conversation, and actually, like, an invitation to, like, have a very, like, lovely discussion with a person. Because even if, Right now, like we just said, like, okay, I'm gonna tell you three things I like about you and you're gonna tell me three things you like,

who doesn't enjoy that conversation? Like, it's lovely to hear, and you're often surprised by what it was a person liked. The corollary of that, which is a little harder, but I think equally valuable, is like, when are sometimes, I didn't, you didn't feel loved by me? Like, what's something I do that I don't know that I'm doing maybe, where you don't feel seen,

or you don't feel connected to me, or that makes you feel different, disconnected from me. And that's like hard to hear, you know, it's hard to hear. But it's often, I think, incredibly instructive. What's amazing about my job as a lawyer is like, I have to understand the other side's case against my client as well, if not better than I understand my case. Because I have to shore up defenses. I have to figure out ways to be proactive and get around and do the eight mile thing. Play offense and defense. That's what I call it with director. It's like, I have to have a schedule, but also if that falls apart, right? Right. Right. And so,

Yeah, because like no plan survives first contact with the enemy. So you have to just have a better map. And you also have to get instincts and move around. And some, you know, I've been doing it so long now that I sometimes don't even know how I know. Like I don't even know how I like, like my partner Colin will say to me like, oh, you know, like, how did you like ask that question knowing that they might do that? I'm like, I don't know how I knew that. I just felt like maybe, you know. And so I call alcohol problems.

It probably. Yeah, it could be that sensitivity and that control stuff. but i i have to tell you like there's such value in in my opinion in being you know radically vulnerable with your partner if you're going to make the choice to be in an intimate relationship like i i don't think i think in our society we've created this demand that like it's a presumption you're supposed to get married you know like you're just supposed to like if you said guess what we're getting married i'm supposed to say oh my gosh congratulations yeah it's considered indelicate if i go oh really why yeah like what why like what is the problem

to me for saying why and then two years later you got divorcing it's like you're right but what but what is the solution to which marriage is a problem for you like because it it certainly isn't that you were like this is so good like we got to get the government involved have to like that's insane that's i've been to the DMV like i've never walked around the DMV and be like these people should be in charge now i'm hold on no one defends the DMV pretty fucking better now but it's pretty I mean again how would you give every single person a license to drive what would be your system it's not it's not the system it's the manner in I'm a believer in like if you give them a uniform they think they're Hitler so like I feel like there are

people at the DMV I'm sure wonderful people who do their job of montage of him wearing this outfit welcome back to better call sexting hey gang welcome back to better call sexton hey gang thanks for joining us welcome back folks Then there's some that like, oh, you failed to fill out box 23, go to the back of the line. Yeah, I know. You're like, are you really? We're doing this? Like, the court system has a ton of those.

Like, anytime you have people in government work, it's often not like the best and brightest in the world, it's people that were like, yeah, I want like a nine to five job. I want a certain amount of paid vacation. I want good health insurance. Like, that was their priorities. It wasn't like, I want to help people meet their transportation needs. What has been the. You may have spoken about this before, but the, everyone that comes to you, every, every, every, every case you've litigated, what are they all have in common?

Is there like, is there a thing of like, if only they'd X, Y, or Z? Or is it, most people shouldn't be together? What's your, what's your sort of 35,000 feet view on this? Yeah. Because it is, I find, starting with the pre-nup video, which Lucy and I watched a year and a half ago, and just like, oh, I. I sent it to her and kind of, it's kind of risky sending somebody a video about like this divorce, a very sexy divorce lawyer. I'm risking it all.

I'm putting my, I'm putting my, putting my, my, my, my, my, uh, sex and it's on the line. Um, but what is, what do they, what could, if you time machine, what, how could they have prevented? Obviously, it's overly prescriptive. No, I, I think there's a couple of potentially good answers. is the first one that comes to mind is, I think everything stems from two problems. We don't know what we want,

and we don't know how to articulate what we want. And if you're going to connect to another person in this very intense way that a romantic relationship of that level is, anything but a casual romantic relationship level is, you have to have a good sense of what it is you want. I also think what really jumps to mind is, And this is, I think the reason why the divorce rate is starting to go up again, and I think we have Rocky Water ahead, is that we've increased the amount of the performative self in the world, because now we all have these devices and we're all broadcasting to an audience that we don't really know the size of, you know, no matter who we are.

And I think that is created in people, because if you think about it, like, when you look at your phone, you're watching other people's curated greatest hits while you're living. your gag real and you're never really looking at your phone in peak moments of joy it's usually like i'm on the train i'm on the toilet i'm bored so you're kind of at a low state you're watching people's curated best selves and you start to compare your life to theirs and of course you're going to be dissatisfied i think the biggest dissatisfaction in relationships is you're you're comparing your romantic partner to the idealized romantic partner in your head. So my perfect partner in my head would know exactly what to say and when to say it. They'd know exactly what I need and would give it to me before I had to ask. Like, that's not

real. That's your imagination. Like, so it's totally unfair to get upset at your partner when they fail to be the imagined ideal that you have in your head of who they should be. And I think that stems primarily, I think, from the way that we relate to ourselves, which is we're wildly critical of ourselves at times where we should probably be, give ourselves a little grace, and then we're wildly egotistical at times where we probably should be a little bit humble, you know? But like, if I had someone in my life who spoke to me the way I speak to myself in my head, I would have, like, beat the shit out of them a long time ago. And I would even venture to say that you know if if you had someone in your life who spoke to your girlfriend the way you speak

to yourself in your head you would kick the shit out of that person because you would be like whoa whoa buddy you don't you don't know what her life what she's been through you've never to judge her like she's okay she's out perfect no one's perfect but we relate to ourselves in this i think very distorted way divorce is a very interesting moment in someone you but you but you you we're doing divorce litigation before the smartphone oh yeah what's the difference it's um the the the abundance of terrible information is increased it really is incredible the number of people that now have a greek chorus of people agreeing with whatever righteously indignant insanity they've bought into yeah so you can find whole communities of people that's the system is rigged against men the system is rigged against women

the family court system is corrupt. You can find a giant community of disgruntled people. And what I will tell you is, like, working in divorce is an interesting space because we have this bizarre perception as a culture that there's this, like, two choices. You can either, like, go to a mediator, hold hands, sing kumbaya, hug each other at the end and be like, hey, we'll always have Paris and go your merry ways,

or knock down, drag out litigation where you kill each other. And there's actually a whole bunch in between that, where it's just a negotiation between counsel or there's like a judge gets involved but just to break deadlocks or stalemates but the only people that really talk about their divorce are are the people that had these brutal ugly terrible divorces because a it was transformative of them it's horribly traumatic and b it's like super interesting like if you know if you said to me like oh jim tell me about one of your cases and i was like oh there was this couple and like they met in college and they slowly grew apart and the then diagram of their shared interest kind of got small or so they figured out a way to worry right you're just already like dude I'm checked out like this is not good whereas if I was like and then he like took the chainsaw cut the car in half he's like bitch figure out which half you want like that that story you're like is that true that is a true story by the way and and so it that's the story people want to hear so that's what you talk about

that's what people talk about so then people get this perception that that's how divorce is and how it's supposed to be so they fear it in the sense that it's like well I can't go through that even though that's not what the majority of divorces look like and the people who talk about it online and elsewhere and want to like have this be a core ideal of their personality how meaning the question remains how what do they all have in common what would you tell the people at the beginning at the beginning of the relationship yeah they stop paying attention you you you when you you you must constantly pay attention and you're not talking about returning texts or or attentiveness you're talking about

I think actually returning text would be a part of it. I think, I think we stop seeing that, which is around us all the time. I think we become kind of blind to it. And I think when you're first dating, you're trying to close the deal. Like, like you're trying, you're interested and you're interesting.

And both of those are intoxicating in their own way. Like, it's really exciting to meet someone and be like, oh my God, I want to know. Like, I want to know everything about you. Like, I want what do you look like in a hat? I want to see you in a hat. I want to see you in a hat. I want to see you in a Halloween costume.

I want to see, like, I want to see every little thing. What's your favorite food? Oh, you know, like, I want to know everything. And they feel the same way about you. And suddenly, you feel incredibly interesting. Yeah. How do I work in a hand? But who you are is like, suddenly, oh, like, yeah,

I see myself through that person's eyes, through their desire. Like, if someone tells you, God, you're like the most handsome, you feel handsome, you know. And so we go through that phase, and that's how we connect. And then we kind of gradually are like, gradually are like all right I've told this woman she's beautiful 4,000 times I got to do this every day now like I don't you know but the truth is like what does it take like what does it take to just say or leave a note like hey you know it was really fun hanging out on the couch with you last night I'm glad I'm with the prettiest girl in the world like it's it what does that take like less than a minute to write that note how do you think it feels to receive that note like it has to feel good you know like it has to feel good like I've joking said to my male friends that like sending your girlfriend or wife a text that's like hey i'm in starbucks and this song came out it made me think of you or oh i just was you know i'm

stopping for lunch and i just wanted to say hi and tell you i was thinking of you is the equivalent of her sending you nudes like it's the equivalent yeah and and it it takes nothing like it's a low percentage low what i do is i'll send a video of the song playing and i'll just have the tip of my dick But that's nice because you're bringing a lot of elements in. You know what I mean? Two birds. And that's fine. And then it also says, look at how romantic I am.

How might you reward that? Hello. You know, how might you meet that with some of the same? Yeah. I'm just putting in any of you, she goes home, but why did you send me a picture of your dick? I'm like, oh, I didn't even know it was in there. You missed the point.

Oh, did you even listen to the song? Is that all I am to you? Yeah, it's all you can think about. Fine. If that's all I am to you, here it is. You know, and that kind of a. that kind of a what if it's not in that guy's personality do you just say like you don't have a personality figure it up meaning i'm not a guy i'm not that thoughtful i'm not that because

i think women will will uh get upset when guys send too many memes and it's kind of like i that's a bit of a love language yeah so what do you how is that why are you not accepting me for for who i am i Or is it, I do need to adjust your love language? I think if you're gonna be in a relationship with another person, you have to understand and study them like Margaret Mead studying the Yanomomo tribe. Like I think you have to like be an anthropologist about it. Like, okay, and I especially saying,

although it's maybe not a popular opinion to have, like I think men and women are different. And I think I still at the age of 52, I have a lot to learn about women. I still learn tons like I have an office full of women who work around me and I listen to their conversations sometimes as a small office and I I'm fascinated by the shit comes out of their mouth because I'm like this is a whole different level of interaction. It's a whole different way of relating to things and I think you you have to learn that like if somebody says like oh well that's not you know how I'm normally wired you're not normally wired to be in a relationship. You have to learn how to be in a relationship and I think we break in relationship. We're you're not normally wired. You have to learn how to be in a relationship. And I think we break in relationship. We. heal in relationship. Like, I think you, I can't learn everything I need to know about myself from myself. Like, I need people around me. And I think that's a big piece of being in a relationship is like, okay, this doesn't come naturally to me, but like what comes now? I mean, you know, I think

good stand up, like you watch a good stand up and it just looks like they're just popping it off the top of their head. Meanwhile, they've worked that so many times and they've had to just absolutely shit the bed so many times. And, you know, all you see is the effortless. part and you go, well, I wouldn't be good at that. And it's like, well, no, you don't, you're maybe not born good at it, but you could cultivate it if you have some of the wrong ingredients. If you're enough connected to this person to be like, hey, out of eight billion options, you, eight billion choices, you're the one I'm picking.

I think you owe it to yourself and to them to try to understand better. And again, I think there's ways you can do it that if you don't instinctually know it, great. When do you feel loved by me? are some things that made you fall in love like when you watch a couple when you say to them hey how'd you guys meet everybody softens yeah everybody softens because their brain brings them back to that place where it was like oh yeah she was this and and it's like well she was a mystery and you were a mystery and it was like you know all of a sudden like you're there again for a minute and i think that why do you need to have someone else imposed that can't you do that in your own relationship can't you like find ways to cultivate that see i think people

want like giant answers to this like everybody loves you know the buzzfeed approach to things like what are five things that are assigned a marriage show tell me three things about what ends marriages and they don't want to hear the answer which is no single raindrops responsible for the flood like but but like you know the the the branch that has a bunch of snow on it like one snowflake was the one that broke that branch but it was all the snowflake so i think it's the same thing like we we fall in love really fast. It's really like pheromones and hormones and all this stuff. And then we fall out of love the way we go bankrupt, like real slow and then all at once. And I think that's the hard part is like how do I do the preventative maintenance of just keeping the connection rather

than like it's so much easier to just maintain a healthy weight than to gain a bunch of weight and then try to lose it and gain a bunch of weight and try to lose it. Same thing. Like once you're completely out of love like you're disconnected i'm not saying it's impossible but it's hard to find your way back but if if you have an abundance of affection for each other and you're like oh we want to keep this this is good like because i'm not as interested in the divorce rate as i am the marriage satisfaction rate like because even though the divorce rate's 56 percent i know there's another 10 20 percent that are fucking miserable but staying together for the kids or because they don't want to get away half okay now we have a technology fails 76 percent

percent of the time. That's reckless. Yeah. Like legally, like the definition of reckless in the law is a substantial and unjustifiable risk of serious harm. That's recklessness. Negligence is a failure to perceive a substantial and unjustifiable risk of harm. So marriage is reckless. It's not even negligence. It's reckless because you're disregarding a substantial 76 percent risk of harm. And yet, we want it. We keep doing it. 86 percent of people who get divorced are remarried within five years. So those are people that like bed up at the table lost their hand and they were like, oh, let's keep playing. So I think it's because there's something in us that knows this is something we're called to. So if it's that important, why wouldn't you do preventative maintenance?

Like if you have a car, you know, a lot of people now, like, they just have a car and they have for like three, four years and they don't take care of it and they don't give a shit because you're just going to get another one in a couple of years. My iPhone, like, I don't just going to get another one in a couple of years or whatever. But I was like, well, by the way, this is your only phone. That's the only phone you're ever allowed to have. You would take good care of that phone. You would bring it in and say, is there anything I can do to get this clean? Or make sure it's maintained nicely.

I mean, there's maniacs that don't have covers on their phone that in case they drop it. Yeah, that's weird. Yeah, that's weird. Or they have a, like, Juna Sequa, that we don't have. They have like a, you know, they're living their life in a fearless manner. It's stupid.

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It's not romantic. It's not. Has it made you transactional in a negative way? Is it, has it made you sort of, I guess the word cynical comes to mind, but can you be realistic about it? see the carnage, live in the carnage. You live in the carnage of failed relationships and still be, what keeps you optimistic? Because you use the word, we're called to it,

and I'm not sure that we are. If you look at the history of marriage, it's a bit like, I don't know if romance started like 120 years ago. Yeah, it was usually preservation of land and things like that, but no, I, I believe, I am, I think very much at heart of romantic. But I think there's a difference between being deeply touched by the value and power of love, the transformative power of love, and how good love feels, and believing in fairy tales.

Like, I like to consider myself realistic and pragmatic because what I do for a living has forced me to confront in very hands-on ways the way that love can go wrong, the way that intimacy can be weaponized, all of the horror. that can come and carnage from when you allow your soft, vulnerable parts to be exposed to another person, and then they weaponize it against you in some fashion. So I've seen all those things, and I still believe the greatest thing in life is love.

I think to feel loved and to... Between a romantic love. I'm not gonna make that distinction necessarily. Like, I love, like, the way you love your dog, you know, and the way you love... your romantic partner are different but they're both a very like you know your your dog like there's this you no one's ever i don't know any dog owner who has a dog that's like 10 years old and like looks at the dog and it's like i got to get a puppy like the dog is old like it doesn't it can't do

like play ball like it used to it's not but like i know a lot of guys that look at their wives and are like oh she's not as hot as she was or she's like not as well you know and and and vice versa women towards their men. But I don't know anybody who feels that way about their dog. So there's something very selfless about that kind of love. It's very honest. It's very authentic because the relationship is very pure and very simple. I think one of the upsides of dog is they're going to die. Well, I think, well, I actually think one of the upsides of that is that they make us realize that their love is not permanently gifted. It's loaned. And I think that if we figured that out about our romantic partners, we'd be in a better position. See, I think I was a hospice volunteer

here for many years. And I have never felt more alive or grateful than when I walk out of a hospice visit. Because when you spend an hour or two with someone who is dealing with like progressive multifocal leucal encephalopathy and going to die within a month, you walk out of that, you know, whatever's going on in your life that you're like, oh, I owe this credit card bill and I've, dude, I don't have that. Yeah. Like I'm fucking alive. Like right now, you know, like I'm alive. Like, you feel like a samurai like it's just this like the sound of the rain sounds beautiful and i every single relationship you have will end everyone yeah in death in a breakup like whatever it might be what dogs show us is a very profound pure simple kind of love that's very reciprocal and they have an

incredibly abbreviated lifespan so that forces us to confront that we have a very limited time to love this thing and be loved by it but also that it's love will change us and stay with us in an eternal way. It becomes part of our constitution, right? Like there's no one who's ever, their dog died and they're like, you know, oh, yeah, that one, I got a new one, it's all good. Like, so I think if we could approach our relationships

with our partners with that same humility of like, hey, this isn't permanently gifted, this is loaned. And every day we wake up and decide, we're still doing this thing out of the eight billion other options in the world, I think that would be a cure for a lot of the problems that we have. Yeah. I, Tchnaud Han, the Buddhist monk, he passed away just a couple of years ago, but he has

this like exercise that he encourages people to do that I think some people find very morbid. I think for some reason you'll connect with it because we have some of the same pathologies. The fuck is that supposed to mean? Well, it meant as a compliment because we have the same pathologies. I think when you, what he says is when you hug someone, you should think about the fact that they're there and you're hugging them. And then you should close your eyes and you should imagine that they've died and you're hugging their dead body for the last time before it's taken away and then you should think

about the fact that they're alive and you're hugging them i think if you did that if you really did that every time you hugged your partner every time you hugged your brother your sister you would relate to them differently and you would relate to the way you engage them differently and i think much of the world is designed to detract our attention from the fact we're going to die because if if we really thought about that every day we've we've wouldn't buy all the shit they're trying to sell us and we would engage with each other in much more authentic i think ways so i think the the thing that hospice and divorce work both of which very much appealed to me have in common is they're both about endings they're both about the fact

that everything is ending all the time like your life is ending all the time your relationship is ending all the time it's all ending all the time and sometimes that end is is a beginning of the next thing. And sometimes that end is just pain, like it's just loss with that insurmountable and can't be replaced. And you have to figure out how to grieve. And I think I think that's what inspires, but that has not to answer the original question. There's a line in a Joseph Brodsky poem that is my favorite line in my favorite poem. The poem's called a song and he wrote it when his wife died. And the refrain of the poem is, I wish you were here, dear, I wish you were here. I wish we sat on the porch and you sat near.

It's like a very sweet poem. One of the lines is, I wish you were here, I wish you were here. I wish I knew no astronomy when the stars appear. And I feel that way, I used to feel that way about my work. Like, I think early on in my career, spending so much time in the wreckage of people's relationships made me think, oh, I wish I didn't know how love ends because I could embrace it more.

Like I wouldn't find it scary, I would just embrace it more. And then I think I kind of moved through that and realized, like, oh, no, like having the awareness of the fact that, like, you can understand that a star, like, the math of what a star is, it doesn't make it less beautiful. It makes it less mysterious. But I don't think something has to be mysterious to be beautiful. I think that you can actually be blunt and honest about your feelings and your partner's feelings and still be very, like, that can be very beautiful. In fact, I think it can be more beautiful. Yeah, you can know how the sausage is made and still. And still want to eat the sausage.

It's still delicious. Yeah. Really shove it down your throat. Yeah, exactly. Well, that's another good relationship. Thank you. Thank you for all of it. Yeah.

Have, okay. So you think it's, we are called to it. Despite knowing the history, the property, you know, exchanges and the, and the dowries and all it. Look, I think it's- Some of it is cultural pressure, which I agree. which i agree and and you know tradition is is really two different things like tradition is in one sense like the wisdom of the people who came before us and their life experience and tradition is also peer pressure exerted by dead people yeah so it's they it's like it's like oh cd right

of like no you we do this is how we do it right this is how we do we do so marriage is both of those things yeah marriage is in some ways just like well you do that why because that's what you do yeah like that's what grandpa did and that's what great grandpa did and that's what you do you know but i don't i don't think that just because something is now a unexplained and potentially hard to explain idea and seems like a bad idea on paper and statistically it seems like a bad that it means it's definitely a bad idea like i i i don't i think that we are called to this kind of connection with people i genuinely believe and again i'm not terribly mystical but i don't I don't think it's a, you know, it's a stretch to say that, like, we are created out of the connection of male and female.

Like, we're, that's not a controversial thing to say that, like, we, as an organism, we exist because someone put a penis in a vagina. Like, that's how that works. So I feel like that may be some invitation to like, okay, so how is this, all this other stuff supposed to lead to that occurring, right? Like, because there's models of society where it wouldn't have to be that two people find each other interesting and get to know each other and then they decide, hey, can we rub our body parts against each other? That might feel fun. Like, there's a way of structuring a society that doesn't involve that. You could, like, go to particular clinics and people would just sort of, you know, create babies in there. But I think we are called the architecture of our anatomy, you know, calls to this kind of connection. So what do we do with that?

Like, I think that it, to me, is an indication. And also, it's a feeling. Like, my, I know that some of the peak experiences of my life have been in the experience of romantic love. I just don't buy the idea that we're supposed to look at relationships like success or failure. Like, I was married. I got divorced.

I consider that marriage a success. It produced two wonderful children. What if it hadn't? If we hadn't had children? Yeah. I still think it was a success because I've had a lot of relationships that did not produce children, all of them but one that I know about. And I... But what I'm saying, would it have been worth it just for the...

Yes. Connection. Yeah, I think so. Like, I mean... I do too. It's not popular to say and you'll get in trouble with a girlfriend to say it. But like, if you think of every relationship you've probably ever had, if you don't focus on the end, which is unfortunately what we're... we most often remember is how our past relationships ended so we remember this awful part of it like

if if you think back like there's some moment or moments in every single one of them that you were like oh that was so good yeah you know like i you know steve bartlett at the end of uh one of my interviews with him said um when when in your life did you feel the most loved and i actually like sat back for a second and i went got the slideshow in my head right now is like the nicest thing in the world like I'm reliving all of these moments like and some of them are so silly you know like the time I was with a girl and we somehow like inadvertently walked all the way from Washington Square Park to like you know the time Warner Center like and we just looked up and we're like oh my God

where are we you know and we're like too we just walk the whole length of we were just so lost in like talking to each other and like holding each other's hand like and that I think about that and I just go like that was so lovely. Like, that was such a, that was one of those experiences in my life that was like just incredible, you know, and if you think about all of your past relationships and you can not think just about the ending, because the problem is, like, you know, when my mom passed away about nine years ago after a really terrible battle with cancer and the last two years of her life were awful. And I remember one of my greatest fears when she was imminently dying and she had wasted away

to nothing. She was like a skeleton. I remember thinking, this is how I will remember like this is the last memory I'm going to have of her, and this is always how I'll remember her. And for a little while, it was. It was the freshest memory. But now, nine years later, like I can tell you, I rarely think about that. Like, I remember her smiling and with hair and all that.

Like, I remember her in very different and wonderful ways. Memory can be very kind. I think when you end a relationship, like, it's very hard to not remember how it ended, because that's the most proximate thing. But I think if you, if you're honest, like there were moments in there where you know in your heart, like, oh yeah, like that's why this was worth it.

Like this connection, this moment. And that's the thing that causes me, my visceral experience. People say to me all the time as a divorce lawyer, like, do you believe in love? I'm like, that's like saying, do you believe in gravity? Like gravity exists whether I believe in it or not. Like, I, of course I believe in love. Well, it's, do you believe in love?

My question is like, what should we then do about it? about it about love I don't think love and marriage have anything to do with each other I think I think I have a line that I said to Lucy one time I said our relationship is getting in the way of our connection yeah and yeah it's because we just build up all this infrastructure of just nonsense and fucking nonsense and habit yeah and like I don't know I thought you like that and but that's hard when you because you know I this is how I say people and intentionally ruin their own sex life because with good intentions they ruin their own sex life because think about like you start dating something and you like just throw like everything you've got

in the bedroom at them like you're like everything they ever worked with anyone else like everything you've seen that look like she looks like you just fucking throw it all and then pretty quickly you figure out okay she likes this she doesn't like that okay he likes this he doesn't like that and then what do you do play the fucking hits man yeah play the hits like i didn't go see springsteen you hear like acoustic ghost of tom joe like play boring to run you're not a real fan you're not a real fan fine fine you know like but i i i mean listen play that you like the part where i can go get a drink or something use the bathroom but like you you you're not gonna say like oh i forgot to do thunder road like no you i came here to hear thunder road so i i think it's the same thing like you throw all the stuff

then you refine it and then you kind of get almost like efficient where you know why not right like we all have a limited amount of bandwidth and time like let's let's let's do the best things in the best okay now what did i just do we've created a routine yeah and now it's a habit we're caught in that habit this is the way we do it and now if you like call an audible and do some random different thing in the middle you'd actually notice like she would notice you would notice right away they'd be like whoa what was that like you don't usually do that yeah if you have the kind of relationship where you can talk about it okay but many people don't so then they just don't do something different and now they're like yeah my sex life is really boring and it's like right but it became boring born of a really great desire of the two of you to really enjoy each other so is there a fix for that i think there is i think the fix is you have to swing you have to don't even say it stop talking swing the answer is swinging it's a lifestyle it's a lifestyle promo code neal thing of keys was yeah man oh that's so weird it's me you and this dude over here do you have a fiat because that's what i grabbed that's a

uh you're i mean he's got facial hair how old are you yeah um well i mike as you say that i'm kind of jumping around but are people's expectations for their partner too high i think i think i may have heard you talk about yeah i think the well but i feel like now it's the everything marriage it's like you have to i don't i even the emotional part and i've been doing a bunch of jokes about it It's like, when did you think men develop this skill to emotionally satisfy you? Like, when?

My dad didn't, my grandfather didn't. No one did it. And now I'm supposed to do all the physical shit and the emotional shit. Well, first of all, the Greek chorus now that's around us all the time of telling us, like, how we should be settling for nothing but the best. And how the other side in the war of men and women,

all the girls are telling the girls how great they are and how much men suck and all the men are saying how my women are awful diggers and how great men are. Yep. So that's not helping. But I also think, you know, like, look, you're a writer, a director, a performer, a host. You're a bunch of things. Yeah, it's really just a quadruple threat.

It really, I stand in awe. And it's a quintuple threat. Yeah. And I'll punch in a face. And you do, I didn't even know. Yeah. So you, but you do all those things. Now, to do all of those things and to do all of them at the absolute highest level.

Like if I said to you, okay, rank, your skills at those things like you'd say well here you know my my writing is here my stand-up is here my whatever like but it wouldn't all be this is my all my best I'm the best at all of it I think it's the same thing in relationship like this is your travel partner your roommate if you live together your financial partner if you have intermingled finances your co-parent if you have kids your dog or cat co-parent if you have pets together like it's a hell of a diverse skill set that we're expecting of people and we live in a world that's very

quick to tell you if they're not top tier at every single one of those things they're not your soulmate they're not your soulmate yeah and there's eight billion people in the world and your soulmate is still walking around out there because if they if they were the one they would check all of those boxes and see i i think that's how we fuck a lot of things up in the world like Starbucks used to make coffee, good coffee. And then someone said, you know, some people like tea. Let's have tea. And then it's like, you know, you might want to eat a little something,

so let's have cookies. You know, and jump ahead five years. And they're like, we have CDs. And there's fucking homeless people everywhere in there. That is true, actually. Yeah, it's actually become like the homeless. So I don't know what that has to do with your analogy. It's a very little, but it's a very common New York grape.

I think it's the reason why we all avoid Starbucks now. Starbucks restroom has become a real venture into like you're really in Fort Apache at that point. But yeah, no, I think that we try to do too many things, we try to be too many things, we try to master too many things in relationship, instead of saying, what's the skill set? To what I said earlier of our relationship

is getting in the way of our connection, the conversation that I was afraid to have that we've had and it's been, I think, transformative, is me going like, I'm not that attuned emotionally. I'm not, I'm not the announcement. I have is I have a couple versions of it like you may need a nurse more of a doctor I'm more of a doctor right I think most men that's great to fall into that I have a meaner version which I'll cover the podcast which is you need a nurse bitch I

built the hospital yeah too mean can't can't use yeah well a different skill set right but it's the the thing that I am good at and just saying it saying like I'm never gonna be good at this we can keep having this argument or you can just go I'm gonna need to get this somewhere else right I don't want to spend my life trying to get better at a thing that I'm never gonna be very good at right and I think that that because of the nature of male and female coupling or or romantic coupling in general you you both have lots of options mm-hmm so if you say to me look at the most important you especially because it's just like you're out there just

crushing it you know you're a coxman at that level at that level you know but yeah yeah I thought because I signed the NDI it wasn't a lot to talk about But yeah, I feel like you have to look at your relationship and say, okay, look, I'm not going to be exactly what you need at everything. So, like, what are the priorities? Like, because the priorities is a, I, this is the conversation to have. I really believe it. Like, hey, here's what I'm good at. Here's what I think I'm good at. Is that going to be enough for you? And, and, and with the caveat that she may think it's going to be enough for and then she. turns out a couple months later it's like i thought it would be enough it's not well and here's this shit i need to work on and i'm willing to work on and then here's the stuff that it's probably not going anywhere yeah it's probably not change it like it's constitutional it's definitional yeah like so i think there are some things that i could say look i'm not good at this but but i'd like to be like if you need me to be i'll learn how to be and then there's some things that i don't want to do that

I got to be honest, I... But I think that's part of the value of love. I think part of the value of love in general, I think connection with other people is it is an opportunity to get better at being a human being. But what if you don't value the stuff? Then I don't think you should transform into it.

I need you to get good at crochet. Yeah, well that's, but that doesn't have value to you. That fits in that other category. But like, I'm impatient. Like, I'm impatient. Like, it's part of function that I build in six minute increments. But like, part of it is like, even in relationships,

I've always been impatient for what I don't enjoy small talk with someone who's not a good storyteller and so if I come home out of day of talking I love I don't know what your problem is really I know yeah so I I'm very light I skip to the end like we got to land this fucking plane like I can't like what Neil Brennan what happens fools gladly you do this guy fucking loves fool I love sit there you just like I always have fools like do more to that story because if you could just daughter your way around. Any minutia, granular details and just watch the people. I love an open mic. Yeah, that's fun. That's fun. So we're

in that sense, we would be a bad couple. You know. But I, but I guess it's the thing of admitting I'm never, I think the trap that I fell into was anything I wasn't good at, I assumed I was just, it was a horrible deficiency. And I needed to work on it and I went to therapy. Every time i i've gone to therapy so much yeah with the with the kind of inner mandate of like make me like relationship yeah like i why don't i like this more this girl's x on paper and i did it yeah why don't i like it and then i realize like i don't know neal you're running at a time just find

one that you like and the stuff you don't like just say i'm not good at this is it okay with you if it and i and i think well i mean i think that's a very you know bow burnum advice done in music was like if you want love like find a guy and love him you know or if you want love find a girl and love her like that's what that's how you figure out love is like by being in it i i think you know something i learned on um so i go uh you know i go to a intensive uh psilocybin retreat yeah we talk about this before we talked about i'm excited about it i'm excited because i've never heard you talk about yeah there's this uh it's called mico meditations they're in jama it's legal in jama

and it's a it's a it's not like a I actually went to it thinking this is going to be awesome like it taught me less than not reading not even a party I just thought I'm going to do a bunch of psilocybin on the beach it's going to be gorgeous and have nice meals I did I should have read the website where it was like this is a therapeutic you know so it was like hours of group therapy and then psilocybin sessions and then more group therapy and integration and then but one of the and I I do this every year and I I've benefited from you tremendously from it. But one of the things that like the lead facilitator was saying to me one day after group, because in group therapy settings, there's this temptation to like talk about all the shit you need to work on and all the things about yourself you want to change. And of course, people are motivated sometimes to come to a therapeutic retreat because they want to change something about themselves. And and Justin Townsend is the guy who's like the CEO and lead facilitator said to me, you know, what if you weren't a problem to be fixed? Like, what if that's not who you are? Like, what if you're just stopped looking at yourself as a problem that needed to be fixed? And that may sound very simple, but I had never really considered that possibility. That, like, I'm not something that I have to look at as,

okay, here's all the ways I have to change myself so that I'm better at these things that I may not find value in, or I may not constitutionally, you know, have in me. like that may not be my thing right like some people are good at certain things like i'm i'm not artistic i imagine if i practiced and tried i could get better than how abysmally padded it i am but i will never be like what some people are just naturally good at i mean i'm sure you there's stand-ups that it's like they're they're just born for this like they're their their proclivity to you're

a perfect example exactly and and like it's i need more fingers you and a few yeah i we get all point at myself let's all point it nil so that's all That's great. Okay. Do you feel better now? Are you people watching? Are you pointing at the monitor? Are you pointing at your phone right now? You just let me know when you're done. I'm never, never, never, never. Never, never.

Never. But I genuinely find value in what you've said, which is don't, I think looking at parts of your, going into therapy and saying, okay, the people around me or my intimate partner say I do this the wrong way. So I must be doing that the wrong way. It's like, no. My challenge has been, and we're close to the same age, that I've only really started to, I think, more deeply attend to, is like, oh, yeah, like, become who you are. Yeah.

That's the hardest thing to become, but it's also the thing you're called to be, you know. So I try to approach that, like, how do I become an authentic expression of myself? And I can't think of a more noble goal in a marriage or in a, like, long-term committed romantic relationship than to say that your goal, is that that lasts a lifetime, that connection, the depth of it and the joy you find in it together, more joy than suffering. And that at the end of it, that they would say about you,

that person helped me be the best version of myself. Like, that's the greatest compliment to say, you helped me figure out who I authentically am, and you helped me be the best version of myself. And hopefully they did this for you as well. I would I would dispute the word best okay the most authentic version of yourself yeah yeah yeah that's what I mean by best I think is like the most authentic version best feels performancey and I yeah no no I mean like the most yeah the most like real and authentic the

part like we all know we feel it when we're like in it like when we're like oh yeah this is me like I'm at the best expression of myself it's very often you know you said it earlier like oh like so how did it feel to be good at debate yeah you know like when we're like When we are doing something we're good at or excellent at, like I feel so a lot, I always say work is my favorite narcotic. Because whatever's going on in my life, I am phenomenal at this job. So I just have to go in, like I'm much better in a courtroom than in my living room. In my living room, I kind of don't know what to do with myself.

But in a courtroom, I know exactly what the rules are, I know exactly what the mission is, I know exactly what to do, how to do it. the rules of evidence I've just memorized, you know, and the rules in your living room are like much more fluid and ill-defined and like, I don't, they're nuanced and I don't- You can do what I do, which is accuse somebody of something, if you want to make it more like a courtroom. That could be fun, yeah, like, just do some cross-examination stuff.

All, never stop cross-examining. Never, yeah. That's been my- That sounds exhausting, actually. I used to joke with my sons because, like, when they were teenagers, they would like try to, engage me in an argument about something. Like it'd be like, I gotta be in by 10. They were like, what about 11?

I'm like, I can't argue unless you paid son. Like that's not, that wouldn't be fair. Like it would be like if you said in your relationship, like I can't be funny unless you've paid. Like it's rude. People have paid me a lot of money to be funny. And if you're not willing to pay, I can't just do it for free. That's rude.

I'm, uh, there's never the post-coital. that 15 to 20 minute window yeah me and we'll call him dave chapelle used to talk about uh you're never funnier than that period yeah and he calls them uh he calls them pussy skits yeah so why do you think that is i think it's the glow i think it's the thing of being great at something yeah she she had an orgasm maybe a couple you had one you felt connected it was it lasted at the right amount time culturally. I think it's also like there's a looseness you feel. Yeah. You're you're both naked. You both enjoyed each other's nakedness. There's a level of acceptance within it. I think it was Alan Watts who said that the moment of orgasm is the closest that most people will ever come

to like the Buddhist conception of enlightenment. I think because it's the moment where you are thinking about absolutely nothing but what's happening in that exact moment. Absolutely. And I think it's probably while, though, I've never done heroin, I am advised that that first time, that chasing the dragon concept is rooted in, it's like that same sensation of, okay, I am now feeling something so amazing that there is nothing else the whole world falls away and there's nothing else. And I think when I describe doing my work or when we described like that, you know, that post-sex

feeling, it really is. you had this experience of like a deep enlightenment in a moment, like you fully immersed yourself you shared a thing. You should have a really cool, a transcendent thing. Yeah, and I think that's a, and again, I think there's something very mysterious about all this stuff, like love, sex, like what, even sex, like, it's ridiculous.

Like, sex is ridiculous. Like, if you look at it or think about it, like not in the performative artistic way that people do in pornography, like, we're just, it's friction. It's like goofy, but yet it's like the most important thing. it's the best thing it's like the drive but it's so i mean it's absurd you know like it's absurd and hilarious i mean that this silly i mean don't you know this is like uh you can cut this if you want to but like i i've always felt like you know because like like any man you know you

you jerk off and there's don't you ever just i feel so silly the moment i come like you just are yeah i have a joke about yeah it's a werewolf you're like a werewolf it really is you're like a that's a great yes I think I've heard you make that yes yes you know what yeah I have a better version of yeah but it is it's like the feeling of what happened to my clothes yeah like what I who am I do like what do I subscribe to oh no why am I in the star book yeah yeah exactly yeah I had a I have an acronym that I thought of and I think it's a good guide for relationships and then we're gonna wrap it up if you want to a good relationship and it's an unfortunate acronym but and i'll give it to you at the end you can guess

it find out what you're like within on your own right accept it what you're like and present it to someone with an offer of love okay the acronym fap fap yeah so more fapping more fapping find out accept it present it present it well you actually just so fapping is the solution to when you said to me what is the key thing I said you don't know what you want and you don't know how to share it with another person and the answer is fapping it's it's called branding guys boom we're both masters of it boom he wears the same outfit every video every video that's why he's a Nazi yeah The metals are underneath.

James Sexton. What's the book called? As if that matters. How to stay in love? How to stay in love. Practical wisdom from an unlikely source, is this something? And it's just, you'll start getting his content if you like this. And if you subscribe it even better.

The diversity of people that follow my stuff and like it bugs me out. Like last week, 50 Cent and John Mayer both like. Reached out. That's a weird, that's a weird combo of people to like repubes it. people to like repost videos of a divorce lawyer you know it's almost like you're more than a divorce lawyer i don't know it's all jim that's that's my fucking that's high on the copyright i trust me i have my lawyers are all rights already way ahead they're running to the padd off those guys in suits sir um james j sexton esquire guys don't know what the why that we're still

doing esquire but we are in that we are in that shit um i really liked it i liked our talking Me too. I do too. I really enjoyed it. Yeah, great to meet you. I hope it would be friends out. Absolutely. Bye.