The Invisible Force Destroying Marriages — A Top Divorce Lawyers Warning Signs

Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett, featuring James Sexton, one of New York's top divorce lawyers. 126 minutes of raw, emotional wisdom about love, marriage, prenups, and what it really takes to stay together.

James Sexton has spent 25 years destroying marriages in courtrooms, and he just dropped the most devastating relationship insight you will ever hear. The number one reason a successful man's wife will walk into his office asking for a divorce is not cheating. It is not money. It is not fighting. It is slippage. Tiny, almost invisible disconnections that nobody thinks are worth addressing until the flood has already destroyed everything. And the context for this conversation makes it even more powerful. Steven Bartlett just proposed to his fiancee, and he brought in the world's most experienced divorce lawyer to help him not mess it up.

The Number One Marriage Killer That Nobody Sees Coming

The most dangerous threat to any relationship is not a single catastrophic betrayal. It is what Sexton calls slippage, the gradual accumulation of small disconnections that individually mean nothing but collectively destroy everything. No single raindrop is responsible for the flood, he says. The pattern is always the same. Two people who once made each other their absolute priority slowly begin letting life push the relationship down the rankings. The entrepreneur who used to send spontaneous messages starts losing 14 hours without checking in. The partner who used to feel like the most important person in the room starts feeling like an afterthought.

Sexton has watched this play out hundreds of times from behind his desk. A woman sits across from him wanting to divorce a man who is a great provider, a great protector, and genuinely a good person. The reason is almost never dramatic. She simply stopped feeling seen. She slipped in the rankings of things that matter to him, and by the time either of them noticed, the distance had become a chasm. The cognitive bias that keeps Sexton in business forever is that people just do not want temporary discomfort. Our aversion to pain beats our desire for joy every single time. He referenced the opiate crisis to make his point. There is a reason the opiate crisis was bigger than the cocaine crisis. One drug removes pain. The other provides pleasure. The human drive to escape pain, any scientist will tell you, is the controlling aspect of self.

People spot the slippage in the moment but tell themselves it is not big enough to address. That little raindrop, it is just a little raindrop. And that is the fallacy that funds an entire industry of divorce lawyers. The feeling that if I bring this up, it will turn into a whole thing. So instead of a five minute conversation about a small disconnection, you get ten years of accumulated distance that ends with someone sitting in Sexton's office at a thousand dollars an hour.

Steven Bartlett admitted on camera that his natural operating mode makes this a real danger for him. When he is working, the only thing in his head is the work. He can lose 14 hours and forget to check in with his fiancee entirely. It is not that he does not love her. His brain simply goes all in on whatever is in front of him. Sexton's response was pointed. That same intensity that makes him successful will be the thing that quietly dismantles his relationship if he does not build systems to counteract it. Bartlett shared that he recently told his fiancee he would FaceTime her every day while traveling, even if just for one minute. Sexton found that beautiful. You are still trying to figure out how to be better at this, he said. That is amazing.

The Five Minute Exercise That Could Save Your Marriage

If you do not have five minutes a week to devote to your relationship, then you need hours. Sexton borrows from a story attributed to the Dalai Lama where a busy executive says he does not have 15 minutes a day to meditate, and the Dalai Lama responds that he should meditate for an hour then. The same principle applies to love.

The exercise is deceptively simple. Once a week, tell your partner three things you love about them. Make them different every week. The advanced version adds three more layers. Tell them three things they did this week that made you feel loved. Tell them three things you could have done better. And if you want to end on something fun, tell them three things they did that made you want to have sex with them. That is the entire system. Five minutes a week. It sounds absurd that something so simple could prevent divorce, but Sexton insists that this kind of regular preventative maintenance is all most relationships actually need.

He drew a comparison that immediately landed. If you walked into someone's house and saw The Power of Habit on the table, you would think, look at that person, still sharpening the point of the spear. But if you saw How to Stay in Love on the table, you would think, oh no, are things okay with them? Why is it admirable to work on your career but somehow embarrassing to work on your relationship? We go for the job interview, we get the job, and for a while everything is exciting. Three years later we are complaining about the commute. We never remember that at some point, this relationship was something we aspired to. We wanted this so badly.

When Bartlett suggested some partners would cringe at this exercise, Sexton had zero patience. Dave can not name three things he likes about you? Really, Dave? Is that a big ask? He can get down on one knee, buy a ring, commit his entire life, but he cannot identify three things he appreciates? Sexton believes the real terror is not about the exercise at all. It is about the fear that we are fundamentally unworthy of love. Most people's deepest fear is that if you knew the real me, all the weakness, all the selfish thoughts, all the dark corners, you could not possibly love me. So we love the character the other person is playing, the version that hides all those things. And we are terrified to look any deeper because what if they stop loving the real version?

Why Men and Women Destroy Relationships Differently

From 25 years of facilitating the end of marriages, Sexton has observed a clear and consistent pattern. His practice is roughly an even split between men and women, many of them very high achieving or married to someone who is. Men get caught cheating more often than women. That does not mean they cheat more. It means they cheat in more scattershot, stupid ways. When a woman cheats, in Sexton's professional experience, it is usually a signal that the relationship is already completely over. It is a soft landing or a final confirmation that she has moved on. When a man cheats, he has had hundreds sit across from him saying the exact same thing. It had nothing to do with my wife. I love my wife. I just do not know why I did it.

Sexton compared it to potato chips in the cabinet. You know you should not eat them. You want vibrant health. But at 8 PM when you are tired and feel like you deserve something, if they are there, you are eating them. We are human, he said. There are times when we are lonely or hungry or angry or tired and the warmth of connection with another person, the thrill of flirtation, the excitement of energy between you and someone you are attracted to, it is very normal. The problem is not the desire. The problem is failing to think about consequences in the moment. Discipline is trading what you want now for what you want most, and sometimes it is impossibly hard to keep what you want most in your line of sight.

The presenting reason someone gives for divorce is never the real reason. They will say I met someone else, or she betrayed me, or we had a terrible fight and said things we cannot take back. But underneath every single one of those explanations is the same thing. We lost the plot. That photo of the proposal, that moment of tremendous optimism, it was the end of one chapter and the start of another. And the story slowly drifted until neither person could find their way back to the characters they used to be.

How to Navigate Conflict Without Destroying Everything

Sexton revealed one of his courtroom trade secrets and then applied it directly to relationships. His job is manipulating people's emotional states. He wants the judge to like his client, dislike the other side, and feel emotionally connected to the narrative he is constructing. That is what trial lawyers do. And he argued that the same tools, used honestly, should be applied in romantic relationships.

The key insight is about framing. When something has gone wrong in a relationship, the natural instinct is to frame it as a problem. Something is going wrong. As soon as someone hears that, the defensive walls go up. Well, I did not mean to do it wrong. It is not my fault. Now you are in a fight instead of a conversation. But if you reframe it as something has changed, the dynamics shift entirely. Have you noticed that our tone has changed when we argue? Is it just me? I do not know if it is something I have done, but I would appreciate you telling me. Now it is a non-defensive dialogue. Nobody is being accused. You are simply noting that something feels different from how it used to be.

He used the example of sexual frequency, one of the most common complaints in his practice. There is a way to bring it up that will blow up in your face immediately. We are not having sex as much. We are not having enough oral sex. That leads straight to well, you have not been around, which leads to well, I would not have to work so much if you did not spend so much, and within thirty seconds you are in a full argument. But if instead you say, remember when we went away that weekend? Remember how connected and close we felt? I love when we feel like that. Lately it feels like maybe we are not as close, and if there is something I am doing, I really want to get it right. That is the same conversation about the same problem, but framed in a way that invites connection instead of conflict.

He also shared a counterintuitive tactic he uses with aggressive opposing lawyers. When someone comes at him hard, his first move is to apologize. I am sorry. If I said something that made you feel disrespected, I apologize. The other person has no choice but to de-escalate. Oh no, that is just my tone. And suddenly everyone is calmer. He argued this same principle works beautifully in romantic relationships. Apologizing first is not weakness. It is a strategic act of humility that opens the door to real conversation.

The Prenup Conversation That Changes Everything

When Bartlett asked whether he should get a prenup, Sexton did not hesitate for even a second. Your marriage already has a prenup, he said. It is either written by you and your partner, or it is written by the state legislature. The same government that runs the DMV. The same legislature that changes with every election cycle. You have been to the DMV. Have you walked in and thought, these people should make the rules for my marriage? Do you trust politicians you have never met more than the person you chose out of 8 billion people?

Using M&Ms as a physical demonstration right there on the table, Sexton showed how marriage creates three buckets. Yours, mine, and ours. He put some M&Ms in each pile. A prenup simply defines which is which. Without one, in California after seven years, everything becomes community property. Every asset, every liability, all subject to identification, valuation, and division. And he has seen people who strategically time their divorce filings to hit specific thresholds. He has clients right now who are waiting six months to file because at the twenty year mark, the alimony formula kicks up to another level.

He then described the nightmare scenario using Bartlett's own podcast as an example. In a divorce without a prenup, her lawyer would argue the podcast is worth a billion dollars. His lawyer would argue it is worth nothing. They would hire dueling partisan experts who would produce wildly different valuations. The cigarette companies had doctors willing to testify that cigarettes were good for you, Sexton said. You can find an expert to say almost anything if you pay them enough. Meanwhile, both sides are paying a thousand dollars an hour in legal fees while this plays out over years.

Bartlett shared that a friend's divorce took seven years. The opposing lawyer started in a small office and now has a skyscraper funded entirely by his friend's legal fees. The depression on his friend's face from the process was what finally convinced Bartlett he needed a prenup. His fiancee was not only supportive but wanted her own assets protected too, which Sexton said is exactly how it should work. Both partners should want to feel safe.

For anyone afraid to bring up prenups with their partner, Sexton was direct. If you are scared to mention a prenup, you definitely need to mention a prenup. Because what that fear really means is you are afraid to have a hard conversation. And if you are getting married, hard conversations are coming at you fast for the rest of your life. He also mentioned his creation of trusted petnup dot com, a free resource for couples who share pets, because companion animal custody cases are becoming increasingly common in courts.

The Divorce Lawyer Who Cried About Love

The most striking thing about James Sexton is the contradiction he embodies. He is one of New York's most feared courtroom lawyers. He manipulates people's emotional states for a living. He compares himself to Yo-Yo Ma with a cello when he is in front of a judge. And yet he cries on camera talking about love, multiple times during this conversation.

He spent his entire thirties and forties trying to kill the soft, warm, empathetic part of himself. He thought the final form was a machine, a mercenary who could weaponize his talent and dominate everything in his path. His ex-wife told him something that haunted him for years. You will never love any woman as much as you love the law. Every woman who you ever meet will be playing second fiddle to how much you love being in a courtroom. You are great in a courtroom and you have no idea what to do in your living room. In his living room, he was completely paralyzed. The courtroom had defined rules, a cadence, a clear goal. Relationships had none of that.

What changed was discovering that these two seemingly opposite forces, the razor-sharp litigator and the man who weeps watching Love on the Spectrum and cannot make it through an episode without crying three or four times, are not enemies. They are authentic aspects of the same person. The empathy makes him a better lawyer because he can put himself in the heads of every person in the room. The toughness gives him the spine to tell clients the truth they do not want to hear. His first thought with a new client is often not how do I win this case but is this person accurately perceiving their situation? He has referred people to therapy instead of taking their case when he senses that the marriage might not actually be over.

This duality was shaped by a childhood with an alcoholic father and an overwhelmed mother. At nine years old, he was a lonely kid in a room with a Bruce Lee poster and a Chuck Norris poster, obsessed with martial arts because it offered a superpower that discipline could build. When he needed something as a child, the response was not of course, let me help you. It was what is wrong with you? Can you not do that yourself? That shame trained him to be independent in everything. He cooks amazingly well. He is good at almost anything he puts his mind to. But it took him decades to realize that the same independence that built his career was the greatest obstacle in every relationship he ever had.

The Most Shameful Parenting Moment and What It Teaches

Sexton's most revealing confession was about his son, now 28 and married, a lawyer himself. When the boy was five or six, he was crying about something relatively minor, and Sexton grabbed him, not roughly, and said control yourself. Calm down and control yourself. The boy managed to do it. And twenty years later, Sexton is still ashamed of that moment.

He understands now what was really happening in that exchange. Multiple things at once. He could not stand to see his son in pain. Seeing the boy cry made him deeply uncomfortable because he loved him so much. He also wanted to transmit a message from his own father's playbook, the world is not going to be nice to you if it sees your feelings, so find a way to hide them. And underneath all of that was a seven year old version of Sexton still running the show, the little boy who was told his needs did not matter and who learned that the only safe thing to do was to control everything.

But that was the wrong message. We should not be telling people, especially boys, to control their feelings. The difference between controlling feelings and being governed by transient emotions is subtle but critical. Sexton believes the only question that matters at the start of therapy is what is it I am afraid to feel? Because most of our avoidance behaviors, our addictions, our work obsessions, our inability to sit still, they all trace back to feelings we are running from.

Work is his favorite narcotic, he said. The best definition of addiction he ever heard was from a therapist named Dave Klugman. Addiction is anything you do to get away from feeling what you would have felt if you had done nothing at all. The most productive periods of Sexton's life always coincided with the most painful personal moments. Getting divorced, his mother dying, something awful happening. He took tremendous comfort in the feeling of control and competence at work because those were feelings he could manufacture when the feelings he actually needed were too terrifying to face.

Independence Versus Connection and the Cost of Building a Castle

Bartlett raised an observation that clearly hit a nerve. He noticed that the most independent people he knows struggle the most with relationships. They have built their own castle with a moat around it. And society glorifies this. Be your own boss. Stand on your own two feet. Dependency is not cool. But if independence and connection are on opposite ends of a spectrum, then the thing we celebrate is the exact thing that makes love hardest.

Sexton agreed completely. He used to view the world in terms of two warring versions of himself. There was the lead pipe cruelty and mercenary sensibility version, the one that built his career. And there was this other part that got misty eyed talking about love and cried when he thought about dogs. For decades he tried to beat the soft version out of himself and keep only the machine. He blared Nine Inch Nails on his headphones trying to become harder. It never worked.

What he eventually learned, partly through this unexpected public career talking about feelings, is that there are not two warring forces. There are two authentic aspects of self that have to learn to dance together. Sometimes the tough, focused version should lead. Sometimes the warm, empathetic version should lead. Men in particular have been taught a rigidity where you either get to be Clint Eastwood or Richard Simmons. And Sexton thinks that binary is a lie. He has spent twenty years on the Brazilian jiu-jitsu mat and some of the men who could snap your neck with their thumb are the warmest, most lovely people he has ever met.

Gray Divorce, the Rising Tide, and Why Love Is All That Matters

The conversation turned to a statistical trend that is reshaping the divorce landscape. While millennial and Gen Z divorce rates have actually declined because younger people are marrying later, cohabiting first, and being more selective, divorce rates for people over 50 have doubled since 1990. For people over 65, they have tripled. Sexton calls this gray divorce and attributes it to several converging factors. People are living much longer and much healthier lives. Erectile dysfunction medication alone has transformed what a seventy or eighty year old's romantic life looks like. Hormone replacement therapy has changed the game. And the stigma around divorce has largely evaporated. It is no longer seen as a moral catastrophe.

At its core, Sexton said, these older people are looking at their remaining years and deciding that staying in an unhappy relationship is no longer the only option. They have the health, the finances, and the social permission to start over. Whether this is a positive development or a sign of societal decay depends entirely on your perspective.

Sexton ended on a note that was equal parts simple and devastating. When you look back on your life at whatever stage, the moments where you felt most glad to be alive were usually moments where you felt loved or where you got to feel tremendous love for someone else. Celebrity and professional success, he said from personal experience, are really just the praise of strangers. Lovely, like a sugar substitute, but not the real thing. The hardest thing to become is yourself, your authentic self. And really all any of us want is to be loved and to be worthy of love. Everything else is noise.

His closing moment was the most emotional of the entire conversation. When asked about his most significant dream from the past year, Sexton described dreaming about his mother, who died ten years ago after a long battle with cancer. In the dream, she just sat there silently while he talked. She was patting his leg. She did not say a word. He woke up feeling calm, like he had actually spent time with her. The message he took from it was that sometimes the words get in the way and what matters most is just being next to someone. Since that dream, he has been trying to do that more with the people he loves. Just stop talking and be present. For a man who makes his living with words, that might be the hardest practice of all.

Key Takeaways

One, the number one marriage killer is slippage, tiny disconnections that nobody addresses because temporary discomfort feels worse than long-term erosion. Two, a five minute weekly exercise of sharing three things you love about your partner can prevent years of drift. Three, men and women both cheat, but men do it stupidly and impulsively while women do it as a final signal that the relationship is over. Four, frame relationship problems as something has changed rather than something is wrong to avoid triggering defensive responses. Five, every marriage already has a prenup written by the government, and you should write your own before politicians you have never met write it for you. Six, the soft parts of you and the tough parts are not enemies, they are authentic aspects of self that make each other stronger. Seven, the only question that matters in therapy is what am I afraid to feel, because most of our destructive behaviors are just escape routes from emotions we cannot face. Eight, the greatest gift in any relationship is helping someone become the most authentic version of themselves, not the version you wish they were.