Honesty as the Path to Love

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Find new episodes Sundays wherever you get your podcasts . Wharton professor Ethan Mollock says that with AI, his students are doing a semester's worth of work in just a couple of days. In Mollock's classroom, AI is required I'm Henry Blodgett, and this week on Solutions, I talk to Professor Moloch about how he's radically transformed how he teaches and how he continues to test the boundaries of what AI can and cannot do. Follow solutions with Henry Blodgett to hear our conversation Today's number 49%. That's how much more likely AI chatbots are than humans to validate a user's action, even if it's deceitful, illegal, or harmful. A divorce. And I said, mm, that's way too fucking expensive . Listen to me. Markets are bigger than us. What you have here is a structural change in the world distribution. Cash is trash. Stocks look pretty attractive. Something's gonna break. Forget about it. Ed, how are you? I'm doing alright. Um I'm in New York. Um Yeah, I'm doing okay. How are you doing? Well that was fascinating, Ed. Uh we don't talk about me enough. Um Okay. I'm doing great. I'm headed to Florida on Thursday. I'm gonna take some time off. My kids are coming with me. They'll get to see their friends. And yeah, I'm super excited. And I'm going to Los Angeles to get more projects going that will soon be canceled. Movie projects? Yeah. Or TV. Notes on being a man. And it's either going to be a documentary or a Seventh time Lucky. Yeah, there you go. It's either going to be I can mock my failure in Hollywood. You cannot Louis Thoreau already did it and he did it better than anyone could. Yeah, this would be a little bit different. Have you seen the manosphere? I have. Honestly I think my biggest takeaway was the fact that there is an entirely different media ecosystem that is flourishing beneath a lot of people's noses. And uh I mean, I thought Louis the way he conducted himself was excellent. And I thought that he w the way he exposed what is happening uh and the messages that are being put out there by these guys was excellent. But I honestly I think I think the the big takeaway, what I love loved about it is that he shined a light on how huge these guys have become. And most people don't really know the names of these people. They don't really know who Justin Waller and Sneeko and H. S. Tiki Talkie are. But I mean, thousands, hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of young children uh uh love these guys. And so what he did was he showed like this is what is exactly happening. And he didn't, you know, he didn't mince words about it. He literally went into the in he as as the documentary says he went inside of it and he showed us what's really happening there. I thought the way he did it was just excellent. Even the way that they they showed how the live streams work and the comments streaming in and how things get reposted and clipped up and repackaged, like it was really a lesson on how media works today in a way that I think a lot of people could honestly benefit from. The Manosphere starts off positive. The fact that there's a group of people or thought leaders trying to speak to young men, I think is a positive thing. And it starts fine. Be fit, be action-oriented, take responsibility for your life, initiate action, and then it just comes off the tracks. It's all about money, it's all about dominance, it's all about the grift, it's all about misogy ny. Um which is really a shame. But I've I'm I have another theory I want to lay on you as a young person and I'm be c So eighty percent of women under the age of thirty now don't have a kid. And I don't think it's because they've decided they don't like kids. I think it's because they're having trouble finding economically and emotionally viable partners. And also there's less venues for men to demonstrate excellence. And I think one of the ways that men demonstrate excellence, and bear with me right now, I think that the lack of bars, the lack of venues, the lack of people going out , I think that young people, I think we should have tax subsidies for places that offer dancing. I'm convinced that one of the one of the venues for mating is when people dance . And now nobody dances. I just read an article saying the number of times a person under the age of twenty-five dances is off 60% because they're worried about being filmed and mocked. And that people aren't drinking as much, so they aren't dancing. And I remember I go back, you know, everything uh is anecdotal here, but I remember in college, the initial stages of flirtation, dan wec'ingre with somebody. And that we need more dancing in young people's lives. Anyways, Ed and Claire, more dancing? Is that gonna could that be a solve here? I think that's one of the problems, but there are way more problems. I'm not suggesting it's the solve. So tax sub subsidies, right? For places that offer it? My idea is to have subsidies for third places. And that is a place where you don't work or sleep for the young people get together in the company of each other for no other reason than to do something together. Yeah. I love the idea. I also think some of the best clubs in New York are the ones that don't allow phones on the dance floor for exactly that reason. I mean, I think partying has gotten has just been ruined by phones and concerts have been ruined by phones. It's kind of sad to go to them these days and everyone just has their phone out recording the situation instead of just living in it. Instead of being in the moment. Yeah. Yeah. Instead of being in the moment and meeting people. So clubs that have phone free dance floors, I think, would be a good thing to encourage all that said, we have our guests in the lobby. Are we good to move on? All right. Let's pr let's bring them off . We spent a lot of time on this podcast talking about where young people are struggling and relationships are near the top of the list. Fewer young people are getting into relationships and even fewer are getting married. The shift is dramatic. 60 years ago, more than 75% of 25-year-olds were married. Today it's less than 25%. So instead of asking why relationships are breaking down, we brought in someone who sees firsthand how they fall apart. James Sexton is a divorce attorney who spent his career on the front lines of failed marriages, making him uniquely qualified to tell us what not to do. He has been an attorney for 25 years and has earned a place in the top 1% of family law attorneys practicing in New York. So, James Sexton, thank you very much for joining us on Prof. Thanks so much for having me. Great to see you guys. So uh I'll start with uh a question here. Um something that we often talk about on this show is the fact that money seems to be a big problem in relationships. Some people say that it's the number one issue that married couples fight about. Um, and we've also seen that it's actually the second leading cause of divorce behind infidelity . I just be curious to get your perspective. To what extent has money and money management played a role in the divorces that you've seen over the course of your career? Yeah, I mean, money is a a tremendous piece of the puzzle. I I I think it's not just the money itself, but it's also what the money comes to symbolize for people. You know, I I think people who uh grew up with economic insecurity, money comes to symbolize all the things they didn't have in their life. So it becomes, you know, money is a symbol of security, money is a symbol of of you know, peace and tranquility, safety, a feeling of not being so afraid. So I think um, you know, when that gets threatened, it creates tremendous distrust between parties. When people lose their jobs, when there's economic instability, when technological innovation changes the job landscape, that has a tremendous effect. I mean, there's a uh a high correlation between men losing their job and the divorce rate um because there's there's a significant uh hit to a man, you know, as men being defined in in many cultures as being, you know, the provider , the protector, feeling like as a result of factors beyond your control, you've lost your job, you know, is a tremendous uh uh difficult experience for for anyone, but certainly for men when they're defined in in their role as a provider. And then you see second order effects that come from that, substance use issues as a coping mechanism, you know, men being disincentivized to, you know, participate in genuine things like therapy that might be a better solution than trying to pour whiskey on the on the shame. So you you see money underneath all these things, but I always try to say to people, even when you're talking about infidelity, we want simple explanations for the complex problem of a divorce and the breakdown of a relationship. But I I think, you know, people go, you know, get divorced the same way they go bankrupt very slowly and then all at once. And so no single raindrop's responsible for the flood. But all of these little things add up. And then there is some final indignity, some final moment, whether that's infidelity, whether that's financial impropriety, that that you know really is the straw that breaks the camel's back. And um, you know, I see that both with when I used to represent, you know, the cop and the teacher and all they really have is a 401k and a house. And now I represent billionaires and they have some of the same problems. You know, there you there's there's just no if a hundred million dollars isn't enough, five hundred's not gonna be enough. If a billion is not enough, 8 billion is not going to be enough. Yeah, the algorithm it consistently says he'll be interested in what this guy has to say. Um so you see couples on the back end after it's gone south. Uh do you have kids, James? I do. You and I both are fathers of sons. I'm a little further down the road. I have a 26-year-old and a 28-year-old. So if you if you had I I would imagine at this point you're asked to on the front end for advice around how to avoid ever seeing you or your colleagues. What uh uh you've talked really uh uh el eloquently about some of the red flags in a relationship. If you were to advise people who are thinking about getting married and say uh and by the way, I I don't expect any of them to listen to listen. I I find that when people are in that situation, they don't listen to By the way, uh I found it is a no-win situation to tell your friend not to get married. Because they get married anyways, but they tell their spouse that you told them not to get married. Anyway , so what are the two or three red flags you would say you really want to be mindful of if you're thinking about getting married in a partner or in the relationship more broadly? I am a very much a believer still in marriage. I think the value that a good marriage adds to someone's life is just beyond measure and I think on every level. Um but I think marriage is like the lottery, you're probably not gonna win. But if you win, what you win is so good that it would be really difficult to argue you shouldn't, you know, buy the ticket. And unlike the lottery, you can actually do things to improve your chances of success in a marriage. And I think the red flags are actually sort of the counter of what I would see as what you need to do for the marriage to be a successful and stable one. And I think, you know, uh you're a divorced man, I'm a divorced man, like we, we, we learn, I learn from my mistakes, I have to step on the rake in order to learn how to do something well. And uh I I think sometimes people who've been divorced or have shepherded, you know, hundreds, if not thousands now of people through a divorce, we get a very unique view of okay, here's where people get things wrong. I think big red flags are the things that draw us together, are sometimes things that in the long term are going to be hard for us to navigate. So, you know, you may love the fact that you're this disciplined focused, really, you know, like OCD person, and she is, you know, more like, you know, free and easy. It's a barefoot in the park kind of a thing going on, you know, and in dating, like you help her be a little more serious. She helps you be a little lighter hearted. Man, that feels so good when you're dating somebody. But when you marry someone, those habits and those, you know, that polarity that brought you together, it might start being something that's antagonistic and it's going to start creating long-term issues. Because again, marriage, it's such an odd thing, modern marriage, because we've really packaged it as this person's your best friend, best roommate, best co-parent, best financial partner, best travel partner, best companion animal partner. Like it's a long list. You know, and if I was talking to you about a chef and said, you know, Jose Andre's an amazing chef. you Would be like, well, but can he farm? You know, like, well, no, like those things have to do with food, both of them, but it doesn't mean like if you're not good at one or you're automatically good at one, you'd be good at the others. So I think, you know, not being mindful of how the polarity that drew you together might have long-term difficult effects. So that would be red flag number one. Red flag number two would be the inability or the fear. Like if you feel a real fear about talking to this person about issues between the two of you. That's a huge red flag. Like you are going to have disagreements with your partner. You're going to have to navigate difficult conversations. When I talk to people about prenuptial agreements you know very often people say like well i'm just you know i don't want to have this uncomfortable conversation and i i want to say to them do you if you don't feel comfortable having an uncomfortable conversation with this person, you might want to choose one of the other eight billion other options because you're gonna have to have difficult conversations from time to time. And I guess a third one, you know, would be you're it's sort of, you know act like it's a little contrary to each other, right? Or a little contradictory. But I think two major mistakes people make when they're getting married is thinking that if I marry this person, they're never gonna change. They're gonna stay the way they are. Like this is so great. It's going so well. I I want it to stay really good. So I'm gonna marry them because that will be like the wall we build around this thing, the fortress that'll keep it safe. And I just don't think that's honest. I don't think you can have a long-term relationship with someone, have the changes, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that everybody has in their life. Um, and and conversely, think ing that marriage will change a person is another big problem. Like it it is they are gonna change, but they may not change in the ways you hope they would as a function of marriage. Like, you know, he drinks a little too much now, but once we get married, if we have kids, he he''llll stop that. Or you know, he works a ton now. But once we get married, he'll make more time and he won't push it so red line. Like I think sometimes the things we think are going to change don't and the things we hope won't do , and that leads unless there's good communication, that leads to a lot of disappointment. Aaron Powell So just a follow-on here. So Ed's girlfriend is much higher character, much hotter than him. Is that a problem? Sorry. Couldn't I've been waiting for I mean listen, playing above the rim is excellent. That is excellent. I've been waiting for ten minutes to say that. So let's talk about let's say that things let's say that things work out and in a moment of weakness, she agrees to marry him . Give them advice. What are two or three best practices during the marriage that make it less likely they'll be in your office? First of all, what I'll say is is Scott and I are proof of the fact that thank God for good women with terrible taste in men. That is that is something you bad vision. That is a good thing. Okay. So yeah, when you got when you're playing above the rim, realize you're playing above the rim. So that's a good thing. Um, but what you know, I think one step I think is really important is to talk when you're not fighting about hey, at some point we're gonna disagree on something. What does that look like for you you? Do need a minute? Are you somebody that like give me a minute so the emotion of it calms down and maybe we sleep on it, we'll talk in the morning? Or are you the, hey, we gotta figure this out right now. I'm not gonna be able to sleep tonight, if we don't work it out right now, like I need you to engage with me on this because I can't let this sit and fester. The time to have that conversation is when you are in that place of abundant goodwill and deep connection to each other. And you because look, this is a job the two of you signed up for. The job of loving each other, the job of being the other person's person . Like marriage is fundamentally you're my favorite person. Like there are eight billion in the world and you're my favorite one. I like that. What more beautiful four words could someone say than you're my favorite person? And what more beautiful four words could you hear someone say and know they mean, then you're my favorite person. Like that's the most lovely sentiment. And if I had a toast for you at your wedding, you know, it would be, I hope 50 years from now , one of you when you're losing each other, because every marriage ends, it ends in death or divorce, and I hope yours will end in death. That's a weird thing to say to a human being, but I hope it does. I hope what you'll say to each other is this person helped me become the most authentic version of myself and they're still my favorite person. And that's the greatest blessing you could shoot for. And I think the way to do that is to not be afraid to talk about, hey, when we disconnect, what's the best way to reconnect ? The other thing is, I I think that look, man, we have all these gadgets, all these reminders, all these little watches and whoops and all the things we all use, you know. I don't think there's anything wrong with, you know, every day just taking a minute to remind yourself, hey, her, like keep her in your line of sight. You know, we're busy people, we're hardworking people, we got a million things going on, we're spinning all kinds of plates, and any woman who's signing up for someone like you or either of us, they're doing it for, you know, a reason. They know they're we're as advertised. But take a minute. Take a minute to just because right now you're still trying to close the deal. You know, you're still, you're still trying to impress each other, you know, you're saying and I think that if you can keep a little piece of that, like how what does it take to send her a text message that just says, hey, I was in the coffee shop and that song came on that, you know, I it makes me think of you. Or, you know, hey, you know, it was so fun on the couch watching TV with you last night. I I'm so glad I have the prettiest girl in the world. You know, I caught her eye. What does that take? 30 seconds? That is the equivalent of her sending you nudes. Like that is for her . Like that's flowers. Like you just send a dozen roses if you send that. You know? And and it's a lot cheaper and it's a lot easier. And it's something that again, if you make a point of just, you don't even have to tell her that you put a reminder in your phone, but put something that just reminds yourself to just that little bit of connection. Because it's really easy for all of us to say, all right, I've got that. Thank God. You know, I found my person. I can focus on these other million things now. But take the time, like take the time to just keep that little bit of connection, that little bit of gratitude, that reminder that this is your person . Um, I think that's a giant piece. And then the last thing I would say is is um , you know, I think it's it's really important to be able to share with each other. Again, I like things that are a practice. So I would say build into your week . You know, once a week, just have like a walk and talk or send each other an email, whatever works for the two of you in your dynamic. What are three things I did this week that you know made you feel loved? What are three things I did this week that maybe I could have done better? What are make it fun? What are three things I did this week that turned you on? Like I have to tell you, you'll be shocked. You'll be shocked. It won't be the things you thought. Like it won't be, oh, you had to have eight-pack abs. Like it it was something like, oh, when when uh the dog was running around and you wiped his paws off in the mud. You looked like so sweet that you were caring. That turns you off. Like what I'm not been doing, my obliques in the gym. Like, what was that? You know, and the the truth is, like, never stop exploring that connection. I think that's so easy, so low percentage. It's free. That's why you don't hear about it, because it's free. You don't have to buy anything. You don't have to get an app for it. Like there's nothing you have to do except that little bit of connection. And I'm telling you, I think that keeps that' ll keep you connected to each other, keep you communicating with each other. If you add in that piece of what's something that I could have done better this week, then I think that that starts to create a space where both of you feel like you can give each other pointers. Cause I tell you, like I'm 53 years old. I've been in therapy 20 years. I understand about 70% of this guy. And I'm in here. You know, like so to think another human being, I'm gonna be able to navigate them perfectly, like you're kidding yourself. That's insane to think. So I think there's real value in creating habits of connection and communication . We'll be right back after the break. And if you're enjoying the show, please follow our new Prof. Markets YouTube channel. The link is in the description. 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So5 Plus is packed with benefits and unlock a thousand or more in annual value with qualifying activities. Values including a competitive APY on savings, an investment match for your IRA, and access to one-on-one sessions with SoFi Wealth Financial Planners. You can get started for $10 a month, and if you join SoFi Plus between now and April 15th, you'll have a chance to win over $75,000 in cash. Giving twenty individuals a thousand dollars in cash prizes and fifty winners free SoFi Plus memberships for a year. Head to SoFi.com slash Scot G to enter. Terms and conditions apply. To learn more about SoFi Plus, head to SoFi.com slash Sofi High We're back with the profit markets. So James, I've I've read that 70% of divorce filings are now from women. And some of that is that women no longer feel in economically indentured and uh that an increase in divorce rates in some ways represents progress in our society, but also that potentially women bring quote unquote more divorce energy to a relationship. And the data I saw that, and I'm very open to pushback here, is that the lowest divorce rates are among gay men, second lowest, heterosexual couples, highest divorce rates, gay women. Thoughts on divorce energy by gender and different types of marriages, and what you observe in terms of the likelihood of them deciding to end it. Yeah, I mean those statistics are accurate. I think they're often weaponized in the wrong ways. So, you know, in in the what I'll roughly call the red pill man osphere space. Although, you know, our mutual friend Chris Williamson describes you and I and he as the gentlemanosphere. So we're we're we're sort of, you know, uh we have a male audience uh or a percentage of our audience that's male, but we don't have that sort of, you know, hardline position that that made for an interesting documentary for Louis Threw. Mm-hmm. Um I I think the way that gets weaponized is this idea that women are somehow playing at the casino of marriage, and then when the chips get high enough, they cash out. What I think it really is is the tendency of men more than women to go out for milk and never come back. And then what happens is the woman comes to my office or one like it and says he left. He left for his secretary, or he left, and I don't know where he is. Um, and he's not paying the mortgage, and I don't know what to do. And I go, okay, we have to file a divorce action. And she goes, wait, I don't want a divorce. I didn't ask for a divorce. He's the one who left. I want him to come back. I want us to figure it out, or I want us to be civilized with each other. And I say, look, if you want that mortgage pa id, if you want temporary child support, we have to go to a judge. And the only way to go to a judge, there's no such thing as an action for I'd like to work it out if possible, it's an action for divorce. So we have to file the divorce action. And I can't tell you the number of divorces I've done over the span of 25 years is a high number, but I would say very few of them have ever been a woman just cashing the chips out at the casino. Whereas I've had a large number where the guy just leaves and the woman ends up having to be the plaintiff. And adding indignity to that is that very often that man will say later on, well, you're the one who filed for divorce. You know, you're the plaintiff, your mom filed for divorce. So it's it's misleading . But I do think the idea of like divorce energy, I I think we're in a, you know, unfortunately we're in a uh misandressed moment, I think. And it's it's um it's become very acceptable for women to engage in behavior that i in relation to marriage that if it occurred with men would be viewed very differently. I've always said that in the context even of like, you know, the song Maybe Next Time He'll Thforinke Be He Cheats, you know, where she crash you know, breaks his car with baseball bat and all these things. If if that was a song by a man about maybe next time she'll think before she cheats, it would be a hate crime. Like it's multiple felonies being described in that in that song . And you know, if a if a man cheats on a woman, even if she hasn't had sex with him in years, it's well, he couldn't keep it in his pants and he's a Lithario. If a woman cheats on her husband, even if it's with like the hot personal trainer or tennis instructor. It's you know, he wasn't keeping her happy, her husband. She needed to figure out who she was. So if he took cheats, it's his fault. If she cheats, it's his fault. Um, and there's a lot of that energy out there on the internet and a lot of that content. And I think the algorithm continues to drive that. And, you know, I I I I know that you uh you understand better than most in the context of your writing and thinking that, you know, this boys versus girls world that we've created and that the algorithm rhythm pushes because it creates engagement. You know, whether you're shouting in opposition or shouting amen, it's just engagement. And so, you know, the uh the the social media gods love it. So I think that's only increasing. We're getting further from each other and we're not recognizing what you've rightly pointed out, which is that a world in which men are flailing is not a world where women are thriving and vice versa. Aaron Powell Such an obvious insight that men more men end marriages than it than is perceived because it's the woman that ends up filing. I never thought of that. The what you're saying is that number's misleading. A lot of men effectively end their marriages. They're just not the ones legally filing for divorce. Correct. Yeah. I mean the divorce statistics that are tracked. See I get into this conversation a lot because I talk to people about how divor how marriage is arguably, from a legal standpoint, not just a negligent activity, it's potentially a reckless activity. So the law makes a distinction between negligence and recklessness. Negligence is a failure to perceive a substanti al and unjustifiable risk of serious harm. And recklessness is a conscious disregard for a substantial and unjustifiable risk of serious harm. With the divorce rate hovering just over 50% . And then you add to it, and there's been quite a bit of interesting studies about marriage dissatisfaction. Because remember, those are just the marriages that catastrophically failed, meaning they divorced. There was the entry of a certificate of dissolution of marriage, which means the divorce was finalized. But there's another 15 to 20% that are physically separated under a binding written agreement, but not finalizing a divorce for whatever reason. So they can stay on each other's health insurance, religious reasons, whatever it might be. And then there are the percentages of people, and there's been a lot of interesting research on this, that stay unhappy in a relationship, either for the children or because they don't want to give away half their things or economic insecurity that you can't move out now if two cable bills because you're barely affording your single cable bill. So it really turns into something where statistically, this is a very unlikely to succeed enterprise and one that is likely to cause tremendous harm. But again, it's wildly popular. And it's not one that we would ever ask the question of someone like if Ed said, Hey, guess what? My girl and I were getting married. If I said really why? That would be indelicate. That would be a rude question to ask. Whereas most things that catastrophically fail 50% of the time and generally fail to achieve the objective, which was living happily ever after, roughly 75% of the time. It's not unreasonable to say to this person, hey, what what are you look- what is the problem to which marriage is a solution? And you know, I I my graduate work before I went to law school was at NYU and I and I was uh Neil Postman's research assistant on a few of his books. And I was in his department, the department of culture and communication. And um when when I was there, you know, Neil had this approach to technology of saying anytime you encounter a new technology, ask yourself, what is the problem to which this technology is a solution? Who has that problem? How does it practically solve the problem? And what new problems might it un intentionally cause. And if you apply that model to the technology of marriage, you're gonna have people that are gonna approach it very differently because marriage is above all else , a contract with the state in regards to the rule set for your relationship. And that's not how most people look at it. So I just want to push back or ask for a follow up on that 50% number because my understanding of the 50% number is that each year, at that moment, they look at the number of marriages, the number of divorces, and they divide one into another. But my understanding is that a lot of divorces coming to fruition right now are a function of the economic dependence women may have felt 20, 30, 40 years ago that they no longer feel. And that if you look at the data around young people, Gen Z and millennials getting married now, who start out on more of an economic equal footing, that the divorce rates may in fact be much lower, that that 50 percent number is actually misleading, and young people getting married today will in fact have much lower divorce rates. So I've spent a lot of time discussing this and defending this. So I've I've really done the research on it. Um so the, you know, uh and I'm gonna rely a little bit on notes here, but um, because I want to get the numbers right. But you know the the there's what we call the crude divorce rate and the CDC does the national vital statistics um system that looks at a crude divorce rate of approximately two point five per 1,000 population in recent years, which again seems low in this scheme of things, but it translates to literally hundreds of thousands of divorces. Second and third marriages, it's much higher. Second marriages, you're looking at 60 to 67%. Third marriages, 73 to 74 percent. Um, you know, what's really interesting is couples who marry before the age of 25 have a significantly higher divorce rate, roughly 60 percent. Um, where at and couples where one or both partners did not complete college divorce at much higher rates than college-educated couples. So what often happens is people do a great job of lying with statistics on this because they'll say, well, you know, a survey of college-educated women over the age of 30, uh, divorce rate's only 5%. You're like, right, you just cherry-picked people who graduated college, which is not the majority of the world. And uh or of the United States and people who marry after the age uh of 25. And so this is like you're you're again, you're picking a statistical model that's gonna work best for you. And then on top of that, like I said, you have these statistics of a marital breakdown without a formal divorce. And the American Psychological Association um did some good work on that. The U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey. Bowling Green State University has something called the National Center for Family and Marriage Research. And they've done a ton of research on, not with that simplified model of saying, here's the marriage rate, here's the divorce rate, and let's match those up, because people are very rarely in the same year, getting married and divorced. And when you have things like the pandemic, where the court system essentially slowed or shut down for a period of time, then of course, right after you know the world sort of came out of lockdown, there was a glut and backlog of divor ces that that happened. So really you have to look at the data in a long-term way, and you have to sort of try to control for all of those variables. Um, but the the the marriage rate has gone down , the divorce rate has gone down as a function of the marriage rate going down. But what's frightening in terms of what what you'd call like the refined divorce rate is it it it's really the the majority of Americans, and people don't you know like to talk about that, but the majority of Americans don't have a college education. And the college education framing is a very important piece of this because there is such a disparity in the divorce rate when people are college educated versus not college educated. And again, I'm not sure of the reasons behind that. I'm sure there are people more qualified than me to answer that. But if , you know, like if one in four planes crashed, people just wouldn't fly. And and so even if you just said twenty-five percent of marriages catastrophically fail in divorce, I I think that would be, you know , a very uh uh frightening number. But again, I I still think legal separation and unhappily married, like there's a uh what's called the Toshiro estimate, which was a psychologist named Ty Toshiro who wrote a book called The Science of Happily Ever After. He talks about, you know, the percentages of people who express real satisfaction in their marriage. And I tell you, some of the stuff that that comes out of that is absolutely terrifying. Because what you've got basically is 42 to 45% of people that formally divorce, three to four percent separate without divorcing, and fourteen to nineteen percent report their marriage as unhappy, loveless, feeling obligated to stay and actually report that they dislike their spouse. Now, I don't think anybody who gets married is saying that would be success, that if I could maintain that level of connection, that would be success. Like, so so again, are we looking at marriage as like an endurance race? That if you don't divorce, you won? Or are we looking at as we maintain this high level of connection and goodwill with each other and that we say, hey, I don't regret this choice that I made. And I think that that impacts the statistics in a real way. We try on this show, this is Prof G Markets, so we try to look at things through a general lens of economics and economic security. One of our views, and I'd be curious to get your perspective on this, is that marriage, if just strictly from an economic security perspective, is generally a good thing. That it means that we kind of get our shit together, we work harder, we notice this anecdotally among the people who work at our company. But generally speaking, if you're trying to get rich, if you're trying to build economic security, then you should probably trying to get be trying to get married too. And I have some follow-up questions, but first I want to hear your response to that question. I don't disagree. I mean, I think um a successful marriage is a tremendous asset. I think Warren Buffett, you know, said that the the best investment he ever made was his marriage and that, you know, uh choosing the right spouse is the most important economic decision you're ever going to make. I think many, many people would agree with that. I represent a tremendous number. You know, I'm I'm in New York. So, you know, if you're talking to Laura Wasser, you know, she's gonna tell you about her clients that are all celebrities. My clients, you'd pass them on the street, you wouldn't know who they are. Scott might know. You might you guys might actually you recognize a different you guys are a different kind of geek. You might be like, hey, I know him. He's from BlackRock, you know. Um, but they're they're the Patagonia vest wearing guys that I do the uh the prenups for when they marry a yoga teacher. And uh what I'll say is yeah, I think they they realize value. You know, they see that this is bringing something to my life. And um I think what that is is is it's eliminating a certain noise. And that is the noise of mate selection. It's it's grounding someone, you know, in in connection with another person. I mean, look, I'm I'm still very much a romantic at heart, even after doing this for 25 years. Like I think that the value that a good strong, relationship brings to someone in their life is you can't measure it. I mean, I've I've seen some incredibly successful people have incredibly successful marriages. And by the way, I don't think a marriage has to last forever for it to be successful. I I think you know you can have a happily ever after separately. You know, my ex-wife has been remarried for 15 years. S'hes a wonderful person . The man she married is a wonderful guy. I consider him part of our family. You know, and we raised our sons as a group. And I'm so blessed to have had that chapter. And I think that it would be much healthier if we viewed relationships as chapters in a long story. And I think, you know, marriage came about when most women died in childbirth and most men died before they were 50. And now, happily ever after, we're marriage is running into the same problems that the pension system is running into, which is it made sense when you paid in for 20 years and then you died when you were in payout for 10 years. But now you pay in for 25 years and then your divine benefit plan kicks in and it's paying you for the next 40 years. This is why the postal system's gonna go under, because the pension it was not designed for these current climate conditions. I mean, marriage is like so many other things. We are primates living in medieval institutions with godlike technology in our hands. Like how does that story end? Does it end with a happily ever after? Does it end with a tremendous amount of confus ion? It I think it creates a lot of confusion. But I do think if again, if you get it right , the stability and security that a pair bond brings, even without children . Like with children, of course. I think it takes multiple people and it takes, you know, uh a tremendous amount of energy. I won't even call it masculine or feminine energy because I I actually think it's it's human traits that tend to cluster in men or cluster in women for a variety of reasons, but it takes the unique skill set of multiple people to raise children successfully. And I I think marriage is a great opportunity to bond very closely with another person in raising, you know, new humans, or even if you don't have children, in navigating the self and and having someone there who genuinely sees your blind spots and calls them out with real love and helps you again. When I gave my example earlier about what I hope on your deathbed you get to say, it's not this person became who I wanted them to be. It's I helped this person become the most authentic version of who they are, who they were. And I think that that is something we need other people to be able to do. Aaron Powell Given how high these marriage rates have gotten, uh it seems as though that's something that everyone should at least recognize. Yes, you're you're you're getting into this relationship, this also contractual agreement, which might pay dividends later. Uh hopefully it will, that's why you're doing it. But also it comes with tremendous, tremendous risk. Which makes me think: shouldn't everyone be signing prenups? What is your advice to most people getting married today? Every marriage has a prenup. It's either one that was written by the state legislature of the state in which you reside and can be changed by them without your consent. And then once they change it, you don't have the right to opt out anymore. I mean, find me another contract where you sign up for something and they can change the essential terms. And you're not allowed to say, well, wait a minute. If you change the amount of my car lease, I don't want it anymore. No, you change what apartment I get in my apartment lease. No, no, I I I signed up for this one. Like the state legislature in the state in which you reside for a period of six months or more has jurisdiction over your divorce. And they can change. Now by the way, I don't care what side of the political aisle, left, right, or a raging moderate. That was my little plug for you, Scott. The reality is you put yourself in this situation , and you're I guarantee over the last 16 years, every single person you know has looked at the government at some point and said these people are idiots. So you're signing a prenup with the government or or the person you like better than the other eight billion other options. You tell me. You tell me which of those two things is more sensible. Relying on a future government that will be elected by a popularity contest, and you hope it'll work out, and the rules that they came up with will make sense for your specific dynamic, or this person and I, this person I've chosen out of the eight billion options, we are going to make a rule set for our marriage. There's no contest there as far as I'm concerned. I think some people would say that the trouble is that it's a little overwhelming. And at least if you're going with what the government has decided, you're depending on some level of precedent for these very, very difficult questions that often do have to do exactly with money, the kinds of questions that people don't really want to confront. So I guess my my follow-up question for you is what kinds of things should be going into a prenup ? How should couples be thinking about their finances? Are they together? Are they separate? What are the kinds of things you run into? Yeah, look, it it may be a difficult conversation. And that's what I was saying earlier about don't marry someone if you can't have difficult conversations with them. The solution to it though is look, I've been to the DMV. I've never walked into the DMV and thought, oh yeah, these people should be in charge of everything. They've got this whole thing locked down. I'm gonna put them in charge of my finances. This is great. This is this is the this is the best and brightest the world has to offer. Like that's who you're trusting if you don't do a prenup together. But look, I I don't I've represented victimtims of inate partner abuse, coercive control, domestic violence for many years. And what I will say is I've learned conclusively from that that you cannot feel loved if you don't feel safe. Like the most important thing is to feel safe. And safety comes in a lot of forms. It comes in the form of physical safety, which is obviously the most important, but also emotional safety, economic safety. When you love someone enough to marry them . You should want them to feel safe. And you know, there's a line from a song by Prince off the album Sign of the Times. It's a song called If I Was Your Girlfriend. And Prince says a man is singing it to a woman he's dating, and and one of the lyrics is : if I was your girlfriend, would you run to me if somebody hurt you, even if that somebody was me ? And I always thought that was a very romantic line, because the truth is, like, that's what a prenup conversation is. Is what are you afraid of? Like, what are you afraid of in this relationship? I'm afraid that I'm gonna sacrifice a bunch of things and trust you to take care of the finances and I'm gonna diminish my lifetime earning capacity. And then you're gonna find a younger model and split. Hey, you know what? That's a very fair thing to be afraid of. There's lots of examples of that you can point to. So say it out loud. Sometimes when you're afraid of something, you know, Scott knows this as a father, you know. You know my kids were little and they would say out loud like yeah I'm afraid of this or I think there might be something under the bed. Like that's the way you go, okay, let's look. Let's look under there. Let's put the light over here and let's see what that is. You know, let's not you don't do well by like pretending it's not something you're afraid of. So I think sharing with each other, look, I'm afraid that you're going to weaponize against me someday and try to take everything I built, including the things I had before we got married. And that you're gonna, that the threat of litigation is gonna be so potentially expensive. And the valuation of my business interests is gonna be and the things I'm gonna do for wealth preservation and tax avoidance that are legitimate, fair things are gonna get weapon ized and spun in the full contact storytelling that is divorce law. And the lawyers are gonna walk out with hundreds of thousands of dollars in fee, and we're gonna walk out with a lot less and a lot of pain, and I don't want that. Okay, those are both really legitimate fears. If we can give them voice, I think if you love someone, you'll want to understand their fear and not go, oh, you don't trust me. You'll look at it and say, okay, I know you trust me, but you're afraid. It's okay to be afraid. Let's figure out how we can make each other feel safe. Is there some uh form of managing finances? Is there a way to go about the money problem in a relationship, in a marriage that is ultimately either going to maybe decrease the likelihood of getting a divorce, or if we're not trying to make a boogeyman out of out of divorce, that makes the divorce less difficult that is generally speaking a good thing for the marriage. Obviously everything in a relationship, like how much sex should people be having, what should they do in terms of dinner rituals or date nights? I think the particular chemistry of two people is important to look at. So I'm not, I'm not a fan of giant, like one size fits all approaches. But what I will say is for me, I think a very sensible system that I can understand is the yours, mine, and ours. Because I think really our relationships are based on a series of Venn diagrams. You know, like there's the you, the me, and the we. And like, you know, you met her, there was you, and there was she, and and then there's we. And so whether it's economic or whether it's inter ests or how we spend our time, you you want that Venn diagram to continue to be a Venn diagram. Like there's a temptation to make the we because it's so warm and cozy , to make the we everything and reject all the you and the me. But that's not healthy because you fell in love with each other and that's the you and the me. So the we wouldn't exist if you didn't like each other. So you can't let it subsume your identity. And I think the same thing financially. I think that there should be some shared sense of the finances, but there should also be some separateness. If I'm buying you a Christmas present and you're going to always see exactly how much it costs, we have no privacy or autonomy in our spending. And so I again I think for each couple, the conversation about what should be the you, the me, and the we economically, it's the same conversation that you should be having on every other thing , which is what do you want, what do I want, what's good for us, and how do we have that, you know, check-in. And again, it's kind of like estate planning. When somebody says to me, you know, when should I do my estate planning? I always say early and often. You know, and it's the same thing. Like you can, you should check in early in the relationship and often. And constantly say, is this still working for the two of us? Because you're gonna see on a long time, Line at a as a as young buck, you're gonna see that as time goes on, like what's incredibly important in your 30s and even in your 40s, it shifts, it starts to change, like and it moves in different directions. And again, that's not necessarily a bad thing as long as you say to each other, hey, something changed. Is it good? Is it bad? Is it just a function of the natural flow and progression of time? That that's I think the most important thing is to have the the mechanisms for just constantly checking it . We'll be right back. And by the way, first time founders is officially moving to the Prof. Markets feed. The first episode on the feed is coming out tomorrow with the CEO and co-founder of Portifal. You can find it right here on Prof G Markets . Support for the show comes from hosting her. The biggest barrier to entry for most entrepreneurs is no lack of capital. It's the friction of starting. You can spend months in the strateg izing phase, which is precious time that could instead be spent actually making moves. But these days, the rules have changed. AI is redefining who gets to build a business. So when you're building the next big thing, go live in minutes, not weeks, with Hostinger. 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From rolling countryside to cobblestone streets, begin your next chapter. Book your seat at WestJet.com or call your travel agent. WestJet, where your story takes off . Hi, I'm Brene Brown. And I'm Adam Grant. And we're here to invite you to the Curiosity Shop. A podcast that's a place for listening, wondering, thinking , feeling, and questioning. It's gonna be fun. We rarely agree. But we almost never disagree, and we're always learning. That's true. You can subscribe to the Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app to automatically receive new episodes every Thursday . We're back with Prof. Markets. You had said something that uh some data that was really illuminating, that people who get married uh when they're over the age of 25 have lower divorce rates, and people with college educations have lower divorce rates. So if you take away that as you get older, you're more mature, better perspective, and if you are fortunate enough to have a college degree, it might it doesn't necessarily mean you're smarter, but maybe have more historical context, maybe even again, you're blessed with not only privilege, but maybe some perspective that comes from education. Isn't the takea way that it's a smart thing to do to wait to get married and also a really smart thing to try and stay married? Yeah. I mean, I think you can make that argument from that data. The downside of making that argument is the biological reality of people wanting to marry for the purpose of having children. So if you say to somebody, and this is where this, you know, this becomes such a fraught conversation to have. And and somehow, you know, thankfully I've managed to like have it without too much offending either side. Um, partly because I've represented both sides of every single argument in the divorce space, you know, and and so whenever somebody like I posted something a few weeks ago on International Women's Day that got me a lot of uh negative and positive, you know, press because I I posted five of the wealthiest women in the world. And they the majority of them, the ones that I posted were all billionaires as a function of divorce. And, you know, of course, I was immediately getting attacked, and people were saying, you know, well, didn't these women deserve this? And I wanted to say, what argument do you think? The men were billionaires because of the w the women they married? What argument do you think I make in court? Like I represent those women and I represent the men they're married to in roughly equal measure. So like I'm I think it's hilarious when people are saying to me an argument that I've made in a court, you know, they're saying, like, well, don't you know that those women contribute? Of course I know those women contribute. I've made those arguments. Some of those women are my clients. So of course I get that. But I also get the other side of that argument as well. I I think the the truth of of marriage statistics is people who have a college education, it's usually a sign of other things like they're, you know, again, the the substance use uh uh disorder rates related to a person who has a college education and doesn't this is not a function of the fact that they had a good liberal arts education. This is a function of the fact that this is a person who probably had the economic stability that they could go to college in the present climate. You know, again, it's not, you know, it's not your story of of a person who could get into a state school and could do that. They're not, I went back to, I went to a state school in New Jersey. I went to Ramapo College of New Jersey. And they asked me about 10 years ago to come back and to speak at an open house. And you know, I was very effusive about the fact that hey, I I didn't have good SAT scores. I was a really unambitious, bad student. I had long hair and a bad attitude. And uh I said, you know, this is a school that took a chance on me. And I'm so grateful of the fact that I moved on to become someone very successful. And after wards, one of the admissions people came to me and said, you know, this was so great and you were so funny. But in the future, when you come, like maybe don't talk about that because um you wouldn't get in now. Like you then wouldn't get in now. And I said, do do you know how horrified you should be to say that out loud? Like, cause you just admitted you would have passed on me. And look at me, you have me speaking here today. That's right. So I I think that there is a um a reality, an echo I mean again, I don't want to sound like a me in college saying there's no war but the class war. But I I do think that that, you know, if you really care, this is why I always think it's funny when like right-wing conservatives, you know, I debated with Matt Walsh on the Daily Wire about this, because he was very gung-ho about how we got to get rid of no-fault divorce. You know, that no-fault divorce is to blame for the demise of marriages, which is kind of like saying, like emergency rooms are to blame for the number of injuries people have. Like you're mistaking cause and effect, and you're thinking barriers to exit. I would actually say barriers to entry makes more sense. Like you gotta, you know, it's the most legally significant thing you're ever going to do other than die. And you don't even have to take a test, you know, before you do it or fill out like there's no waiting period, nothing like that. But if the right really cared about marriage and keeping marriages together, they would care about creating economic stability. They would care about creating opportunities for people to go to college and to be able to get educated. They would look at the raw data and say, hey, this improves marriage outcomes. So let's feed that. And that by the way, it would have a lot of other cascading effects because that would increase the number of people that don't deal with, you know, substance use disorder, which again, when you take that demographic out, improves the marriage rate. So all of these things, they're all tied to each other , and the answer is not that difficult to suss out, but it's not going to be popular among the left or the right. The left, because it's got a lot of gender stuff in it, which becomes fraught terrain. And on the right, they don't want to have to look at the fact that the ink you know the wealth disparity in the United States is a big piece of this. When we look at the way that divorce rates have changed over time, also we've been talking about how young people are not really dating as much as they used to, they're not having sex as much as they used to, and they're not really having children as much as they used to. I think the stuff that always kind of shocks me is the fact that around half of Gen Z in my generation say they don't want to have children. And a lot of people trying to figure out why is that. We believe that it's mostly to do with uh financial anxiety. But I guess my question , as someone who is literally a practitioner of marriage and divorce, how would you say that the digital age has changed marriage? And are there any ways? I mean, I guess how has it changed marriage as an institution for the worse? And perhaps has it maybe changed marriage for the better? It has not changed marriage for the better. It has changed it for the worse. Um, I think uh unequivocally. There's a chapter in my book called If We Wereing Go to Invent an Infidelity Generating Machine, it would be called Facebook. I would probably change that now to meta or because I think Instagram and TikTok are better. But look, I I think, you know, Ed, you're too young to remember the song Part Time Lover by Stevie Wonder. But it was this song about a man who's having an affair and he's singing to his mistress and he says, You know, uh call up, ring once, hang up the phone to let me know you made it home, so then my wife won't suspect, you know. And the the whole song is about like if there's an emergency, have a male friend call and ask for me. Now it would just be, I'm gonna text you. Don't worry, I'll slide I'll DM you. Like we're we have created technologies that are wildly antagonistic to monogamous pair bonds. Because A , you're watching everyone else's relationship greatest hits while living your gag reel , which creates this endless comparison. And by the way, I cannot tell you how many people , celebrities, because I represent a lot of athletes, celebrities , that I see them on social media, hashtag blessed, greatest husband ever. And they were just in my office. They were just in my office for a consultation. They've been living apart for the last two years. Like this is this is an absolute but but again, we don't show that to anybody. And then what happens is one day they just go, it's with great pain. We tell you that we're separating. We'd like some privacy during this difficult time as we navigate it and move on in our relationship. We'll be grateful for the gifts that we gave each other and our conscious uncoupling. Like, and this is, but but meanwhile, the rest of us, the civilians, are looking at this and going, like, I've my relationship doesn't look like that. They're so happy. Look at how happy they are. And by the way, at the same time, while we're again when when are you looking at your social media? Like when you're bored, when you're on the subway or on the toilet. It's not when you're having like great moments. So you're watching everyone's greatest hits. You're sitting in this bored, sad moment of your own. And what are you looking at? Everyone's curated wonderful life. And you now have reasons to communicate with people you have absolutely no business communicating with. Like in the past, if you wanted to flirt with a woman who was one of the moms on your son's soccer team, you would have had to like slide up to her in person at practice, which is pretty obvious. Whereas following her on Facebook or Instagram, because there's a group where you guys share information about who's doing rides and who's doing snacks, well, that's perfectly harmless. And now you're seeing her vacation pictures with her in a bikini and and you have a message. Oh, where'd you guys stay in Taloon? We were thinking about maybe going ourselves. Oh well, you look great, you know. Now we're talking, and we're talking privately, by the way. Like if if at the soccer practice, I grabbed that mom, was like, Let's go over here behind the bleachers and talk. Everyone would look and go, what are you doing, man? Whereas if I'm doing that on the couch next to my wife, she doesn't even know I'm having that conversation. So there there is so much coming at marriage right now that I am shocked that the divorce rate isn't higher than it is, and that the marriage satisfaction rate is going to survive this at all because there is just such an endless progression of comparison and false performative things. I want to believe the optimist of me wants to believe that part of the popularity of my work is how honest and blunt I am about the challenges we're facing, but how it has not taken my optimism and belief in love. And how ultimately the most important thing in life is to find deep conne ction and to feel loved and to feel worthy of love. I think our greatest fear is that if people knew us, the real us, they couldn't possibly love us. And I think that real romantic love is about someone looking at you and seeing, I see you . I see the good, the bad, the fool in you, the hero in you, and I love you. I love the whole thing of you, and I'm cheering for you. And I believe in you. To me, that's the most worthwhile, beautiful sentiment in the world. It's a superpower if you find it and can keep it, but I like everything that has value, it requires some effort. And I think we're not doing anybody any favors by pretending that it's effortless. You know, we we make these rom coms and it's like everything's fine. They live happily ever after. Right, because you end the story. You know, but if Jack had survived the Titanic, eventually Kate Winslit's character would have been like, dude, what with painting the French girls? Are we gonna get a real job? What are you doing? You know, and it it we're not doing people a service by showing them like only the greatest hits and not the day-to-day maintaining of connection part. James Sexton has been an attorney in New York since two thousand and one. He holds a law degree from Fordham Law School and a Master of Arts degree from NYU, where he focused his graduate studies on persuasive speech and propaganda. After nearly two decades of refining his skills as a lawyer in the courtrooms of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Rockland, Westchester, and Orange County James earned a place in the top one percent of family law attorneys practicing in New York. James is the best-selling author of If You're In My Office, It's Already Too Late, How to Stay in Love and How Not to Fuck Up Your Marriage. He's also the host of the podcast Better Call Sexton. James, this was uh entertaining and meaningful. Very much appreciate your time and good work. Thank you. It was a pleasure, Scott. I'm a I'm I'm a fan of uh of of your work for many years now. And if I had a dollar for every person that said to me, you and Scott Galloway should chat sometime and and I do have to say I owe you a big one. I've heard the same thing. Yeah. I owe you a big one too because you uh you got me through the pandemic. I I jokingly say that you and Cody Rigsby were my two best friends in the pandemic because I listened to Pivot constantly during that time and it was like a lifeline. And uh and I remember and I did Peloton rides like three times a day, and Cody Rigsby was like my my savior. So uh no, I'm thrilled we we finally intersected. We have a lot of people in common, and I'm glad Ed uh that we got to meet as well. And and uh it's always fun. Uh like Scott, I I I really share Scott's passion and enth usiasm for men connecting with younger men and us trying to sort of collaboratively share our life experience and wisdom and share from you and get from you, you know, all the the the different perspective that you bring to uh to the ol der guys like us. So I think we're we're all really lucky to have each other. I'm really glad we chatted and I I hope we'll connect again. Really appreciate it, James. Thank you so much. It's a blast. Good to see you guys . Scott, reactions? Uh so I really enjoy James' content because just as we've normalized, I think it's important we normalize talking about cancer. Before you didn't , even when my mom got cancer, I remember you like you only told your closest friends because it was somehow embarrassing. Then we normalized mental health struggles. You never said, oh, my kid's struggling with anxiety, or I'm in a relationship with someone who's bipolar, and we've normalized that, which is really healthy, or made it a topic of conversation, which is an acceptable topic of conversation. And I think divorce is finally an acceptable topic of conversation outside of kind of TMZing it. And it's something I consider one of my biggest failures. Um you know, I had a wonderful relationship with my ex and I'm still very fond of her. We still speak pretty regularly. And it's just I find his I find his um content comforting . Because I think, I mean, I actually don't think he's a divorce attorney. I mean, he may be in practice during the day, but on TikTok, he's basically a marriage counselor. He's basically saying, these are the these are the it's like if you want to understand how to be a good pilot, you should go to airdisaster.com and listen to every black box recording of every crash in history so you know how to avoid air disasters. And I think he's very instructive and informative for people your age around how you what are the red flags, how do you set yourself up for success? So I really like his content. I also appreciate I think he's a fantastic communicator. He's sort of, again, I said this, he's kind of tailor-made for TikTok. Your thoughts, Ed? Also Taylor made for podcasts. I mean I was just gripped the entire time. Um Yeah, I found it really interesting the thing he said about prenups, the fact that you're signing a prenup either way, and it's either you sign it with your spouse or you sign it with the government. And it just kind of got me thinking , I mean, it reminds me of our a conversation that we had with Ramit Seti where Ramit was talking about this cult of home ownership, this idea that everyone believes that you you have to own a home. And so we'll kind of do whatever we can just to make sure that we can say, yes, I am a homeowner. And then we forget about all the fixed costs and we we