What Actually Predicts Divorce, and What Women Really Want in a Partner — ft. James Sexton

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Scott Galloway (1:32)

Welcome to Prof G on Relationships, a special two-part series about love, marriage, and what it takes to make a partnership last. We're joined by divorce attorney and author James Sexton, who's become a bit of a like almost like a relationship guru, having seen kind of the other side of what a successful relationship look like. Together, we're going to try to answer questions about what predicts divorce, how couples maintain both fairness and desire, and what we've learned from navigating complicated relationships. James, it's great to see you.

James Sexton (2:01)

Yeah, good to see you too, Scott. Always fun.

Scott Galloway (2:04)

Yeah, the algorithm is clearly, and I feel as if I know you better than I do because I'm getting so much insight into you. I really enjoy your social media presence and your ability to break stuff down.

James Sexton (2:19)

I really appreciate it, man. I think we've run a lot of parallel paths in terms of not only our NYU affiliations, but also our status as divorced men who had children and kind of been through the whole experience of it and talk a lot about the intersection between relationships and work and life and balance and how to try to get the whole thing right. So and also you really saw me through the entire pandemic. I listened to Pivot just nonstop over and over. Between Pivot and the Peloton bike, it was like the only thing that kind of kept me sane. So I feel like I'm in your servitude forever now.

Scott Galloway (2:54)

All right, let's roll. So neither of us have seen these questions. The question number one comes from Jacob Stav on Instagram. Which is the most important predictor of a divorce and the one for keeping a relationship?

Go for it, James.

James Sexton (3:07)

You know, I think the biggest predictor of divorce is something subtle on that, is just disconnection between two people. I think everybody looks for like the big relationship killers, you know, like people who are in open relationships or people who, you know, sometimes that's the blood in the water, you know, of the relationship being in distress. But I think it's actually much more subtle than that. I think people get divorced and their relationships fall apart the same way that I think Thomas Wolfe said, people go bankrupt very slowly and then all at once. So I think it's a lot of little small pieces of disconnection that eventually just catastrophically lead to the failure.

Scott Galloway (3:42)

You have a great story about one of your clients and it involved granola. Do you know what I'm talking about?

Can you talk about the story?

James Sexton (3:50)

Yeah. I mean, you know, I talk about it in the book too where I had a client, very put together beautiful young woman in her thirties, and she was getting divorced, two young kids. He was a successful guy in finance. And you know, you spend a lot of time with people when you, you know, you go a lot of miles when you're their divorce lawyer and you get to know them really well in a very candid way. And I was just sitting outside of the courthouse with her and we were chatting. I was drinking espresso on a lunch break. And I just said something along the lines of like, when did you realize that the relationship was over? And she told me a story about how there was granola, this particular type of granola that she would put every morning in her yogurt, and they only sold it at this one Whole Foods. And she said he used to just always buy the granola for her. She never had to ask for it. He didn't ask for like, you know, what Chris Williamson calls good boy points. You know, we do something for our significant other, and we go, oh babe, did you see what I did? He would just do it. And she said it made her always feel so loved. And at some point she said, you know, the granola just ran out.