The Wisdom Wall

“I've always said in relationship, like, if you're gonna rob me of solitude, you owe me companionship. If I'm gonna trade having sex with lots of women For having sex with you regularly. Then that's the deal. Like that's the economy that we've agreed to.”

“marriage is a symbol. That's all it is. It's a symbol. We've decided we're gonna create this legal connection or spiritual connection that's gonna symbolize this way of keeping the relationship safe. It's an illusion. It's not real.”

“The thing that's interesting to me, and I've, I've, I've talked about before, and I talk about my book, is the question when people are confronted about adultery. Because the man's first question is, did you have sex with him? And the woman's first question is, do you love her?”

“praising the behavior that you're trying to facilitate is the way to do it. And, and, and in marriage, that's incredibly easy. It's incredibly easy because you have all these levers. You have affection, sex, romance, You know, you, you have all of these things that you can weaponize in a good way to modify the behavior…”

“But really, like, love is loaned. Like, your husband's love is loaned to you, and your love is loaned to him. It's not permanently gifted. And your marriage will end. Every marriage ends. It ends in death or divorce.”

“infidelity is a symptom. Of the problem. The problem is almost always the same. Disconnection. Disconnection from self, and then disconnection from the other person. Because the two biggest problems are, we don't know what we want, and we don't know how to express it to another person.”

“It's a terrible line that everybody says at the wedding, like the uncle who says it at the wedding, I should pay him a dividend. He's like, hey, he made a lot of money for me. But it really is. I mean, if anything, it should be happy spouse, happy house. But, but even that, if your meaning is, yeah, just like do what…”

“if we were going to invent an infidelity generating machine, it would be called Instagram.”

“And sex, I think, is the glue. In marriages. Otherwise just be roommates.”

“If, if like 90% of your sexual outlet is women on a screen you will never meet and not your primary sexual partner, you're, you're gonna have issues with that.”

“Like people lie to their therapists all the time. They don't lie to their divorce lawyer. Like there's absolutely no profit in lying to your divorce lawyer.”

“if you actually want to change the divorce rate, we have to create barriers to entry.”

“The nanny, in some ways, represents a lot of the aspects of the wife before you guys had kids. She has a life outside the home. She, you know, has interests outside the home. She is still something of a mystery to you, and you're a mystery to her.”

“I've always said like, to me, the, the sound of a, of a marriage that's about to end is, is like, it's, it's a very simple, subtle sound. It's this, it's what? Huh? Yeah, whatever. Like, it's, it's a tone of voice more than a content. And the tone of voice says everything. It's like, the what? Like, why, why are you…”

“Why wouldn't we, as an exercise, together, if we're in a relationship, why wouldn't we, once a week, tell me three things I did this week that made you feel loved. Tell me three things I did this week that I, I could have done better. Tell me three things I did this week that turned you on.”

“Well, they happen, I think they happen like bankruptcies happen, very slowly and then all at once. Like, I think it's very gradual, like falling feels like flying for a little while, you know, and then you hit the ground.”

“I think it's an impetus for the disconnection that is the impetus for divorce.”

“I tend to think that I look at the infidelity, the financial impropriety, the dishonesty, all as the, the symptoms of the underlying illness, and the illness is the disconnection.”

“Good cross-examination at the highest level is getting a person to commit to a set of Principles that they think supports their argument and then snapping their neck with that.”

“That's a lot of what you're doing when you hire experienced counselors. You're hiring someone who kind of knows the proclivities of the judge.”

“So I think a lot of, a lot of what I would say are the red flags that a relationship is not likely to continue successfully are an absence of things rather than a presence, right? So like one of the things that's present in almost all the happy couples I know is this sense of like cheering for each other.”

“people's relationships fall apart the way people go bankrupt. Very slowly, and then all at once. And that's, and how companies fail. Very slowly, and then all at once. And relationships, the same thing. It's like very slowly, and then you just go right off the cliff.”

“I cannot, there's only a certain number of hours in the day I can bill. And there's only so many, like, I'd have a bunch of lawyers working for me, but they're not me. So people eventually would go, um, where's Jim? I hired him. Like, if I'm going, oh, no, no, I'm not your lawyer. I know you hired me, but here's Bob.…”

“Everybody has a prenup. It's either one that the government wrote, or it's one that you and the person that you've decided you like, other than the eight billion other options.”

“The skill set for an ex-husband, the resume for an ex-husband, totally different than for a husband.”