What No One Tells You About Divorce (From #1 Divorce Lawyer)

Mel Robbins (00:00:08):

Today on the Mel Robbins Podcast, the ultimate guide to divorce for you and the people you love.

James Sexton (00:00:15):

You're not protecting your children by not getting divorced. What you're choosing is what lesson they're going to learn. Divorce ends a marriage. It doesn't end a family.

Mel Robbins (00:00:26):

From the world's number one divorce lawyer, James Sexton.

James Sexton (00:00:30):

Sometimes happily ever after means happily ever after separately.

James Sexton (00:00:44):

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

Mel Robbins (00:00:46):

I am so thrilled that you said yes to this because when I first had you on the show and you and I had one of the single best conversations about relationships, you taught me four words and those four words are you're my favorite person. And those four words are the secret to having lasting love. And I'm celebrating my 30th wedding anniversary this year with Chris. And we say you're my favorite person every single day to one another, and it has really improved what was already a really great marriage. And so I cannot thank you enough for not only making a difference in my life, but after that conversation, I said to you, you are the number one divorce attorney in the United States. If Chris and I were getting a divorce and I found out he hired you, I would need a diaper. Not because you're mean,

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But because you're exceptional. And I said to you after our first conversation, would you come back and do a comprehensive guide on divorce and cover everything? Because most of us, if we go through that or if our loved ones do, would never be able to hire you. And you said yes. And I would love to have you speak to the person who's listening and share with them what are we going to cover today and how do you want them to think about this conversation in terms of it being a life-changing resource for them or people that they love who may be going through divorce or may be considering divorce or may have gone through one and still can't get their power and their life back?

James Sexton (00:02:35):

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

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

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What are the lessons that they learn from it? What are the scars they carry? And how do we see that? How do we notice it and how do we use it for our benefit and the benefit of the people around us? And if someone's listening who loves someone who's divorced or going through a divorce or their parents have divorced or one of their children is divorcing or one of their friends is divorcing or someone who they're in a new romantic relationship with went through an ugly divorce, I think I've now just described the entire world, right? But I think those people, it's going to be how can you be part of the structure of this person you loves life? How can you be a support to them? How can you be? Because it's a table. There's this person and their spouse and the lawyer and then there's this other leg, your friends, your family, your community, the people around you.

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And the thing about tables is if one leg is off, doesn't matter how nice and straight the other three legs are, that table's going to fall down. So I guess when we're thinking about divorce, what I want to say to people more than anything else in this conversation is the pain isn't optional. They're going to either be painful conversations to avoid divorce or there's going to be painful steps you have to take to make it through a divorce or how to place it in your life afterwards. But the damage is optional. The damage is optional and there's a lot you can do. So hopefully we'll walk out of this conversation with a feeling of a little more control.

Mel Robbins (00:06:06):

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

James Sexton (00:06:41):

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

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

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And you'd be shocked how many times that actually happens to people. And I have a ringside seat to it when it does. The fourth one, it's kind of like an unrepentant repeat, like somebody cheats, somebody says something terrible in the middle of a fight. Anybody who's been married to someone for more than five months, they have what I call the nuclear codes. They have a sentence they could say to their partner that they know would reduce them to tears. And like the nuclear codes, you can't use them more than once and you shouldn't use them at all. The only way to win that game is not to play. But everyone, you've been married 30 years, there's some sentences you could say to him, he could say to you that would just hit all the soft targets. You can't love somebody and not let them see where your soft targets are.

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So it's like weaponized intimacy. So when I talk about the unrepentant repeat, it's someone who has just engaged in some awful behavior, but the apology has become something they're fluent in. It's just something that they, "I can't believe I did this. I'll never do it again." Six months later, "I can't believe I said that. I'll never say that again." And it just becomes a cycle that it's not ending anytime soon. It's just going to keep happening.

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And the fifth type of marriage that I think needs to end is, I would call it's the shrinking marriage. And that is a marriage that forces you to just become less and less and less of who you are until there's almost no sense of who you are left anymore, like a marriage that requires you to be smaller, quieter, and less of yourself. The other thing I said in our first conversation was the two wonderful things to say at the end of a marriage when hopefully it ends in death is to say, "You helped me become the most authentic version of myself and you're my favorite person." And I think a good marriage is one that helps you become who you are. So the opposite of that, one that requires you to be something other than who you are

Oprah Winfrey (00:10:52):

In

James Sexton (00:10:52):

A real and increasingly frequent way, that's a marriage you need to have end. But see, leaving a marriage that can't be made safe isn't failure. I think it's not a failure at love, it's defending love. It's defending the love you have for yourself. It's defending the love that you have for your children, and it's defending even sometimes the love you have for this other person who may not realize that they're not the most authentic version of themselves either by virtue of this connection that isn't working anymore.

Mel Robbins (00:11:23):

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

James Sexton (00:11:31):

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

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And it's a trial you're having in your head with no defense counsel present for the other party, but it's real. It's where you start to make this connection between, hey, my unhappiness and the status of my marriage might be tied to each other in some way. The third stage is I think where you decide, okay, this is it. I think this has to happen. I would call that the moment of decision. And that is where like, okay, the deciding I'm going to do this is over. Now it's like timing, logistics and fear, that's all. When will I do it? Because my business has a busy season. Busy season is right after the kids go back to school and right after the holidays. January 2nd, gyms and divorce lawyers offices are full because everyone's going to lose 200 unwanted pounds this year in the form of their spouse or at the gym, one of the two.

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And so I'm going to reinvent my life. Again, as if you couldn't reinvent your life on the 15th as easy as you could on January 1st, but this is a moment of decision. Now again, also the holiday ceasefire is over. Everyone's kind of had to keep it together. Sometimes even the happiest marriage can be strained after having family over endlessly and the company holiday parties and all the stuff that you had to do and all the debt you accumulated buying your children, whatever the latest gadget is, and trying to get your spouse a thing that you though they'd like and then they didn't like it as much as you though they'd like it. And even if they did like it as much, you didn't feel as good as you thought you would. So it's one of those things that everybody's feeling not great January 2nd, and that's a time where a lot of people come in.

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And when the kids go back to school, there's a summer ceasefire that seems to happen where everybody's like, all right, listen, the kids are home. It's kind of a quieter pace. Now the kids are back at school, structure's coming into play, we got to get moving here. Then there's the actually taking step stage. The fourth stage is taking steps. You're actually doing the thing. You went to talk to a lawyer, you've hired a lawyer, the private thing becomes public. You're starting to let people know, yeah, the marriage is ending, the marriage is over, we're in a divorce proceeding.

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The fifth thing is you're in it, solidly in it. The real deal of divorce, the meat and potatoes of it, a process that makes otherwise logical people sometimes unrecognizable. You're really in the thick of it, what Walt Whitman called the hour of lead, where the heaviness of reality is on you and you're just trying to get through it. And then the sixth stages just got out. You just got out. It's over. The paperwork gets done faster than your nervous system. I think everybody has this attitude when they get divorced of, well, I've been going through it for a year and a half, so yeah, I'm over it. It's like, no, no, no. When the papers actually get signed and everything's officially done and you paid that last bill to the lawyer and now you close the door to the thing, that's when grief begins. That's when healing really begins.

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And that's the part where a lot of people just want to move on to the next thing and they'd rather get a dating app before they get a therapist and that's backwards. So those are really the six stages.

Mel Robbins (00:15:40):

I want to go through them one by one. So let's talk about the first one, pre-contemplative.

James Sexton (00:15:53):

Yeah. The hard part about this is it looks like nothing.

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

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So if you're married because, well, yeah, we're married, that's the thing you do. We're married. Okay, but are you paying attention to this anymore? Does this have value to you anymore? What do you do to add value to it? What value do you derive from it? Is it by default or is it by design? What is this marriage? The pre-contemplative stage for me is nobody's asking questions of each other anymore with an actual question mark in it. The conversations are all about logistics of the day and nothing to do with each other. If you sat down in front of your partner and said, for 10 minutes we have to talk, but it can't be about our jobs, our kids, or something logistical related to our house, would you just stare at each other with the sound of crickets happening? Is there anything really between you?

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Because when you met, there was you and me and then we, and then sometimes the we becomes everything and the you and the me is completely gone. So the question is when you're sitting across from this person, what's still there? And to me, the most divisive sound starts to appear and that's this sound.

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All right. Yeah. It's just this sense of contempt, this sense of your partner's an inconvenience. "What are you saying? Yeah. All right, whatever. "That's to me, the sound of the smoke. It's not fire yet, but that's the smoke. That's the pre-contemplative stage.

Mel Robbins (00:18:23):

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

James Sexton (00:18:30):

You can have 10 awkward minutes or so of conversation with your partner or you can let it start to become a flood and then you're going to end up with therapists or mediators or lawyers involved. So I think there's value in looking at your marriage, sitting down with your partner and saying," Hey, can we have a conversation about this, about us? Let's look at what we do. "Because look, you've written books. I've written books. What's a book? Books is like people doing things and saying things, right? Okay. So this is a story we're writing as a couple. What do we do every day? Why do we do it? Why do we do it that way? Why do we put the mugs in the cabinet where we put them? Is it just because the first day when we moved in, we just put them there and then we just left them there because it was like," Oh yeah, that's where the mugs go?

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"Or was it like," Oh, why are the mugs there and the coffee makers over there? "We never stopped and just went," Yeah, because your brother put the mugs up there when he helped us move in five years ago because it's just, oh, that became where the mugs go. "There's so much of that in people's marriages. So

Mel Robbins (00:19:37):

True.

James Sexton (00:19:38):

Why don't we eat dinner in this room instead of that room? Why don't we put our phones over here when we talk to each other? Why don't we go on Saturdays anymore to the farmer's market together? Why did we stop having sex in the couch? Why did we stop? Why did we stop? Again, there might be very reasonable answers. There might be really good, but just would it take that much to stop and go," Hey, let's look at our life together, our day-to-day. Because again, doesn't matter what I know, it matters what I can prove. I want to see the evidence. Let's look at ourday-to-day life. Let's take a week in our life. Why do we do this this way? Is it by default? Is it by design? If it's by design, great, you're a step ahead. If it's by default, should we maybe do it different?

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Would it feel different? Would it feel better? Would we feel better? Would it maybe put us in a better place together? And I think there's tremendous value in that. There's an invisible contract that happens in marriages. Why wouldn't you say it out loud? You're bound by it already. Why wouldn't you say it out loud and decide we're the two people to this contract? We can renegotiate at any time we want to if it's not working for either or both of us. So that's what when you take action in the pre-contemplative stage, you can actually do something worth. The conversation you're avoiding is the cheapest today it will ever be.

Mel Robbins (00:21:01):

What do you mean by that?

James Sexton (00:21:02):

The price tag of silence in a marriage can be my bill. It can be millions of dollars, or it could be 10 uncomfortable minutes with your spouse or one uncomfortable afternoon. The price of that conversation with your spouse is the lowest today it's ever going to be. Just say to your spouse, "Hey, are you happy? I want to do a good job of making you happy." And I feel sometimes like we're kind of passing each other. Or you know what? I heard this idiot divorce lawyer talking on Mel's show the other day, and you know what? He said something about how people don't talk about why they do what they do. And I though, I really want to do a good job of being married to you. I really do. I know you do a really good job sometimes being married to me, and I just though it'd be really good for us to have a conversation about that sometime.

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I don't know a lot of people that would go, "I'm not doing that. I got something else to do." Okay. By the way, if your partner would say that, I'd like to know that. I'd like to know. It's worth knowing if your partner says, "Yeah, I can't spare 10 minutes for this marriage. I'm sorry. I got the games on." Okay. If that's how you feel -

Mel Robbins (00:22:09):

Divorce is necessary.

James Sexton (00:22:10):

Divorce may be necessary at that point. Yeah. So the conversation is the cheapest now it's ever going to be. So have it now. Have it while it's raindrops. Don't wait till the flood.

Mel Robbins (00:22:19):

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

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And that in and of itself is more evidence about where things are. I'm going to come right out and say it. I am thrilled that JetBlue is a new sponsor of the Mel Robbins podcast. You want to know why? I love JetBlue. JetBlue is my all-time favorite airline. The thing I love most about JetBlue is this experience that they have called Mint. Holy cow. You walk onto the plane, it's in the front section of the plane. If you're going to go on a long haul flight coast to coast or overseas, flying mint by JetBlue, for me, it's like a vacation. I feel as if I'm checking into an eight-star hotel. You have these amazing Y flat seats and fast free wifi. They partner with some of the world's best chefs and restaurants, so you get this three course meal. You cannot believe you're eating on an airplane.

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You can't believe how delicious it is. So consider mint, a little pre-vacation vacation where you rest, dine, relax, then you step off the plane and you're going to be like, "Why am I even on vacation? I just flew mint." Visit jetblue.com to learn more and book your next trip.

James Sexton (00:23:44):

Yeah.

Mel Robbins (00:23:45):

And what do people ignore when they're contemplating divorce?

James Sexton (00:23:50):

So when you're contemplating divorce, there's a list in your head of the problems in the marriage. What I would say is take some steps when the list is at three or four. Don't wait till it's at like 32. That's what a lot of people do. A lot of people wait until this thing is bleeding out before they go past the contemplative stage. Contemplative stage is where you're really taking a fearless inventory of what's really going on in this marriage. What are the problems that we're having? What impact is it having on me? What impact is it having on this person? What impact is it having on our children? Let's be really honest with ourselves about what's going on here. I think having that conversation with yourself is important because sometimes there's an element of grief happening that people don't look at. So things change in marriages all the time.

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We talked about this last time, how I said one of the two biggest mistakes people make is thinking, "Oh, nothing's ever going to change. Things are so great. We're getting married and everything wi stay the same now because marriage is going to be the moat we dig around this relationship that protects it from the world and the slings and hours of outrageous fortune." And then the other mistake they make is saying, "Oh no, this person will change. They drink too much now, but now that we get married, they're going to get their shit together." Or, "Oh no, this person's really inattentive, but once we're married, they're really going to pay attention to me." Or they have a wandering eye, but once we get married, they won't have a wandering eye anymore. So these are two mistakes that seem like opposites, but they're both legitimate mistakes.

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Now, the truth is, I do think sometimes change happens, right? In the 30 years of you and your husband being together, think of how many

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Losses, how many victories, how many little deaths and how many huge changes, physical changes in both of you, your children, everything, your environment, where you live, economics, so many things. And by the way, some completely forces beyond your control, pandemics, economic crisis, all kinds of things happening, right? Okay. So if you're in the contemplative stage now, I just want you to pause for a second and think about the last 18 months. What's happened in the last 18 months that you're feeling this way that could be impacting? Because here's the thing, when someone is grieving something, the loss of a parent, a child going off to college, loss of a pet, a change in their employment situation, sometimes it resurfaces 18 months later in a different costume.

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You just start blaming, because who's around you all the time but your spouse? And your spouse is a whole lot easier to get annoyed at than fate or God. Who am I mad at? Your dog dies. Who are you mad at? God? It's hard to be mad at God. You know everyone you can yell at really, right? But your spouse not being supportive of you, not helping you through this process, just not being there for you, not creating an environment where you can feel like you can cry if you need to or making you feel self-conscious or feeling like you have to carry the emotional load of their life and you have to keep their chin up because they're not going to be able to. Okay. Again, look at what's going on and say, okay, wait, how much is the marriage and how much is.

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Because man, the answer might be, yeah, marriage. But look at that 18 month lead up period and pay some attention to what's gone on in your life that might have impacted what's happening.

Mel Robbins (00:27:27):

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

James Sexton (00:27:33):

Well, I'll tell you first who you shouldn't confide in. Not social media. Run screaming from social media. Don't lean on the group chat. Do not lean on your kids at any age. I don't care if your kids are eight or 15 or 40. Don't lean on your kids when you're in that stage. Don't say to them, "Do you think I should get divorced?" These are not the people you should be talking to. So I would say one, a therapist individually. Get a mental health professional, hire a therapist. Again, one that genuinely challenges you. Anytime I meet somebody and they're like, "Oh my God, I love being in therapy," you're doing it wrong. If you love it 100% of the time, you're doing it wrong. I'm not saying you shouldn't every once in a while have one of those sessions where you go like, "Yeah, I've made some progress.

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This is good. We're doing a good job." But a lot of the time it should make you kind of uncomfortable because the only question worth asking when you go into therapy is what is it I'm afraid to feel? What is it I don't want to feel? And why am I so afraid of it? And what would happen if I felt it? And what is it I don't want to look at and why? Why don't I want to look at it? Why is it still there? Why is it still carrying around? Why has it become a backpack that's holding me down? So the first thing in this situation, in the contemplative stage, get a therapist. Get a therapist who's going to get to know you and get to give you a very honest perspective on things. And then I think you need one friend, like one, but it's a person with no skin in the game and who's proven that they can keep their mouth shut.

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You want that one friend and then a lawyer. Go see a lawyer. You don't have to. When you go see a lawyer, you don't have to hire a lawyer. I can tell you how many people come in and they meet with me and they go, "Okay, I'm ready to hire you." And I'm like, "Okay, I'm not retiring anytime soon." Come in for information. Learn about your rights and obligations potentially. Learn about how the law. Because most people, by the way, again, you buy a house, you get a HUD-1, lead paint disclosure, all these things. You married, you need to get a pamphlet. Most legally significant thing you're ever going to do in your whole life other than die, and you don't even get a one sheet. You got nothing. The first time people learn what happened legally when they got married is in my office when the whole thing's falling apart.

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Why not go to a divorce lawyer Sooner rather than later, attorney-client privilege attaches. No one can know that you saw me. If I see you on the street, I'll pretend I never met you." Go talk to a lawyer and just say, "Hey, listen, things are kind of. I just want to know what would this look like? What might the issues be?" And then you can give me the ingredients. Tell me, "Here's what's going on. This is what we have. These are the accounts. This is ourday-to-day routine. This is who takes care of what with the kids." And I can say, "Okay, here's the different paths you might take. Here's the different..." Good lawyers, experienced lawyers, "I want you out of my office. I do not want to make money on you. I want to send you to a therapist. I want to send you to a mediator.

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I want to send you to a process that is going to not be me because I'm a weapon. I'm a weapon." They're going to do it with a scalpel. I'm going to do it with a chainsaw. Don't do it with a chainsaw. There is nothing you can do with a scalpel that you should do with a chainsaw. That's insane. So a good lawyer is going to explain to you upside, downside, all the different paths. So again, what is all this we have? We have the psychological ingredients with our therapist. We have someone we can confide in the form of that one friend who's a vault for us, who's going to be able to listen and they've proven to us that they're trustworthy. We have a lawyer who's going to tell us what's going on. And then the fourth most important person to talk to, your spouse potentially, like your spouse.

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And that's the scariest conversation, but it's actually sometimes the cheapest way to do things. Sometimes people don't realize, okay, we had the pre-contemplative conversation. What's going on in the marriage? How are things? Maybe now is the time where we start to have the, hey, listen, I'm really feeling like something's going to have to change. Maybe we don't have to say the word divorce yet, but we can start saying, I feel like this is either the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning and we still have a chance. So what can we do, if anything? Because what outcome do you want? That's counsel. The friend, the lawyer, the therapist who says, when you say, I'm thinking about getting divorced, and they go, okay, what do you hope to get from that? What's the outcome you want? That's counsel. Take him for everything he's got, that's entertainment.

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That's entertainment. That's someone just using your life as their entertainment or to work their stuff out.

James Sexton (00:32:36):

That's insane. But people will come into my office, they'll do the consultation, they'll retain me, we'll file the papers, their spouse hires counsel, and then they'll come in and they'll say, "Yeah, so we're going to sit down the kids tomorrow night and we're going to talk to them." And I go, "Why?" "Well, we just want to let them know. "I'm like," Okay, so I'm your 10-year-old. Where are you going to be living? Where is mom going to be living? Where's the dog going to live? When am I going to see you? What days will I this? Are we still going to go to Cape Cod in the summers? Are we going to do the. Guess what? You don't know the answer to any of those questions yet. Not one. So if your job as a parent, one of your jobs is to help your children feel like there's some sense of control in the terrifying world, the worst thing you can do is say to them, "Mom and dad are splitting up.

(00:33:26):

Kind of don't have more information than that for you at this point, but we'll get back to you in the next couple of months." It's a cruel thing to do. So realistically, can you start shaping your family dynamic in a way that might transition more easily to divorce? Sure. Start spending some more time with your kids separately as opposed to together, maybe going away for the weekend with the kids for vacation separately. So it's not as far and you can say, "Well, remember when we went and it'll be like that from now." Or, "Oh, remember when, or dad was away for work for that week? Remember that was, well, dad was..." And he comes back, you always see him.

Mel Robbins (00:34:00):

How do you tell your spouse?

James Sexton (00:34:02):

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

(00:34:49):

It's cruel. It's cruel to do it in a restaurant. So don't do it in a public setting like that. Again, don't do it when anyone's been drinking, using cannabis, anything like that, any altered state of mind. Don't do it at night. I don't think that's the best time to do those kinds of things. Don't do it on the holiday. Say it in the first 10 seconds. No preamble. That's it. Don't have a preamble. Say it once and clean and then stop talking. I have given this a lot of thought and our marriage needs to end. Okay? That's hard. Those are hard sentences to say, but they're clear. They're not a question. I think maybe we need to. I understand you're trying to be compassionate. There's nothing compassionate about giving someone false hope. If you've decided the marriage is over, the marriage is over. So say it in the first 10 seconds, no preamble, then stop talking because reasons invite rebuttal.

(00:35:43):

So don't give a bunch of reasons because if you say, "Well, listen, we don't talk like..." Well, we don't talk like we used to because you're never home and you're working all the time. Now we're having a debate, a debate about the demise of our marriage. We should have had that already. We could have had that in the first two phases. If we've decided now, if you've decided now this is over, it's over. By the way, own your share first.

Mel Robbins (00:36:03):

What does that mean?

James Sexton (00:36:04):

It's like the movie Eight Mile with Eminem, that scene at the end where the final rap battle and he gets up and he's like, "Yeah, I am a bum. I do live in a trailer with my mom." He says all the bad things about himself and he goes, "Here, tell these people something they don't know about me." I love that. I do it in the courtroom all the time. Same thing in this, own your part first. Listen, I'm not a good husband to you. I'm not doing a good job of it. I don't feel I can be. It's pretty clear to me. It's become increasingly clear to me that I'm just not who you need to be married to and I'm not capable of making you happy in a way that you deserve to be happy. Own your piece of it first. Apologize for your piece of it first.

(00:36:40):

I know I never meant to hurt you. I'm certain of that, but I also know that I have hurt you and for that I am profoundly sorry, but I'm not going to double down on that pain by continuing to hurt you. Clear, concise, precise, honest, even if it's a little painful. And then I think have a 48-hour plan. I know that sounds kind of cruel and tactical, but know where you're going to stay. Maybe if this person needs space, give them some space. Know where the kids are going to be, make sure they're out of the blast radius. Try to give though to the fact that you're about to have a big moment. And I think it's smart to plan about that. It's page one of what your children's memory of this is going to be. So I think it's really important if you have kids, and even if you don't, how things end sometimes can shape how we remember them in their totality.

(00:37:32):

I don't think that's always fair, but I think it's true. So I think clear, clean, precise, but don't invite reasons. Don't invite rebuttal. You can't unring this bell, but this is not a request. This is not a negotiation. I'm telling you a decision. That's it.

Mel Robbins (00:37:53):

What are some of the things to think about? Because you live together, you have kids maybe. Maybe they're at school. You're doing this in the morning. I love that you're telling us do not ask for one. I love the 13 words you used. I have given this a lot of though. Our marriage needs to end. And then stop talking.

James Sexton (00:38:10):

Stop talking.

Mel Robbins (00:38:11):

And then your counsel is own your part of it. I can't be the person that you deserve. I am going to make this worse if I double down. I apologize. I never meant to hurt you. How often do you think people don't know this is coming or they get quote blindsided or if they're blindsided, are you like you've been asleep in your marriage and that's -

James Sexton (00:38:31):

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

Mel Robbins (00:38:46):

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

James Sexton (00:38:53):

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

(00:39:45):

I looked at her and I said, "Can I ask you something?" She said, "Yeah." I said, "Are you happy?" She just looked at me and she went, "Do you really want to do this now?" I said, "I don't know. I think it's as bad a time as any." She said, "Not really." I said, "I'm not either." She said, "Well, what the hell do we do?" I said, "I have no idea." I said, "I know I love you." She said, "Yeah, I know I love you too." I said, "But I don't think this is working." She's like, "I think if sheer power of will could make two people love each other, we would love each other forever, but yeah, I don't think this is working." It was the start of a very difficult chapter and moment, a lot of tears, moments of anger, moments of regret, but it was also the start of something that needed to end.

(00:40:39):

It started, that end started with a question, "Are you happy?" I think I knew I was asking that question because I knew the answer. She knew I was asking that question because she knew I knew the answer. The answer if she'd asked me was, "Yeah, I'm not happy either." She said to me, she's like, "I'm Irish. I'll stay miserable forever." But the truth is I was going to be the one to ask it because she wasn't going to be the one to ask it. I would say that I think blindness to it is sometimes a very convenient lie that we tell ourselves that there's nothing to look at. But anytime somebody says to me, "Don't look in that drawer," that's the only drawer I want to look in because that's the drawer there's something interesting in.

Mel Robbins (00:41:19):

Hey, it's Mel. I have a crazy amazing invitation. I want you to come to Vegas with me and Oprah Winfrey.

Oprah Winfrey (00:41:24):

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Mel Robbins (00:41:49):

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James Sexton (00:42:32):

So staying in a marriage for the children isn't something people are actually doing a lot of the time, because your children are in the marriage with you. And the question is not, are their parents divorced? They're not going to remember whether you stayed or not. They're going to remember what your marriage looked like. They're watching everything you're doing. My dad sat there when I was a kid telling me, "You definitely shouldn't smoke. It's bad for you," while smoking a cigarette. And you will be surprised to learn in high school I started smoking cigarettes because I could hear him. What he did spoke so loudly, I didn't have to listen to what he was saying. I think that's what you're doing. You're modeling for your children what marriage should look like. Would you want your children to have your marriage? That's a very hard question and a really important one for the pre-contemplative and contemplative stage.

(00:43:21):

If my daughter's marriage looked like this, would I be happy on her wedding day? If I could look at a crystal ball and see this is what my son's marriage was going to look like 10 years in, would I want him to get married or would I say, "Hey, maybe you should rethink this." Okay, you do that for your kids because you love them. Well, love yourself. Love yourself enough to look at it and to say, "Is this what I want to model for my children? Is this how my husband is treating me? Is this how I want my daughter to believe a man should treat a woman? How my wife speaks to me? Is that how my son should think his wife should speak to him or how she should relate to him? Is this the love we want our children to see?" Because the truth is what am I modeling and can I change it in this marriage?

(00:44:13):

Is it possible to change it? You're not protecting your children by not getting divorced. What you're choosing is what lesson they're going to learn. So can they learn the lesson that two people can end a marriage and still have affection for each other and still love their children and co-parent in a productive way? That's a valuable lesson to teach someone that things end and that sometimes when they end, it's okay because things are supposed to end and make room for new things because every new beginning came from some other beginning's end. Isn't that a lesson worth teaching children? So high conflict family dynamics, whether they end in people staying together and gutting it out for the kids or whether it's a conflict filled post-divorce life where people have a contentious co-parenting relationship, yeah, it's bad for kids. It's bad for kids to have loyalty bonds and parents who hate each other and who weaponize their affection for the children against each other.

(00:45:13):

Yes, it's terrible for children. That doesn't have a lot to do with divorce. That has to do with how you approach divorce. That has to do with how you approach your co-parenting relationship, but staying together "for the kids" is very often, "Yeah, I just don't want to do this. I don't want to go through the pain of this." There's never a good time to do a really difficult thing. But the question becomes, do you want to wait until your children are teenagers, until your children are already dealing with their own challenges there, or do you want to do it earlier on in the process when again, we don't know who discovered water, but it wasn't a fish. Talk to somebody whose parents got divorced when they were three. They're like, "Yeah, my mom lived here, my dad lived there. I don't really remember my parents being married to each other." So I think that divorce is never free for children ever, but the question of what relationship you're modeling for your children, I think is the key question.

(00:46:06):

More important than is divorce good or bad for kids?

Mel Robbins (00:46:10):

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

James Sexton (00:46:50):

Yeah. It should be, first of all, where are the kids and where are they going to be? Are they at grandma and grandpa's? Are they someplace that they're out of the blast radius? That's ideal because no one's going to be feeling great after this conversation and it's good that the kids are out of the way of it. Two, you don't necessarily want to go back to the same location with this person. You are the least qualified person to help someone navigate you breaking up with them, ending that relationship. You're not going to be able to do that, so don't try. And putting yourself in physical proximity to that person is inviting more conversation. So again, don't kick them out of the house, stay someplace else. Maybe they don't want to be in the house because it's going to make them think about you and the situation.

(00:47:24):

No problem. I'll stay in the house, take care of the dogs. You can go to a hotel. Create options for a person.