YouTube 上名为 “A Divorce Attorney’s Thoughts on Love and Marriage – James Sexton” 的视频非常火爆。我让 ChatGPT 为其文字内容添加了标点符号并进行了分段，整理并简单修饰后的文本如下：
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I had a period of time after my divorce when I was really ambitious about pursuing women. But then it started to feel like a job—like it literally felt like a job after a while. I was like, “God, it’s enough. It’s kind of enough.” You know, it’s like when you’ve eaten so much that you just feel, “Ugh.” I got that way with “pussy.” It was like I’d had enough. It was fine; I was thinking, “This is great.” But when you’re in your 20s or 30s, maybe your libido is a strong meal—it’s actually insane.
在我离婚后的那段时间，我对追求女人表现得极为积极，几乎到了雄心勃勃的地步。可后来，我慢慢觉得那种状态就像是一份工作——真的像是机械式地日复一日。我心想：“天啊，够了，真的够了。”你知道吗，就好比你已经吃得过饱，整个人都“唔”得难受起来。我对“pussy”也变得这样，觉得自己已经玩够了。话虽如此，当时我也会想：“还不错嘛。”可是在你二三十岁的时候，性欲仿佛是一顿超大份的正餐，实在是夸张得离谱。
Yeah, yeah, I definitely was that way. As we age, we mellow, which I think is great. Although, I have to tell you, one of the most depressing divorces I ever did was a guy who was, I think, 92 years old. Oh geez. What made it so depressing is that he left his wife of—who knows—50-something, 60-something years for a younger woman, a woman in her 50s.
是啊，我那会儿确实这样。可随着年龄增长，人自然会沉淀下来，我觉得这其实挺好。然而，我必须告诉你，我经手过的最让人沮丧的离婚案之一，是一位我记得大约92岁的老人。天啊，他之所以让我感到无比难过，是因为他竟然离开了与他共同生活了五六十年的老伴，去找了个五十多岁的“年轻”女人。
I just remember what was sad about it to me: this guy was still being led around by his dick. I thought, “Oh my God. I’m going to be chained to an idiot forever. I’m going to forever be led around by my dick.” I remember thinking, “No, I really thought that at 90-something I would just—like a beautiful woman would walk by and I’d go, ‘Oh, there’s a human being,’” like there would be no reaction whatsoever. Yeah, there would be no sense of “yeah.” You know, that drive would be gone. But this guy is proof that at 90-something years old, you’re still thinking with your dick. We’re doomed. That terrified me. It really did. It actually upset me, because I thought, “Man, I figured at some point I’d get to experience what it’s like to just be free.”
让我觉得悲哀的是：这位老人到了这样年纪，依旧被他的“dick”牵着走。我当时想：“我的天啊，难道我会被一个傻瓜一样的本能捆住一辈子吗？会永远被下半身支配吗？”我记得那时我还想：“不，我真的以为自己到了九十多岁，看见漂亮女人走过就只会想‘哦，那是个人’，完全不会再有任何冲动。”对，我原以为那种“嗯，不错啊”的感觉会离我而去。但这个老人证明，哪怕你到了九十多岁，依旧可能被性欲左右。我们真是没救了！这念头吓到我了，真的让我非常难受。因为我一直觉得，总有一天我能真正自由，能不再被欲望束缚，可事实好像并不是这样。
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You live in New York, where there’s a major financial industry—actually, all kinds of industries thrive here. But sometimes, I wonder if female attractiveness isn’t the highest-valued commodity.
你住在纽约，那里的金融业非常发达，各种行业都蓬勃发展。不过，我有时会想，女性的吸引力会不会才是最被高度估值的“商品”。
100% it is. Absolutely. Because men become rich and powerful specifically to attract the women they desire. Of course, the woman they want—that’s the goal.
百分之百是这样的，毫无疑问。因为很多男人之所以努力变得富有和强大，就是为了得到他们想要的女人。当然，是他们心仪的女人。
What an attractive woman—and I don’t just mean physically attractive, but even sexually confident—can gain is unbelievably lucrative. I’ve handled divorce cases where the woman walked away with 200 or 300 million dollars. For instance, the husband was an analyst at Goldman Sachs who built a hedge fund, sold it, then used his trading algorithm to grow his fortune to 500 million. She was hot, slept with him for a while, then stopped and began sleeping with other people, playing tennis, and getting Botox. She’s going to get half. That’s fucking incredible.
一名外表吸引人、甚至只是表现出性自信的女性，竟能获得如此惊人的回报，简直让人难以想象。我就办过一些离婚案，女性可以分到两三亿美元之多。比方说，丈夫曾是高盛的分析师，后来建立了对冲基金并把它卖掉，然后又用自己的交易算法把资产做到五亿美元。她很漂亮，一开始和他上床一阵子，后来就不再和他一起，转而四处玩乐、打网球、做美容注射。可她依然能得到一半的财产，这不是很夸张吗？
Think about what he had to do to earn that wealth, versus what she did—basically, “I’ll sleep with this guy for 200 million dollars; are you kidding me?” It’s insane. It’s incredible. God bless them both; these are the rules of the game. But you can’t argue that it’s not easier than going to Harvard.
想想他为了攒下这些钱付出了多少努力，再看看她所做的——“我只要跟这个男人睡在一起就能拿到两亿美元？你开玩笑吗？” 这听起来简直疯狂，但确实不可思议。上帝保佑，这就是游戏规则。可要说这跟上哈佛相比，哪种更容易，你也很难反驳吧。
No, for sure. But then the payoff—or the trade-off—is that once they reach a certain age, the value tends to decrease. Any stock, if you hold it too long, is going to go down. So you have to play the stock the right way.
没错，不过这种回报或者说“交易”也有代价：等到年纪大了以后，这种“价值”难免开始缩水。就像任何一只股票，时间拖得太久就会跌。所以要知道如何正确地玩这场“股票游戏”。
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And that’s what I think: if we were a little more honest about the nature of male-female coupling… I mean, right now, we can’t even establish what “gender” is; we can’t establish any of that anymore. So divorce is becoming incredibly hilarious and fraught. But to me, sometimes you have to stand back and look at things to get a real perspective on what they truly are.
我认为，如果我们能更坦诚地看待男女结合的本质……现在我们连“性别”是什么都说不清了，这方面已经乱成一团。结果，离婚也变得既滑稽又复杂。但对我来说，有时你需要退后一步，用更宏观的角度去看看事情的真相。
Sometimes, you look back at marriage—when was it invented? Around 2000 BC, roughly. And the life expectancy of humans back then was 18 years old. Marriage was created for land ownership and similar reasons. If you were going to die in your early 20s, or whenever, then getting married at 16 or 18 made sense. Well, I think there’s a distinction between “pair bonds” and “marriage.” Marriage is a government concept; marriage is a contract; marriage is a legal status. Pair bonds, however, involve two people saying, “Hey, there are 7.3 billion people in the world, and the two of us are going to lock in together. We’re gonna try to hold hands and get through this thing until we’re 80,” or until whenever.
有时你回头看婚姻：它大约是在公元前两千年左右发明的，当时人类的平均寿命只有18岁。婚姻最初是为了土地所有权等目的而设立的。如果你二十来岁就会死，那么16岁或18岁结婚当然说得通。不过我认为，“配对关系”（pair bonds）和“婚姻”是两回事。婚姻是一个政府概念，是一份契约，是一种法律身份。而“配对关系”则是指两个人说：“嘿，这世上有73亿人，咱俩要携手共进，一直努力撑到80岁。”或者说，撑到什么时候看命运吧。
What’s interesting is that marriages always end—either in death or divorce—but they all end. Every marriage ends. So it’s one of the only things where you go, “Wow, I really hope this ends in us dying.” Most things, that’s not the desired outcome. But in marriage, you hope the marriage will end in death. You hope you’ll be together until one or both of you die. Yet every marriage ends eventually.
有趣的是，所有婚姻最终都结束，不是以死亡收场，就是以离婚收场——但总之都会结束。每段婚姻都会结束。它也是少数让你会说“我真的希望我们是以死亡方式结束”的事情。大多数事物都不会这么想，但在婚姻里，你希望它最后是“白头偕老”，希望彼此相伴到其中一方或双方去世。然而终究，任何婚姻都会走向终点。
As a guy, as a provider, if you knew it was going to end and you’d have to give away half your money, you might think twice about doing it. I think that’s what makes being a divorce lawyer interesting. A lot of what a court has to do is disregard what happened in the marriage, because the truth sits at the bottom of a bottomless pit—you’re never going to get there. “Well, he was sleeping with his secretary.” Right, but you weren’t sleeping with him anymore. I have a client whose wife acknowledges she didn’t sleep with him for six years. What did she expect him to do if they hadn’t slept together for six years?
站在男性、尤其是经济支持者的立场，如果你事先知道婚姻有朝一日会结束，而自己得把财产分出一半，你大概会三思而行。这也正是做离婚律师有意思的地方——法庭常常必须无视婚姻中具体发生的事，因为事实就像一个无底洞，永远挖不完。“好吧，他和秘书上床。”可问题是，你已经多年没跟他发生关系了呀？我有个当事人的妻子承认自己六年没和他同房，那她还指望他能怎样呢？
So, okay, you don’t want to have sex—that’s fine. No one should force you to. Let him go have sex with someone else. You don’t want to do the laundry? Hire someone. You don’t want to mow your own lawn? Hire someone. Delegate that responsibility. And this guy wasn’t even “sleeping around.” He was going to those handjob places, where you get a massage and then… well, it’s the most pathetic, most innocuous thing in the world. He didn’t have a girlfriend; there was no love involved. He was paying fifty dollars to get jacked off. That’s sad.
所以，如果你不想发生性关系，那没问题，谁也不该强迫你。但你得允许他去找别人；你不想洗衣服吗，就请个人来洗；你不想自己修剪草坪，就雇人做。把这些职责交出去就好。而且，这个男人其实也没有到处乱搞，他只是去了那些“打手枪”按摩店——就是那种几乎最无趣、最无关紧要的地方。他没有女朋友，也没有感情投入，只是花五十美元让别人给他“解决”一下。听上去确实挺可悲的。
First of all, handjobs are an outdated technology—like a Betamax. Who does that anymore? Anyway, he figured that was fine. His wife had the nerve to say he shouldn’t be a custodial parent because of that, that he was a terrible person. I was like, “Wait, how is that so different from going to a strip club? How is it worse?” He asked if he should deny it. I said, “Is it true?” and he said, “Yes.” I told him, “No, let’s own it. Let’s go in and say, ‘Yeah, it’s pathetic. It really is. My wife hasn’t slept with me for six years, and I’m human—I still want sex. I didn’t want to blow up my life. I didn’t want to hurt my kids and cause divorce, so I thought, fine, she’s clearly not interested in me. I’m not going to get a girlfriend and create more problems or heartbreak. I’ll keep it transactional, like going to a strip club or something else. And yeah, I make a million dollars a year in finance, and I’m paying someone fifty bucks for a handjob. That’s kind of pathetic. But you know what? I found a workaround. To say that makes me a bad parent? That’s got nothing to do with my parenting.’” Thankfully, the judge agreed.
首先，打手枪本身就像录像带那样过时的“技术”，现在还有谁这么干？可他这样做，只是想着“行吧，这也行”。他妻子却说，这种人不配获得抚养权，简直是个坏人。我就想：“这和去脱衣舞俱乐部有什么本质区别？怎么就更过分了？”
他问我要不要否认这事，我就说：“这事是真的么？”他说：“是啊。”“那我们就承认好了。我们就告诉法官：‘对，我承认这很可悲，我妻子六年不跟我同房，我又是个活生生的人，不想毁掉家庭，也不想伤害孩子，所以我觉得既然她对我没兴趣，我也不想搞外遇来惹出更多麻烦，于是就去找这种纯粹交易式的地方。对，我一年赚一百万，却用五十美元解决问题，确实挺悲哀。但说我因此就是个坏父亲？这跟我照顾孩子完全没关系。’”
幸好法官也同意这个观点。
I really do think that, if you break it down, 56% of marriages end in divorce. But consider: that’s just the portion that ends in divorce. How many stay together “for the kids” or because they don’t want to give away half their stuff? Another 10%, maybe 20%? That means we have a “technology” that fails 76% of the time. That’s insane. That’s more likely than not. If I told you there was a 76% chance that when you walked out your door today, you’d get hit in the head with a bowling ball, you’d either not go out or you’d wear a helmet. But people just keep getting married. Not only do they keep doing it, there’s a presumption you should do it. And if you don’t, something must be wrong with you.
我觉得，如果深入分析，56%的婚姻会离婚。但那只是离婚的比例，还不算那些为了孩子或不想分财产而勉强维持的婚姻，或许再加10%或20%。这样一来，我们就得到一个“失败率”高达76%的制度，这也太荒唐了。可能性超过半的话，相当于我告诉你，“你今天一出门就有76%的可能被保龄球砸中脑袋。”你肯定要么不出门，要么戴个头盔。可人们还在源源不断地走进婚姻。更夸张的是，大众普遍认为你就该结婚；如果你不想结婚，似乎就是你有问题。
So if you have a girlfriend you’ve been with for five years, and you tell people you’re getting married, they go, “Oh, that’s great!” They don’t say, “Why? You’re already happy—why ruin a good thing? Why run that risk?” If you say, “We’ve been together five years but decided not to get married. We’ll move in together, but we’re not marrying,” they say, “Ooh, what’s wrong? Do you have intimacy issues?”
所以，如果你有个交往五年的女朋友，你说：“我们要结婚了。” 别人就会说：“哇，太好了！” 他们不会问：“为什么？你们都已经很幸福了，干嘛画蛇添足？为什么冒那个风险？”可如果你说：“我们在一起五年，但决定不结婚，只是同居，”那别人往往就会露出疑惑：“怎么了？有亲密关系障碍吗？”
Meanwhile, 56% of marriages end in divorce, which literally meets the legal definition of negligence. Negligence is when the burden of not doing something is less than the probability of something bad happening times the loss if it does. It’s called a BPL analysis. In that sense, marriage is an inherently negligent activity—like keeping a lion as a pet. The likelihood of someone getting hurt is very high. No one tells you this, probably because it’s not what people want to hear.
与此同时，56%的婚姻都走向离婚。这个数据在法律上都能算“过失行为”（negligence）了。过失的定义是：如果你不做某件事的成本，小于它的潜在风险和可能带来的损失之和，那么你就构成了过失。所以从这个逻辑来说，婚姻本身就带着“过失”的性质，类似家里养只狮子——出事的概率非常高。没人告诉你这些，大概也是因为多数人并不想听这种话。
And let me say, I’ve been doing this for over 20 years, and I still get misty-eyed at weddings. Something in me goes, “Maybe this time it’ll work out for them.” I absolutely believe in love; I think love is wonderful. But love and marriage have very little to do with each other, at least as we practice them. I don’t think they correlate that strongly. I think that’s where we went astray. I believe in pair bonds. I don’t think I can learn everything I need about myself by myself. Having someone around who sees my blind spots is incredibly valuable. And that doesn’t have to be a romantic partner—it could be a friend, or any number of relationships.
而我从事这行20多年，仍然会在婚礼上感动落泪，心里想：“也许这一次他们真的能幸福到底。” 我完全相信爱情，我觉得爱情很美好。但爱情跟婚姻，至少在我们的实际操作中，关系其实并不那么大。我认为二者的关联不强。或许这才是我们走偏的地方。我相信配对关系，也知道自己无法只靠自己就学完所有该学的东西。有一个能看到你盲区的人，无论在不在浪漫关系里，都非常有益——那也可以是朋友或其他任何形式的人际关系。
There is something wonderful about a romantic connection—we know that. Here’s another statistic: 56% of marriages end in divorce, yet 84% of people who get divorced end up remarrying within five years. Really? Let’s think about that. You’ve gone through marriage, it failed, you felt the pain of loss, and then—within five years—84% of those same people are remarried.
浪漫的联结本身确实很美好，我们都明白这一点。再举个数据：有 56% 的婚姻以离婚告终，但同时有 84% 的离婚者会在离婚后的五年内再婚。真的吗？我们来想想看：经历了一次婚姻的失败，感受了失去的痛苦，结果不到五年，84% 的人又走进了新的婚姻。
When you fall in love and you’re with a partner who loves you back, it’s hard to put the brakes on and say, “You know what, that’s as far as I’m gonna go.”
当你爱上一个人，而对方也同样爱你时，要主动刹车、对自己说“好了，到此为止”是非常困难的。
Well, there’s that saying: whoever discovered water, it certainly wasn’t a fish. I think when we’re immersed in something, we often don’t see it clearly. I mean, it’s true—there must be some endorphins or other chemicals being released in our brains that cloud our judgment.
正如有人说的：“发现水的生物肯定不是鱼。” 当我们身处某件事情之中时，往往看不清它的真貌。我想，其中一定有内啡肽或某些化学物质在大脑里产生作用，让我们分不清状况。
Listen, do you want to test that theory? The next time you’re out with a couple who’ve been together for a while and they seem like they might have gotten into an argument—or they’re just sitting there, being impatient with each other—during a group outing, try saying to them, “So tell me about how you met. Tell me the story of how you met.” You’ll see everything about them change. They go back to that moment, and you’ll hear something like, “Oh yeah, she was this…” Because for that split second, they’re transported right back to the beginning.
你想验证这个理论吗？下次当你和一对在一起很久的伴侣一起外出，发现他们似乎刚吵过架，或者在餐桌上彼此有点不耐烦时，你可以这么做：对他们说，“你们当初是怎么认识的？跟我说说你们认识的故事吧。” 你会看到他们的神情瞬间改变，仿佛又回到了当时。你会听到他们说，“哦，对，她那会儿是……” 因为就在那一刻，他们被带回了最初的记忆。
You can do the same thing with someone going through a horrible divorce. If you can get them to recall that time and talk about it, you’ll see a shift.
同样的，你甚至可以用这种方法去试探那些正在经历糟糕离婚的人。如果你能让他们回想起当初相识的场景，并谈起那段时光，他们的心态也会产生转变。
I always say this: when I was a kid, like every kid, I had the fantasy—if you were invisible, what would you do? You’d probably go to the girls’ locker room, or something like that. Well, I have a similar fantasy as an adult: if I could be invisible, I’d sneak into maybe eight of my clients’ houses and find their wedding albums. I’m sure they’re up in the attic somewhere. I’d love to see what they looked like when they loved each other, because now they’re practically weaponized against each other. They’re trying to destroy each other, using every secret, every intimate detail—showing each other at their worst.
我常常说，当我还是孩子时，就像所有小孩子都会幻想：“要是我能隐身，会做什么呢？也许会跑去女生更衣室吧。” 现在我就有类似的幻想：如果能隐身，我最想偷偷溜进我大概八个委托人的家里，翻翻他们的婚礼相册。我知道相册可能被收在阁楼或某个角落。我想看看他们彼此还相爱的时候是什么样子的。如今，他们之间简直成了“武装对垒”，拿出所有秘密、所有隐私来互相攻击，把对方逼到最难堪的境地。
And there’s something in me that thinks: at one point, these people said to each other, “There are 7.3 billion people in the world, and you’re the one. You’re the one I just want to be with, to smell, to touch.” That feeling—we all know it. It’s that electric spark you get from another person.
但回想过去，他们肯定曾有过这样的时刻：两个人说，“这世界上有 73 亿人，而你就是我唯一想要的那个人。你是我想要亲近、想要闻到、想要触摸的人。” 那种感觉，我们都懂——跟另一个人之间那股电光火石般的吸引。
And I mean, I think I’m romantic at heart in the sense that I really understand why we do this. I’ve felt it; I know it. But connecting that feeling to the “technology” of marriage, in my opinion, makes almost no sense at all.
我是个浪漫主义者，我真的明白我们为什么会这样做。我经历过，也清楚那种感受。然而，要把这种感觉跟“婚姻”这项“技术”嫁接起来，就我看来，几乎没有任何道理可言。
I actually think it’s almost antagonistic to that connection with another person, because there’s so much expectation that comes with marriage. Culturally, we’ve created so much stuff around it. Like, when you marry someone, they’re supposed to be—at least in the modern Western model—your best friend, best roommate, best co-parent, best travel partner, best everything, best activity partner. Like, how would one person be all of those things? That’s insane.
我其实觉得，这种对于婚姻的过高期待，几乎和人与人之间的联结背道而驰。因为一旦谈到婚姻，文化层面上我们已经给它附加了太多东西。就好比在现代西方模式里，和某人结婚之后，对方就应该成为你的最佳朋友、最佳室友、最佳共同养育者、最佳旅行伙伴、以及所有事情的最佳搭档——几乎是最强活动伴侣。可一个人怎么可能同时胜任所有角色？这简直太疯狂了。
If I was interviewing for a job and said, “I want you to be the best typist, and I also want you to be best on the phone, and I also want you to be great at IT,” and then I ran down a list of dissimilar things… Or if I went to an amazing chef and said, “I know you’re a great chef, but can you farm?” Like, well, that has to do with food, but they’re not the same thing. What are you talking about?
如果我在面试一份工作，然后对候选人说：“我希望你打字速度是最好的，你接电话的能力也是最好的，你还要对 IT 非常在行。”接下来我再列一长串互不相关的要求……或者就像我去找一位顶级厨师，却对他说：“我知道你做菜很棒，但你会耕田吗？”虽然这两件事都和“食物”沾边，但根本不是同一种技能。你在说什么呢？
So I think, why do we put on people this idea—whoever came up with the word “soulmate,” really, divorce lawyers should be paying that person dividends. Because we’ve convinced people that if this person isn’t meeting every one of your needs, checking all these boxes, they’re not your soulmate. Your soulmate would know exactly what to do, exactly what to say, at exactly the right time. I can go off on this stuff, yeah, I tend to…
所以我就在想，为什么我们要给彼此灌输这样的概念？其实谁发明了 “灵魂伴侣” 这个词，离婚律师大概都该给那人分红，因为我们已经让大众相信：只要某个人没有满足你所有需求，没有一个不落地“全都达标”，他（或她）就不是你的灵魂伴侣。你的灵魂伴侣一定会在任何时刻都说出你想听的话、做出你想要的举动。我对这类话题很有共鸣，我的观点往往会滔滔不绝……
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What do you think the secret is to just keeping a marriage vital, keeping it alive?
“你觉得保持婚姻活力、让它继续生机勃勃的秘诀是什么？”
You know, I think people get unhappy in marriages the way that people go bankrupt: very slowly, and then all at once. I think it’s very slow, and then it just goes off a cliff. So everybody will say, “Well, we divorced because he was cheating, or she was cheating,” or “We divorced because he had an alcohol issue or a drug issue.” Lately we’re seeing more alcohol and drug issues, especially post-pandemic. There’s a tremendous amount of substance abuse stuff that’s causing a lot of issues in marriages.
我的看法是：人们对婚姻的不满，就像破产一样——是非常缓慢地发展，然后突然一下子爆发。通常一开始很慢，后来就像掉下悬崖一样。因此，每个人都会说：“我们离婚是因为他出轨了，或者她出轨了。”或者说：“我们是因为他酗酒、她吸毒。” 最近，尤其在后疫情时代，我们确实看到更多与酒精或毒品相关的婚姻问题，有大量滥用物质的问题正在导致婚姻出现许多危机。
And certainly social media has increased the accessibility of adultery and connections to other people, reconnections with people from your past who remind you of a version of yourself that you felt more excited about because you were younger.
当然，社交媒体也让外遇以及与他人、与过去旧相识的联系变得更加容易。你可能通过和过去认识的人重新取得联系，找回那份曾让你感到年轻、兴奋的感觉。
It used to be if you ran into the girl you banged in high school, it was once every 10 years at a reunion, or if you lived in the same town as you grew up in, you might run into the person at the Walmart. But now, on Facebook, you have all these excuses to be able to chit-chat with someone, and all these benign entry points of like, “Oh, I saw your pictures from vacation. Where did you stay in Miami?” And then it becomes, “Oh yeah, well, you look great. I mean, boy, you look fantastic in a bikini.” And then all of a sudden we’re off to the races, chatting with each other. If we were going to invent an infidelity machine, you couldn’t do better than Facebook and Instagram. I mean, that’s about as good as it gets.
以前，如果你偶然碰到高中时期发生过关系的女生，可能是十年一遇的同学会，或者你还住在老家，才有机会在沃尔玛碰到对方。然而现在，通过 Facebook 这样的社交平台，你有无数借口和对方聊起来，比如：“我看到了你度假的照片，你住的那家迈阿密酒店是哪一家？” 然后话题就很容易变成：“哦，你看起来真不错。哇，你穿比基尼真好看。” 一下子，两个人就顺着这个话头越聊越远。要说“发明”外遇机，恐怕没有比 Facebook 和 Instagram 更合适的了，这个程度简直是顶级配置。
But I genuinely think that the secret to staying happy in a marriage is probably the same secret to maintaining a healthy weight: don’t wait till you get super fat and then try to lose the weight. Don’t wait until you get really sick. My sister is a dentist, and she always says, “If you have a toothache, there’s nothing I can do, really. I can pull the tooth, I can give you a root canal, but I can’t prevent the toothache anymore.” She can prevent you from getting a toothache if you just come see her regularly, and you floss, and you brush your teeth. You’ll never get a toothache. By the time your tooth hurts, something is already seriously wrong. By the time you’re in a divorce lawyer’s office, you’re fucked. The whole thing’s fucked at that point. You’d be better off just figuring out the preventative maintenance—change the oil in your car.
但我打心底相信，保持婚姻幸福的秘诀，也跟保持身体健康的秘诀一样：不要等到体重暴增之后再决定减肥，不要等到真的病得不行了才去看医生。就拿我妹妹的话来说——她是个牙医，她常说：“如果你牙痛了，我能做的其实有限。也许我能拔掉那颗牙，或者给你做根管治疗，但阻止牙痛已经来不及了。我能预防牙痛，前提是你要定期来检查，勤刷牙勤用牙线，你就不会牙痛。但只要你牙痛了，说明事情已经很严重。” 同理，如果你已经走进离婚律师的办公室，就说明“完了”，整件事已经搞砸了。那还不如早做预防，看看有没有办法提早维护，就像给汽车定期换机油。
So if you reverse-engineer divorce—most people, the marriage killer, you know, the cheating or the gambling or the whatever, that’s the symptom. The problem is these little disconnections. One of the best stories I have is: I had a client who I did her divorce, and we’d spend a lot of time together. When you’re a divorce lawyer, you spend a lot of time with people, and you get to know them very well. People lie to their therapists, but they won’t lie to their divorce lawyer, because A) there’s no reason to, and B) I need to know everything, and it’s all attorney-client privilege.
如果你逆向推理一下离婚过程——多数婚姻危机，如出轨、赌博等，其实只是表面症状。真正的问题在于那些“微小的疏离”。我有一个非常典型的故事：我曾代理一位女客户办理离婚，我们花了很多时间在一起。离婚律师和当事人打交道的时间往往不少，也会非常深入地了解他们。人们可能会对心理医生撒谎，但几乎不会对离婚律师撒谎，因为第一，他们没有理由那样做；第二，我必须掌握所有信息，而这在律师-当事人保密关系下是安全的。
We were sitting outside the courtroom waiting on a break in testimony. She was a young woman, in her late 30s, very attractive, and we were just chit-chatting. I said to her, “Was there a moment when you realized the marriage is over? Was there a moment?” And she said, “Yeah.” I said, “When was it?” She said, “There was this granola that I like. They only sold it at this particular grocery store, and I like to put it in my yogurt. He used to always—whenever I’d be running low on it, I would just open the thing one day and a new bag would be there. It always made me feel so loved. I didn’t have to ask. He didn’t want credit for it. He didn’t go, ‘Oh, did you see I got your granola?’ He would just do this thing.” She said, “It was just something that made me smile. Every time the granola was running low and there was a new bag of granola, I just felt very loved.”
我们当时在法庭外等着，庭审暂时休息。她三十多岁，还挺年轻，也很漂亮。我们随便聊天时，我问她：“有没有那么一刻，你突然意识到，这段婚姻完了？有吗？” 她回答：“有。” 我追问：“是哪一刻？” 她说，她有一种格兰诺拉麦片，很喜欢，只有某家超市才有卖，她平时喜欢拌到酸奶里。以前每当她快吃完时，只要打开柜子，就能发现新买的一包。他从来不用她开口去讲，也不邀功，不会说‘你看我又给你买了麦片哦’。就只是那样静静地替她补上。每次麦片快见底，又出现新的一包，这就让她感觉到被爱。
She said, “One day, the granola ran out. I thought, oh, that’s weird. Maybe he didn’t see it.” She said, “So I left the bag in there, because I thought, well, at some point he’ll notice.” He didn’t notice. She goes, “So I took the bag out. I waited, and he didn’t get a new bag. And I thought, okay, this thing’s going down.” And I thought to myself, “Wow, that’s such a small thing—granola.” But these are the things. These are the little things that make us feel loved, and that are gestures of love.
有一天，麦片用光了，她想：“嗯，这很奇怪。大概他没看到吧。”然后她故意把空包装放在那里，以为有天他会注意到。结果对方完全没反应。她又把空包装拿出来，再等……还是没人买新的。那一刻她突然觉得：“哦，这段关系快结束了。” 当时我心里想：天哪，这看似多么小的一件事——就是麦片嘛，但恰恰是这些小事能让人感受到爱与关怀。
I said to her, “Was there anything like that for you with him?” And she said, “Yeah. Blow jobs.” And I almost spit out my coffee. She goes, “No. When we were first dating, and even first married, I used to give blow jobs a lot. Do it in the morning—it took two minutes—and he was super happy the rest of the day. The rest of the day, he would call me or text me and be like, ‘Oh, I’m so good this morning. I had such pep in my step now.’ And it was just like, what did it really take out of my life to do that? And it made him feel good.” She’s like, “And then I got to a point where I was like, well, you know what? No, I’ll wait, and then tonight we can both have sex. We can have sex and we’ll both enjoy that. What, do I owe him a blow job? No, I don’t owe him that.” Then she said, “I got to a point where I look back and I’m like, yeah, I guess I didn’t do that as often—hardly ever, really.”
我问她：“那你有没有什么类似的举动对他呢？” 她说：“有啊，是给他口交。” 我差点喷了咖啡。她继续说：“别笑，以前我们还在恋爱，或是刚结婚时，我经常帮他口交。早上两分钟就搞定，他一天都会超开心，还会给我打电话、发信息，说‘天啊，今天整个人都精神抖擞！’ 其实对我来说，这也不费多大事，而他就很高兴。” 但后来，她开始想：“算了吧，等晚上我们再一起做，可以两个人都享受。难道我欠他口交吗？不，我才不欠他这个。” 再之后，她回忆起来，自己好像几乎没再给过他口交了。
I asked, “Which came first?” She said, “I couldn’t tell you, but I think it’s the same thing. It’s the same thing.” And I do think it’s the same thing. I’m not saying blow jobs and granola are all you need to know, and I’m not… By the way, I’m not saying a blow job is a small thing; I don’t think I have any right to. I’ve never given one. It seems like a phenomenal feat, and I’m grateful for every one I’ve ever received. But I don’t think it’s a massive investment, right? Just like buying someone’s granola is not a massive… She said, “When you love somebody, you love doing things for them. Their pleasure, their joy pleases you. Their happiness makes you happy.” And somewhere along the line—and it happens a lot in marriage—it becomes, “Well, I’m not happy. Why should you be happy?” Then that creates a spiral.
我问她到底是谁先停止的，她也不清楚，只觉得两人就同时陷进同一个循环。我真觉得，这和“麦片”是同一种问题。我的意思不是说，只要有口交和麦片就够了，也不是想贬低口交——毕竟我没给过任何人口交，这事儿听上去就难度不小，而且我得感谢过去所有给过我口交的人。可它在本质上并不算什么巨大投入，对方只是想表达爱意，就像“买麦片”那样。她说：“当你爱一个人时，就会乐意为他（或她）做点事。对方开心了，你也觉得快乐。” 可是，后来婚姻往往会走向另一种对立：我不开心，那你也别想好过。然后一切就走向恶化。
I really believe that spiral could go in the other direction. If he did the granola, I think the blow jobs would have come. And if the blow jobs were there, I bet he’d have bought the granola. I can’t prove that; there’s no control group. I can’t run that research. But it feels to me like those little things, like leaving a note. I’ve said to some of my friends, when they say to me, “As a divorce lawyer, you see all this misery. How do I stay out of your office?” I’ll often say, “It’s dumb little things, man. Leave her a note. Leave her a note in the morning that says, ‘Hey, beautiful. It was so fun watching that movie with you last night. So glad we got to have a date. I’ll be thinking of you today. Love you.’” What does that take? That takes like a minute, not even. Look what it can do. Look at how that makes this person feel. Even if right away it doesn’t work in that moment, it doesn’t work—okay, do it enough times. Then you’re either going to figure out that this person’s gone, and then just bail, you’re done, because if you try for long enough and you give like that, but if you’re not giving like that and then you’re not getting back either—well, I’m not surprised. That’s how you end up in my office, this death spiral of everyone like, “Well, I’m not giving him the granola. She’s not giving me blow jobs.” “Well, I’m not giving him blow jobs—he’s mean to me.” “Okay, well, everybody’s just gonna have an equal right to be fucking miserable then.”
我坚信，这种恶化也能反向改变。如果他买了麦片，也许她就会口交；如果她口交，他就会继续买麦片。没办法实验，这东西没有对照组，无法做试验研究，但听上去确实就像这样。哪怕只是早上给对方留一张纸条，“嘿，亲爱的，昨晚一起看电影真开心。很高兴跟你约会。今天我会想着你，爱你。” 这写下来也就花几秒，能带给对方的暖意却很大。要是刚开始没能立刻见效，那就多做几次。最后要么对方完全没感觉，那你就知道，这人可能真不合适，然后干脆放手，要么对方也渐渐跟你形成了互动，关系就好起来了。相反，如果双方都在想“我才不给你买麦片呢，你也别想让我做什么”，这就演变成了我在事务所里见到的局面：他们不停抱怨，“我不买麦片，因为她不给我口交。”“我不给口交，因为他对我态度不好。” 如此下去，大家就一起糟心。
I think if you’re happy with yourself—truly happy with who you are at that point in your life—it’s easier for you to be happy with your partner. I would argue that as long as you’re not happy with yourself, having someone happy with you is certainly not going to hurt your feeling of who you are, right? I don’t need someone to tell me I’m handsome for me to have a nice day, but I can’t think of anybody telling me I was handsome that ruined my day. Most of the time, you’re like, “Oh, that’s nice. I got that going for me.”
如果你能够先让自己快乐，对当下的自我感到满意，确实也更容易跟另一半相处愉快。我甚至会说，如果你尚未完全接纳自己，有个人在你身边欣赏你、喜欢你，其实也是有帮助的，毕竟被认可不会让你的自我感更糟。就像我并不需要有人夸我帅就能过好一天，可有人夸我帅也从来不会让我心情变差，大部分时候我都会想：“啊，这挺好的，最起码有人觉得我不错。”
So yeah, I think self-love, of course, is the most important love, and to be secure in who you are, and to not allow your self-definition to be easily swayed or pulled. If you believe the good reviews, you have to believe the bad ones, too. I get that. But I just don’t think kindness is that hard, especially if it’s easy, like telling someone they’re beautiful or handsome or that you’re cheering for them.
所以，我觉得自我关爱当然最重要，要对自己有一定的自信，不要轻易被他人评价所左右。如果你只相信好的评价，你也得相信差的评价，对吧？但我不觉得友善这件事有多难，尤其是那些举手之劳的善意，比如对对方说“你很漂亮”“你很帅”或者“我支持你、为你加油”。
To me, with marriage or pair bonds—I shouldn’t even say marriage—the world is trying to kill you all the time. People are criticizing you all the time. You feel like a failure a lot of the time. If you compare yourself to other people, you’ll constantly be—comparison is the thief of joy. So why not have one person who’s just cheering for you? Constructive criticism is still criticism. So if your spouse is just sitting around criticizing you and telling you all the things you could do to improve yourself, instead of just being a fan and saying, “You know what? I know who you are, and you’re beautiful. I know who you are, and your heart is good,”—betting on the best parts of a person—I think there’s very little downside to that. I think it would put guys like me out of this business if people really leveraged that the right way.
在我看来，对于婚姻或其他亲密关系来说——其实不止婚姻，现在整个世界对你都很苛刻，天天有各种批评，你时常会觉得自己失败，一跟别人比就会陷入失落。那为什么不让身边这个人单纯支持你呢？说到底，“建设性批评”终究还是批评。如果你的配偶一天到晚只是在挑剔你各种问题，而不是单纯成为你的粉丝，说“我知道你其实很棒，内心很善良”，用这种方式去看待你最好的部分，我真看不出这么做会有什么坏处。我想，如果每对夫妻都能这样，也许就没离婚律师什么事了。至少，我觉得这样做会让很多人避免踏进我的办公室。
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I asked you earlier if you believe in love, and you said you do. Do you believe in marriage?
我之前问过你是否相信爱情，你说相信。那么，你相信婚姻吗？
I mean, I believe people believe in marriage, yeah. Do I believe in marriage? I don’t think it’s a useful technology. I understand culturally why people do it, but I don’t think people should need it. I know I certainly don’t need marriage. I don’t think marriage… I was married. I was married before I really ever thought about, what does that mean? You know, I married my college sweetheart. I got married because that’s what you do: you get married. But I hadn’t thought about it as a technology and why it’s there. I didn’t understand it the way I do now.
我的意思是，我相信人们相信婚姻，是的。可我自己相信婚姻吗？我并不觉得婚姻是一项有用的“技术”。我理解人们在文化层面为何会选择结婚，但我不认为人们“需要”它。我自己当然不需要婚姻。我不觉得婚姻……我结过婚。在我真正想清楚“婚姻到底意味着什么”之前，我就结了婚。你知道的，我和大学时的女友结了婚，因为在很多人看来，这就是“该做的事”——你跟恋人就该结婚。但我当时并没有把它当作一种“技术”来思考，也没搞懂它的根本意义。我并不了解它，如今才算有些明白。
There’s a line from a Joseph Brodsky poem that he wrote when his wife died, where he says, “I wish I knew no astronomy when stars appear.” I feel that way as a divorce lawyer. I wish I knew no astronomy when stars appear. I wish I didn’t know what the end of so many marriages looks like, because I think I would have a more optimistic and unrealistic view of it. I would… yeah. But you’d be divorced and giving away half your assets. I’d be foolish. I’d be as foolish. But I don’t know that it’s always good to know. Sometimes there’s tremendous joy to be had, and falling feels like flying for a little while, until you hit the ground. It feels really good.
约瑟夫·布罗茨基在妻子去世后写过一首诗，其中有一句：“星星出现的时候，我真希望我完全不懂天文学。” 做离婚律师后，我也常有这种感触。星星出现时，我也希望自己根本不懂天文学。我希望自己不知道那么多婚姻的结局会是怎样，因为也许那样我会对婚姻保持更乐观、更不切实际的看法。也许我就会……是啊，但然后你就会离婚，还得把一半财产分出去。我会很傻，我会跟当初一样傻。可我不确定“知道”一定是好事。有时候不知情可以获得巨大快乐。因为坠入爱河的感觉，像是飞翔，直到你碰地摔下——可那段飞翔的感觉实在美妙。
As I said earlier, now that the life expectancy of man is around the 80s or something, you’re going to do this from your 20s or 30s until…?
就像我先前说过的，如今人类的预期寿命大约都在八十岁左右，那么你要从二三十岁起一直坚持到……？
Well, marriage is a technology that was designed for when women died in childbirth and when men died in their 40s if they were lucky—50s if they were super lucky. If you were in your 50s or 60s, you were an elder. That was pretty amazing. Most women died in childbirth. Childbirth is traumatic; it’s a traumatic thing. And before modern medicine and before we understood antibiotics… so marriage is…
其实婚姻这种“技术”是为当年女性常常死于分娩、而男性如果幸运能活到四十多岁（若特别幸运到五十多岁）而设计的。那时一个人若活到五六十岁，就已经算是耄耋老人，实属不易。绝大多数女性死于分娩。分娩是一件高度危险、极具创伤性的事。在现代医学出现、在我们懂得抗生素之前……所以婚姻是……
I don’t think anyone ever planned that it was going to be, “Okay, we’re gonna do this forever. We’re gonna do this till we’re a hundred.” But I think that’s part of a bigger problem. I don’t remember who said it, but I remember someone saying, “We are prehistoric creatures,” right? “We are biological creatures living in medieval institutions (like education, work) with godlike technology. How do you think that ends? You think that ends in happily ever after?” That’s insane.
我不认为当初有人计划让它一直持续到“好，我们要一起走到一百岁”。但我觉得这只是更大问题的一部分。我记不清是谁说过这句话，但有人曾说：“我们是史前生物，对吧？我们是生物性存在，却活在中世纪的制度里（比如教育、工作等），手里却掌握着如同神一般的科技。你觉得这会怎样收场？难道会是幸福美满？” 这想法也太疯狂了吧。
Marriage wasn’t designed—I mean, think about even the early days of marriage. Think about every Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. Think about Oklahoma, where you’d have the three people in town that aren’t married, and you pick which of the three you were gonna be with. Now you have access to an endless supply of the opposite sex—or I shouldn’t even say the opposite sex, an endless supply of romantic partners—in a device in your hand. How does that possibly stand up? How does marriage, the idea of monogamy, forced monogamy, or enforced monogamy—how does that ever survive in that environment? I don’t think it can. I don’t think it’s realistic.
婚姻本来就不是为此而设计的——你回头想想那些早期的婚姻历史，或者想想罗杰斯与汉默斯坦的音乐剧。再比如《俄克拉荷马！》里，城里有三个没结婚的人，你就在那三个人里挑一个结婚。可如今，一个手机就能让你接触到无数异性（甚至不一定是异性）——无穷无尽的浪漫机会都摆在你面前。那婚姻、单一配偶制、强制或被迫的单一配偶制，在这种环境下怎么可能站得住脚？我觉得它根本撑不下去，我也不认为这符合现实。
And the statistics prove me right. The statistics are absolutely in my favor. Now again, get married as many times as you want if you have a prenup. If you have a prenup, go get married—it’s a blast. Being married is difficult. Someone once said that it’s great to be married sometimes; the problem is you’re married all the time.
而统计数据也证明了我的观点，数据完全站在我这边。当然，如果你有婚前协议，那你想结几次婚都行。只要有婚前协议，你就去结婚吧——反正过程也挺好玩的。结婚难就难在，你任何时候都在婚姻状态里。有人说过，结婚有时很棒，问题在于你得“随时随地”都在结婚状态里。
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So you’re a fan of prenups?
“所以你很支持婚前协议吗？”
I’m a huge fan of prenups. I mean, I shouldn’t be, because a prenup for a couple of thousand dollars will save you hundreds of thousands of dollars, potentially, in legal fees, if not millions. There are clients I have who have spent over a million dollars just in their legal fees, and if they had spent two thousand dollars on a prenup, none of that would have happened—they’d still have that money in their pocket. That’s incredible to me. I have two sons who are adults. They are absolutely going to have prenups. They have to have prenups. They’d be fools not to. It’s like jumping out of a plane with no parachute. Why would you do that? It’s stupid. Prenups are enforceable; they make sense.
“我对婚前协议非常推崇。其实我本来不应该这么做，因为一份婚前协议花个几千美元，就能帮你省下上几十万，甚至上百万美元的律师费。我有些当事人光律师费就花了超过一百万美元，可如果他们当初花两千美元去订一份婚前协议，这些钱根本就不必花掉，全还在他们自己口袋里。想想真是不可思议。我有两个已经成年的儿子，他们以后肯定得签婚前协议，非签不可，否则就是傻瓜。就像从飞机上跳下去却不带降落伞，哪会有人这么干？太愚蠢了。婚前协议是可以强制执行的，确实有道理。”
I actually think there’s something very romantic about prenups, because they force you to have a conversation about this relationship. I genuinely believe that we are the most aware of our health just after we get sick. If you wake up and you have a toothache, all you can think about is the fact that your tooth hurts, and then your toothache goes away. For a week, you’re taking care of your teeth. You go, “Oh my God, at least I don’t have a toothache.” But then a month goes by, and you don’t wake up and go, “At least I don’t have a toothache.” It’s the furthest thing from your mind. But theoretically, you could wake up today and go, “I don’t have a toothache, I don’t have a backache, I don’t have a head cold—this is a great day.”
“其实我认为，婚前协议还有某种相当浪漫的意义，因为它迫使你们坐下来，讨论这段关系的方方面面。我真心觉得，人往往是在刚生过一场病、刚摆脱病痛时，才会对自身健康最敏感。你早上醒来发现牙痛时，满脑子都是‘天啊，我牙好痛’，然后等牙痛缓解了，在接下来的一周里，你会很留意口腔卫生，甚至会想：‘哦谢天谢地，我现在总算不牙痛了。’但一个月后，你就不会每天醒来都想‘幸好我没牙痛’。它压根不会出现在你脑海里。但实际上，你每天早上都可以想：‘我没牙痛、没腰痛、没头痛——今天真是不错。’”
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What does a typical prenup look like?
“那么，一份典型的婚前协议大概是什么样子的呢？”
The easiest prenup in the world: yours, mine, ours. That’s it. Yours, mine, ours. If it’s in your name, it’s yours. If it’s in my name, it’s mine. If it’s in our joint names, we’ll divide it 50-50. That’s it. “Yours, mine, ours.” And then you have to have ongoing conversations throughout the marriage about, “Hey, I got this bonus at work. Do I put it in my account? Do I put it in the joint—”
最简单的婚前协议就是：你的、我的、我们的，就这么简单。“你的、我的、我们的。” 如果是登记在你的名下，那就是你的；如果在我名下，那就是我的；如果是我们共有名下，那就对半分，就这样。“你的、我的、我们的。” 之后，在婚姻存续期间，你们还得不断讨论一些问题，比如：“嘿，我在工作上拿到了一笔奖金，我是放在我个人账户，还是放进共同账户？”
If the husband owns a house that’s worth, whatever, two million dollars, and he marries a woman, the house is still his?
“如果丈夫本来有一栋价值两百万美元的房子，然后他和一个女人结婚，这房子依然属于他吗？”
Well, they have to have a conversation: “Do I owe you a house?” That’s an awkward conversation. You know what’s more awkward? A conversation 10 years later with a lawyer about the fact that you have to give half of this house away to someone. Isn’t it better to have that conversation when you still like each other? Why would you learn how to fight in a fight?
“是啊，可他们要讨论：‘我是不是应该给你一套房子呢？’ 这确实很尴尬。可你知道更尴尬的是什么吗？十年后你才和律师讨论，你得把这栋房子的一半分给对方。难道不该在你们彼此还喜欢对方的时候，先把话说清楚吗？干嘛要在吵架的时候才学会如何打架呢？”
But won’t that undermine the love each person feels?
“可那样不会破坏彼此之间的感情吗？”
Why? You’re gonna die. Does that undermine your life, or does it make you conscious of the fact that this is finite and that you should be out there? I think having a conversation with your partner about, “Look, I love you, you love me, we want to do this thing together, but the numbers are against us, and the world is antagonistic to it. I hope we’ll be together forever. But if we split up, what do we owe each other? What do you expect from me?” Because I have to tell you something: I’m a fair person. If you say to me, “You know, Jim, if I’m not going to work as hard because you make a good living, so if we split up I’m going to need help for a couple of years because I’m not going to pay attention to my career,” okay. Is that unreasonable? That’s totally reasonable. If I say, “Hey, listen, I have this house, and I bought it, but I’m buying it with money that I made really before we were together. So if we split up, I don’t really think you deserve half of it. I think that if we bought things for it together, okay, those things you can have half of. But the house itself, that’s money I had before I met you.” Why can’t you have that conversation?
“为什么？你总会死的啊。死亡会毁掉你对生活的感受吗？还是让你更意识到生命有限，应该好好把握？我觉得，和你的伴侣坐下来谈一谈：‘看，我爱你，你也爱我，我们想一起走下去，但概率上对我们不利，外部环境也可能不友好。我希望我们能永远在一起，可要是我们走不到最后，我们该互相付出什么？你对我有什么期待？’ 我可以坦白说，我这个人挺公平的。如果你跟我说，‘你知道吗，吉姆，因为你赚钱不错，我自己就不会拼命努力，所以要是真分开了，我肯定需要你帮我过渡个几年，因为我没怎么在意我的职业发展。’ 那你说，这要求过分吗？一点也不过分。如果我说，‘哎，你看，我有套房子，是在我们认识之前就用我自己的钱买的，所以真要分开的话，我不觉得你应该拿走一半。如果我们一起装修或购买过什么，那部分你可以分一半，但这栋房子本身是我在遇到你之前就买的。’ 为什么不能讨论这个问题？”
You buy a house, you do a HUD-1, a lead paint disclosure, you’ve got to sign all these things—this is how much the interest is going to be. You get married and Elvis can marry you for 20 dollars at a drive-through cathedral, and it’s a legal status—a massive legal— You buy your spouse a Rolex, you bought yourself one-half of a Rolex. You buy someone a birthday present who you’re married to, you bought yourself one-half of that birthday present. People don’t know that. They learn that for the first time in my office or in a courtroom. That’s insane.
“买房子的时候，你会签一堆文件，从 HUD-1 到铅漆披露，一大堆条款都会写明——比如利率是多少。但你去结婚，甚至可以花 20 美元在拉斯维加斯的汽车通道让‘猫王’给你主持仪式，这就成了一项法律地位，极具法律效力……你给配偶买块劳力士，其实你等于也给自己买了半块劳力士；要是你给对方买生日礼物，其实你也拥有这份礼物的一半。大部分人都不知道这一点。他们往往是第一次在我办公室或者法庭上才发现。太荒谬了。”
What other thing in the world—anything else, any other contract—you would say, “Well, wait a minute, no one explained that to me. No one explained that when I leased this car…” It didn’t say it anywhere in the contract, right? Okay, marriage contract—it doesn’t say that. It doesn’t say, “Oh, and by the way, you’re opting out of the title system, and your retirement assets and all these other things, and if there’s any debts, and you could have enhanced earning capacity or celebrity goodwill that has to be valued by forensic accountants. That’ll cost you a hundred thousand dollars.” No contract that says that. It’s just, “Yep, we’re getting married. Two witnesses, we’re good.” What other contract in the United States or anywhere has that lack of disclosure and is that binding? None. Zero. None.
“世上还有什么别的东西，或者说什么其他合约，会出现这种情况？你会说：‘等一下，没人事先告诉过我这一点啊。我当初租车的时候，可没写在合同里吧？’ 可婚姻合同却没告诉你：‘顺便说一下，你正在自动放弃原本的财产权体系，而且包括你的退休金、以及所有其他相关权益，如果产生债务，或者说你未来会有事业潜能、名气带来的价值，可能还得雇法务会计做评估，这项评估费就得十万美金。’ 没有任何条款写明。只是一句‘好的，我们结婚吧。请两个证人就够了。’ 还真有哪份合同像这样缺乏披露，却又依然有效的吗？在美国或任何地方，我看不出还有哪份合约是这样。一份也没有，零。”
So, why a prenup? Yes, that’s an awkward conversation, I guess. I don’t know that it has to be. And I have to tell you, the more awkward of a conversation it is, the more you should think twice about getting married. Because if you can’t have a conversation with this person about the possibility that someday one or both of you might hurt each other… Like, how many people, while they’re still happy and in love, say something like, “You know, babe, I love you, but we’re going to disagree about something at some point, and when we do, how do you like to fight? Do you need a minute? Do you need to be alone for a minute so you can calm down? Or are you the ‘Hey, we gotta figure this out, we can’t go to bed angry’ type?” Let’s talk about that now, while we’re not in a fight. Let’s talk about it now, while we still get along and we’re happy, and we’re trying to figure out how to navigate each other. It’s hard enough to navigate yourself. I want to navigate another human being? Why don’t we have that conversation now?
“那么为什么要婚前协议？对，可能会让人觉得尴尬。我也不知道一定就要尴尬。我可以告诉你，如果谈这个话题让你觉得特别尴尬，你就更应该认真想想自己是否要结婚。因为如果你没法跟对方谈谈，将来总有一天你们也许会伤害彼此的可能性……你想想看，有多少人在彼此还你侬我侬的时候，会说：‘亲爱的，我爱你，但我们迟早会因为某些事起争执。真到了那时，你会怎么处理？你需要冷静几分钟吗？需要一个人待会儿吗，还是那种“我们一定得马上解决矛盾，别带着问题过夜”的人？’ 我们现在就该把这些说开，趁我们还相处融洽、互相喜欢，好好学会怎样与对方磨合。了解自己已经够难了，还要再去摸索另外一个人？为什么不趁着感情好时先聊呢？”
But no, we don’t. We learn on the job. We learn how to fight in a fight, which is insane. But again, why? Because it’s awkward. It’d be awkward to have that conversation. More awkward than getting in a fight where you don’t know the rules of engagement, where you don’t know how your partner does better or would feel better? You’re not going to ask them that in the heat of battle. So why wouldn’t you have that awkward conversation while you have this abundance of affection for each other?
“可我们就是不聊，我们是在冲突发生时才‘学习如何吵架’，这简直荒唐。为什么这样？因为尴尬啊。真让你们坐下来谈，很可能场面就有点怪。可它会比吵架时却不知道‘规则’怎么定、也不知道对方需要怎样的沟通方式更尴尬吗？你不可能在打得火热时再问对方‘你平常喜欢怎么吵架？’ 所以为什么不在你们彼此好感满满时先克服那点儿尴尬呢？”
I mean, when I negotiate prenups, it’s the easiest thing in the world, in a sense, because these two people really like each other. They’re about to get married, so they’re clearly not trying to kill each other at that point. They clearly like each other. So you just say, “Hey, listen, go home, talk to your fiancé about X, Y, and Z, and see what they think. Tell them what your concern is.” Very often, people will come back and say to me—I mean, I’ve been doing this now over 20 years, I do a lot of prenups, five or six prenups a month, sometimes during pre-wedding season (the fall and before the summer) 10 or 15 a month—the people who say to me, “Oh, well, I don’t want to have that conversation…” They sign the prenup, and within three, four years, they’re divorced, sometimes five years, then seven years. They’re the ones who get divorced. They had no business getting married. The ones who have the discussion and figure out, “Well, I’m worried because if you keep the place…” “Yeah, you’re right, okay, so what if I give you this amount of money, and it’s this much for each year?” “Okay, yeah, that’s cool, let’s do it that way.” Those people, they’re probably never going to put the prenup in a safe someplace, never look at it. Probably good communication. Because they’re able to talk to each other, and they’re able to talk about hard things. How are you going to be married to someone and have children with someone, and you can’t talk about hard things? How are you going to navigate life and not be able to talk about hard things? That’s silly. If you can’t talk about hard things, don’t get fucking married. It’s okay. You don’t have to. You can stay together.
“我经手婚前协议时，有时会觉得很轻松，因为这两个人确实很喜欢对方，也马上要结婚了，那么显然他们当下还没想要撕破脸。你就跟他们说，‘你看，你回去和你未婚夫/未婚妻聊聊 X、Y、Z 三件事，然后再告诉我你们的想法，你还可以说说你担心的问题。’ 很多时候，他们会想通回来告诉我——我干这行二十多年了，做过很多婚前协议，一个月平均可能做五六份，婚礼季的时候甚至可能十几份。那些跟我说‘我不想谈这个话题’的人，最后往往就是结了婚，再过三四年离婚，有时拖到五年、七年才离。他们本来就不该结这个婚；而那些肯认真谈，能理清‘我就担心如果你保留了那套房子……’‘哦，那如果你在每年留多少给我？’‘好啊，那我们就这么做’的人，往往也不会日后拿出那份协议——甚至把它锁在保险箱里，再也不看，因为他们沟通能力强，能谈到这种严肃的话题，怎么会连婚后带小孩都无法沟通呢？如果你连难事都谈不了，何必非结婚呢？你可以不结，也可以继续跟对方在一起。”
But people love—I had a client, no joke. He was in his 70s; he was married four times. I did his third and fourth divorces. He was getting married for a fifth time. And I said to him, “Because I actually thought, he’s older. Does he know you don’t have to marry them anymore? Maybe someone didn’t tell him. You can just be with them.” He’s dividing his assets multiple times. Well, it’s getting smaller and smaller every time, but I said to him, “Why are you doing this again? You don’t have to get married. You’re clearly not great at it.” He was very funny. He said, “You know, Jim,” he said, “you buy a car, and you drive it for 200,000 miles, and eventually the engine craps out. So you go out, and you buy a Ferrari, or you buy some flashy sports car, and you drive it for a couple months, you realize this is not the car for me. So you get rid of it. Then you get another car, and you think this one’s going to be the one for you, but after you drive it for a year, you realize, ‘Yeah, this is not the car for me.’ You can lease them instead of buying them? You’re gonna walk everywhere for the rest of your life?” Yeah, well, that was my answer: you could lease them. Or you could have some other alternative. I mean, here’s the thing about marriage: it’s a technology. We made it up, so we can change it.
“可人们还是深爱婚姻啊……我遇到过一位七十多岁的客户，真事儿。他结了四次婚，我经手了他的第三次和第四次离婚。他准备结第五次婚，我就想，他年纪也大了，难道不知道其实不用结婚也行？或许没人告诉他他能‘不用非得娶’。你说，‘他是不是不断在分割财产啊？’ 是啊，每次都分点，财产越分越少。可我还是问他，‘你为何又要结？你明明不需要，显然你也不是很擅长婚姻嘛。’ 他很幽默地回答：‘你看，吉姆啊，你买辆车，开到二十万英里，发动机终于报废了，然后你想买台法拉利或者别的跑车，开了几个月，觉得这车不适合我，于是就卖掉。接着再买另一辆，一开始你以为这才是你的菜，结果开了一年又觉得不对，回头你跟我说，可以去租车？那总不能让我一辈子都走路吧？’ 我当时心想，你当然也可以租车，或者换其他方式啊。”
You think marriage will change in the next 20 years?
No. I think it’ll… I actually think it’s going to have… The pendulum always swings hard in the other direction. We have a tendency, as a culture, to overcorrect. I think we’re heading into a spiral of traditional stuff, really. I think you’re going to see people getting super religious again. People are going to get super dogmatic. I think we’re going to see the trad-wife thing; we’re going to see the hyper-masculinity. We’re going to see a very… We’ve gone so far in the direction of postmodernism, where nothing means anything and everything’s just…like, there is no definition. We’ve become like Sartre. We’ve become so postmodern that it’s almost a form of rugged individualism. I think we’re going to swing in the other direction now, into traditional institutions. It will be… I mean, from a marriage place, it’s going to be great, because I think people are going to get married.
I mean, people were slowing down on getting married for a while, sure, and they were getting married later, or having kids later, or declining to have kids. I think, as we… I think, as a culture, we start re-solidifying into gender roles—or gender tropes, depending on how you look at it—I think you’re going to see marriage resurge again. But I think that it’s still going to be as flawed of a technology as it ever was.
We have so much out there now to compare ourselves to. You used to compare yourself to the neighbors next door and what car they had in the driveway and what they were wearing when they left for church on Sunday. Now you’re just looking at everyone’s greatest hits while living your gag reel. You’re never looking at any of that stuff when you’re having a peak experience; you’re on the toilet, or you’re bored, and you’re looking at everyone’s #blessed—meanwhile, they’re in my office. I can’t tell you how many people do a consult with me, and they’re cheating, or they haven’t slept with their spouse in three years, and they’re miserable. And you look at their Instagram, and it’s all “Best life ever. #greatesthubbyever.” And you’re like, “What is this?” It’s performance art. It’s an advertisement of how happy you are, but this is what people are comparing themselves to. They’re looking at that and going, “Oh, my marriage isn’t that good.” That marriage isn’t that good—trust me, that marriage isn’t that good. That marriage is in my office.
Look at celebrities. Don’t even look at the people you know—look at celebrities. They do the “It is with great sadness that we advise that we’re going to be moving in separate directions and consciously uncoupling,” and like that. Right before that, it’s like, “Oh no, we’re happy, we’re great, we’re phenomenal.” We’re constantly advertising how wonderful our relationships are while they’re on fire. And then wondering why everyone’s miserable in their relationship—because they’re comparing it to something fake. It’s like comparing your body to a Photoshopped body.
Other than social media, do you think there’s something else in our society that made marriage more difficult to stay together now?
Marriage is more difficult… People’s parents stayed married. My parents stayed married until my mother passed away. Same with me. But they were mixed results. See, I think that my parents were not as caught up in their own happiness. We’re very caught up in our own happiness. We’re all very selfish. We’re all very sort of—I don’t want to say narcissistic, but we’re very much like we are the sun around which everything revolves. “What am I not getting?”
My father was a Vietnam veteran. He got out of the Naval Academy in ’66 and went to Vietnam for three years, so he was alive. He was like, “Fuck, I’m ahead. I’m playing with the house’s money. I’m alive.” Everybody in their wedding party, all the men in their wedding party, died in Vietnam. There were five guys in their wedding party; they all died in Vietnam. My parents never looked at their wedding album, because every single man in it was dead. They were all helicopter pilots in Vietnam who got killed in their 20s. So they didn’t really see marriage as… it was a partnership. It was like, “Yeah, we’re going to do this thing. We’re going to have kids. We’re going to raise the kids. We’re going to have a house. We’re going to have a car. We’ll be successful. The lights are on.” My father was dirt-poor. He came from Appalachia, a small town called Shawsville—didn’t have indoor plumbing until he left for the Naval Academy. He just… I think he saw marriage as, “Yeah, it’s what you do.” He met my mom on Fleet Week. She was a nurse in the city, and he was on Fleet Week. He had his uniform on, and he was in a bar, and he was drunk. He went to her and said, “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, and I’m gonna marry you,” because he was drunk. She said, “Are you in the military?” He was wearing a uniform. He said, “Yep.” She said, “What country?” And he said, “Whatever country you’re from.” He invited her to visit him at the Naval Academy a couple of weeks later, and she came. But he’d invited three other women—he just didn’t know if any of them would come, so he invited all of them. My mom got there, and she saw these other women, and she said, “Either I’m leaving, or they’re all leaving.” And he was like, “I kind of like her,” so he made them all leave. They were married 50-plus years.
But, you know, their marriage had challenges. He was an alcoholic. He’s been in recovery for maybe seven, eight years, since she passed. And he’s remarried, but he remarried within a year of my mom dying. He was of a generation of men that needed someone to take care of him. My mom died—he didn’t even know how to scramble an egg. After she passed, I had him come stay with me and my sons, and I was trying to teach him, “Okay, Dad, here’s how you make a batch of chili, and then you can eat it all week.” I was like, “How’s this guy gonna…?” Because they had this very…
But that’s what he met—another older woman; her husband had died. She needed someone to take care of, he needed someone to take care of him. But that generation didn’t have it as easy as we do. That’s what I’m saying. They were just meeting your basic needs, right? They were grateful to be alive. They were grateful to be alive because they’d either been through war. We’re not grateful unless we’re driving a Mercedes. And even then we’re not grateful, because the truth is, well, okay, Mercedes. So what? Who cares? If people have a Mercedes, my secretary has a Mercedes—she leases it. I drive a Jeep, so is she better than me? Is she more successful than me? She works for me. So I don’t know that any of it’s enough anymore. No matter what watch you have, somebody’s got another one or a better one or five of them. All this comparison that we see… So I just think that’s the thing that makes it impossible. If our parents’ generation was struggling to just make it through, to meet your basic needs, to keep a roof over your head, to raise your children… now it’s very much, “Are you self-actualized? Are you happy? Do you have an eight-pack?” It would never have occurred to my father: did he have an eight-pack? That wouldn’t have been something he thought of, you know. And I don’t think my mother would have been like, “Oh, he doesn’t have an eight-pack.” Because, again, it’s not constantly being advertised to them.
How many women did he interact with in a day? How many women do I interact with in a day—visually or personally, or in a curated, mediated way? And again, those are curated women, by the way. They’re Photoshopped, they’re airbrushed, they’ve got filters on them. So how does marriage survive in that setting? It had a hard enough time surviving without all of that.
Forget kids: The divorce rate keeps increasing, right?
Yeah, it keeps going up. It’s been hanging around 53% to 56% for a while. We had a bump after COVID.
What are other countries like?
Countries that have a significant religious narrative have the lowest divorce rates. The lowest divorce rates are in, like, Saudi Arabia. But they don’t have a whole lot of choice, right? You’re not allowed to divorce, or you just have your wife killed. So that’s… you don’t have to divorce. The countries where there is this very strict religious prohibition against marriage or against divorce… The United States is probably the highest divorce rate. We’re among the highest, yeah. I don’t think we’re the highest; we might be the highest now. For a while, Germany had a very high divorce rate; France had a pretty high divorce rate.
What’s interesting is the divorce rate and the marriage satisfaction rates—those are different. Because most people, the goal is not, “Can we stay married?” The goal is, “Can we stay happily married?” If somebody said to me, “Yeah, I’ve been married 25 years and I’ve been fucking miserable for 15 of them,” I’m not gonna envy you. Like, great job, you really hung in there in that awful situation. That’s not impressive to me.
I have a cousin who got married, and I was chatting with her. She’s a younger woman, and her husband just joined the police force. I said to him, I was trying to make small talk, “So do you like it?” He’s from a family of cops, and he said, “Not really, but I’m gonna do like the 20 years, and then you get your pension. I’ll just do my 20.” That’s 20 years. You’re 25 years old—that’s 25 to 45. Those are fucking incredible years. You’ll never get those back. And your approach to life is, “Yeah, I don’t like it, but I’ll just kinda do it.” I want to tiptoe through life and arrive safely at death? That seems… But I get that. That’s what we—if that’s what marriage is, if it’s an endurance event, where no, you’ve gotta stay married, you know, “Why?” I mean, that’s why I think religions have been very quick to… I always tell people, I’m not religious. I was raised very Catholic. But the reality is that if, in fact, God talked to humanity with Ten Commandments, I think it’s hilarious that the only thing He has to say twice is, “Don’t fuck people you’re not married to.” “Thou shalt not kill,” once. “Honor the Sabbath,” once. “Don’t covet your neighbor’s wife. Don’t commit adultery.” It’s the only thing… it’s the only thing that got two commandments. So basically, “Don’t kill. Honor the Sabbath. Don’t fuck people you’re not married to. Seriously, don’t fuck people you’re not married to.” There’s no… It didn’t say, “Thou shalt not steal,” one… everything. It’s the only one that got double billing.
Religion is a big component, and it’s a huge component, but why? Because how else are you going to control people? How else are you going to get people to sign on for this thing and not sleep with each other? I’m not saying Freud was right, but we do want to sleep with people; we do want to kill people that don’t do what we want them to do. We have these animal instincts, we have these impulses. And what do we do with them? Well, we have to live in a civilized society. Civilization and its discontents. We have to…
If marriage was outlawed or just abolished, it would just be a free-for-all.
I don’t know that that’s true. I think that people would like us to believe that’s true. I don’t believe that if murder wasn’t illegal, I would just go killing people. I wouldn’t want to do that to another person. I think society would be probably happier without marriage. I think we would have a lot less of the damage that comes from it. But I think we’d have to find new narratives to structure and define relationships, right?
I do think there is a part of us that wants to say… Because, you know, as a grown man who’s divorced, when you’re 20 and you say, “Oh, that’s my girlfriend,” nobody thinks anything of it. When you’re 50 and you say, “Oh, that’s my girlfriend,” people go, “There’s a story there.” Because you’re either divorced or commitment-phobic, or why do you have a girlfriend when you’re 50? So they know there’s a story there. And I get that. I get it, because if someone says, “Oh, that’s my boyfriend,” it’s like, all right, well, that could be for a week. That could be nothing. “Oh, that’s my boyfriend.” “My husband?” “Oh, okay, that’s her husband. She’s got some authority there.” So I get that there’s this idea that we want to say… It’s like when you’re a little kid, “This is my friend, but this is my best friend.” “This is my best friend.” But how many adults still need to say that? How many adults still need to say, “Oh, my friend Todd and I, and my best friend Tom and I…” So the extra special friend—do they get health insurance with that? What is the deal with that?
So I think that’s kind of what marriage has become. It’s like, you know, “Well, the person I love—no, no, but the person I love.” There are a lot of people I love. I wouldn’t want to be married to any of them, but there are a lot of people I love. And I love my ex-wife. I wouldn’t want to be married to her. I think she loves me; she wouldn’t want to be married to me. I don’t blame her. I’m a great ex-husband. I’m a terrible husband. I’m a great ex-husband, because the skill set for an ex-husband is totally different than the skill set for a husband. The skill set for a father is completely different than that of a husband. That’s the thing I have to tell people all the time. People say, “Well, he’s a terrible husband, so he shouldn’t have custody of the kids.” I’m like, “Where’s the overlap between being a good husband and being a good father?” Being a good father is a whole different skill. You can be a great husband and a shitty father, and you can be an amazing father and a terrible husband. There’s very little overlap in those skill sets. Maybe good listening skills would be helpful in both, or patience would be good in both, but that’s true of almost anything. A doctor and a lawyer, both would be good if you had good listening skills—it doesn’t mean they’re the same profession.
Is divorce harder on women or men?
That’s a great question. I think it’s equally hard on both, but I think that the world is more sympathetic to women when they get divorced. I think when a woman gets cheated on, the man’s a piece of shit. When a woman cheats on a man, she must have been forced into the arms of this other man, or she had to explore herself, or she was being neglected in some fashion. If a man cheats, he’s a piece of garbage. If a man’s wife cheats, he must not have been meeting her needs. There’s a presumption that the man is to blame a lot of the time. Now again, marriage equality has been a thing for a while, so there are tons of gay couples. So you have two men, two women divorcing each other. That hasn’t really shaken out too much yet, in terms of how that plays out. I don’t know if it’s that gay and lesbian couples are better at it than heterosexual couples, or if they’re still in the honeymoon period because marriage equality hasn’t been around that long.
But I think men find a less sympathetic world, but in fairness, divorced men have it a little easier, I think. Divorced men meet a young woman, and the woman’s like, “Instant family—just add me! That’s great.” If he’s got kids, it’s like, “Oh, he’s got kids. Look how nurturing he is and how lovely.” Women get divorced, they’ve got kids, guys are like, “Nope, it’s got baggage. I’m not going near that.” So I think men and women have different problems post-divorce, and the world could be better to both of them.
I have some women who—I’ve done their divorce, and whatever guy is with them is going to be very lucky, because they’re beautiful, they’re smart, they’re good moms, but they’re also vibrant, exciting women. Now they’re loaded and they’ve got money. They don’t have as much financial insecurity, although I have to tell you, that’s the last remaining feminist taboo. I’ve got a lot of women paying alimony these days. Women marry the handsome musician who’s not successful, or the artist. There’s a lot of… Listen, there’s been a significant effort in our culture in the last decade, if anyone didn’t notice, to improve the situation of women. If you have an equally qualified man and an equally qualified woman, the woman’s the diversity hire, the man’s not. So I have a lot of women who, when they get told, “Oh yeah, no, you gotta give him half your shit,” or “Oh no, you gotta pay alimony, because he makes 50 grand a year and you make 250,” they could be the staunchest feminist in the world. And when you tell them they’ve got to pay alimony, they’re like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. He’s a man. He’s got a strong back; he can get out there and work.” Suddenly the whole “gender is a construct and there’s no such thing” goes right out the window. That’s gone when you’ve got to pay alimony.
I have very, very staunchly feminist clients who changed their mind about how feminist they were when they got told they were going to have to pay alimony. But I do have a lot of men who won’t take alimony even though they’re entitled to it, because there’s just some feeling of, “Yeah, no, I’m not doing that.” It’s emasculating. Like, if she tells people that we know that I took alimony from her, people think I’m less than a man. So again, it’s all gender stuff. It’s still out there, still part of the zeitgeist. We’re still trying to figure it all out.
How many marriages are genuinely happy, do you think?
How many married couples? Gosh, because I see married couples that have been married a decade or two, and they’re having dinner, and they’re having the same conversation they had yesterday, the day before, the day before that, the weeks and months before that.
Here’s what I’ll tell you: I know a lot of people, and I think I know one couple that has a genuinely happy marriage.
What do you think the secret is?
They really like each other. I don’t know. They’re really good to each other. I have to tell you, they make me very uncomfortable. I jokingly—my ex-wife and I jokingly say that they’re the reason we got divorced, because we’ve known them since we were in college. We went to Disney with them, with their kids and our kids, when all the kids were little. We were gonna go on a ride with our kids and their kids, and they were like, “Oh, we’ll take the kids on the ride, you guys can go.” My friend was like, “Oh good, we’re just gonna go walk and hold hands.” And they walked away holding hands. And we looked at them and we didn’t say anything to each other. But five years later, when we got divorced, I said, “You know, when I saw the two of them together, I thought, I don’t feel like that about her.” And she said, “Oh my God, I remember that exact moment. I felt the same way.” So I think they make people uncomfortable. When you see someone who’s got it right—this guy just loves her. He loves her. They’ve been married 25 years, and dude, it’s like he’s talking about a girl he met yesterday. And she’s the same way about him. She’s…
A miracle when that happens.
Yeah, I just think… Look, I tell people marriage is like the lottery. You are probably not going to win. But if you win, what you win is so good. I don’t know, maybe you buy a ticket. Fuck it. Buy the ticket. But buy a ticket and get a prenup. Do you take all your money and buy lottery tickets? No. I don’t buy lottery tickets. You’re not gonna fucking win. Set the money on fire; it’ll be more fun. But if somebody said to me, “No, man, once a week I buy 20 dollars worth of lottery tickets,” all right, go for it. Somebody’s gotta win. Maybe it’ll be you. Same thing with marriage: somebody’s gotta win. I’ve met hundreds, if not thousands, of couples, and I know one that is legitimately happy and really seem to just feed that happiness by that marriage that they have. And they both, as individuals, have become the best version of themselves by being… you know what? They won the lottery. So buy the ticket, I guess. But don’t make that your retirement plan. Don’t go, “Well, I’m not saving money for my kids’ college because I’m buying lottery tickets.” You’re an idiot if you’re doing that.
Excellent, Jim. Thank you so much for sharing your story and your thoughts on marriage and love and divorce. Fascinating topic, isn’t it?
Yeah, it is, and I suspect it will continue to be. I don’t know that we’re going to culturally get any better at it, but the economy is good, we’re busy; economy’s bad, we’re busy. We’re a recession-proof industry. Even COVID didn’t slow us down.
Probably sped you up.
Well, people said, “For better or for worse.” They didn’t say “for lunch.” When you’re locked in the house together, that was not great for most marriages. It was not, “Hey, we should all spend more time together.” There were a lot of difficult conversations that came out of that. Barbers and divorce lawyers—when the pandemic ended, the lines were out the door. So whatever the next thing is, we’ll still be here.
All right, thank you so much.
You got it, man.
