The Ultimate Guide to Divorce (For You & The People You Love)

The Mel Robbins Podcast

In this episode, Mel Robbins and world-renowned divorce attorney James Sexton provide a comprehensive guide to navigating the six stages of

Key takeaways

James Sexton identifies five specific scenarios where divorce is necessary: abuse, the 'false self,' stolen reality, unrepentant repeat behavior, and the 'shrinking marriage.'
The 'pre-contemplative' stage of divorce is characterized by a sense of malaise or 'smoke' without an active conflict.

Main topics

The six stages of divorce
Signs that divorce is necessary

Notable quotes

The damage is optional.

Conclusion

This episode serves as a practical toolkit for anyone navigating or su

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I am so glad that you are here with me right now because this conversation is a conversation that I've been wanting to have ever since I started this podcast four years ago. This episode is the ultimate guide to divorce for you and the people that you love, and we are creating it. with the world's number one divorce attorney, James Sexton. I am so excited that he is here in our Boston studios because he is going to break down what he calls the six stages of divorce. He's going to walk you through every stage, what to do, what not to do. And he's also going to make this point. Divorce impacts every single person you know. Maybe you're going through it. Maybe you're thinking about it. Maybe you're struggling to move on after one, or maybe someone you love is going through a divorce right now. No matter where you are, the more informed you are, the better equipped you are going to be, the better you will navigate it yourself or be able to support the people that you love who are going through it. I am so excited for you to have this life-changing resource as a free guide for the rest of your life, and I cannot wait for you to experience this conversation. Speaker 1 (1:28) For many of us, going further isn't a choice. It's a feeling we can't ignore because ambition has a way of outgrowing where it began, turning dreams into direction. Every journey brings us closer to the life we imagine. Speaker 1 (1:51) So, where will your journey take you? Etihad. Beyond borders. Speaker 3 (2:02) Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I am absolutely thrilled that you're here today. It's such an honor to be together, to spend this time with you. If you're a new listener or you're here because somebody shared this episode with you, I just want to take a moment and personally welcome you to the Mel Robbins Podcast family. Today, you are getting the ultimate guide to divorce for you and the people that you love with one of my favorite guests that we have ever had on the Mel Robbins Podcast, the one and only James Sexton. For over 20 years, He has been one of the top divorce attorneys in the world. He's helped couples deal with the reality of a marriage ending practically, emotionally, and legally. He's a graduate of Fordham Law School, holds a master's degree from NYU in persuasive speech and rhetoric, and you're about to experience that today. Today, he is going to give you a comprehensive guide. He's going to share all the advice that you and your loved ones need to know before you get a divorce, what to do during a divorce, and... how to build your life afterwards. So please help me welcome back James Sexton to the Mel Robbins Podcast. Speaker 2 (3:06) Thank you. It's so good to be here again. I Speaker 3 (3:08) am so thrilled that you said yes to this because when I first had you on the show and you and I had one of the single best conversations about relationships, you taught me four words. And those four words are, you're my favorite person. And those four words are the secret. to having lasting love. And I'm celebrating my 30th wedding anniversary this year with Chris. And we say you're my favorite person every single day to one another. And it has really improved what was already a really great marriage. And so I cannot thank you enough for not only making a difference in my life, but after that conversation, I said to you, You are the number one divorce attorney in the United States. If Chris and I were getting a divorce and I found out he hired you, I would need a diaper. Not because you're mean, but because you're exceptional. And I said to you after our first conversation, would you come back and do a comprehensive guide on divorce and cover everything? Because most of us, if we go through that or if our loved ones do, would never be able to hire you. And you said yes. And I would love to have you speak to the person who's listening and share with them what are we going to cover today and how do you want them to think about this conversation in terms of it being a life-changing resource for them or people that they love. who may be going through divorce or may be considering divorce or may have gone through one and still can't get their power and their life back? Speaker 2 (4:57) I mean, I think our first conversation was more the physics of things, and this one's more the emergency room. Divorce is so common, increasingly more common in terms of the, you know, what we'll talk about later as being sort of the passive divorce, where people stay married. They don't do the paperwork, but they just have checked out of the marriage. So really what I hope... you know, everyone will walk out of here with today in a very tangible way is the realization that, A, if a marriage can be saved, that there are some points where that can happen early on in the process. But if it can't be or it shouldn't be, and those are two different things, that there are ways that we can manage what's happening here. A lot of people treated divorce like the weather. Like it's something that happened to them. And that's not true. It's a process. And it's a process you have a tremendous amount of control over. So hopefully people are going to walk out of this conversation with real clarity as to the levers that they have control over and the things that they should be looking at. And if you're thinking about it. I think you'll see the distinction, a key distinction between is this broken or is this unattended? Because those are two different things. Is my marriage broken or is my marriage unattended? Because they're not the same and they require two different skill sets to deal with. If someone's in a divorce, meaning they've started one or they're right in the thick of one, I think at the end of this conversation, they're going to spend less money on that divorce. They're going to hurt their children less. They're going to do less harm to themselves. And they're going to work better with the counsel that they have. If someone's been through a divorce and they're listening, Speaker 3 (6:43) I Speaker 2 (6:44) think it's going to help them frame where to put that in the Wikipedia page of their life. And where does it fit in their self-narrative and in their sense of who they are? And what second-order effects has it been having? And what second-order effects in a positive way could it have? What are the lessons that they learn from it? What are the scars they carry? And how do we see that? How do we notice it? And how do we use it for our benefit and the benefit of the people around us? And if someone's listening who loves someone who's divorced or going through a divorce, or their parents have divorced, or one of their children is divorcing, or one of their friends is divorcing, or someone who they're in a new romantic relationship with went through an ugly divorce, I think I've now just described the entire world, right? But I think those people, it's going to be, how can you be part of the structure of this person you love's life? How can you be a support to them? How can you be, because, you know, it's a table. There's this person and their spouse and the lawyer. And then there's this other leg, your friends, your family, your community, the people around you. And the thing about tables is if one leg is off, doesn't matter how nice and straight the other three legs are, that table's going to fall down. Speaker 2 (7:59) I guess when we're thinking about divorce, what I want to say to people more than anything else in this conversation is the pain isn't optional. Like, there are going to either be painful conversations to avoid divorce, or there's going to be painful steps you have to take to make it through a divorce, or how to place it in your life afterwards. But the damage is optional. The damage is optional, and there's a lot you can do. So hopefully we'll walk out of this conversation with a feeling of a little more control. Speaker 3 (8:30) Well, I have no doubt that we will. That's why I wanted you here. And I want to read to you from your first... mega bestseller, How to Stay in Love. This is page 261. And you say, sometimes getting divorced is the best thing to do. Sometimes it's the kindest thing to do. Sometimes at the risk of seeming profane, it's the loving thing to do for yourself and for your spouse. What are the biggest signs that you've seen that divorce is inevitable? Speaker 2 (9:04) There's two ways we can look at it. When is a divorce necessary? And when is a divorce likely? And those are two different things. So, you know, sometimes happily ever after means happily ever after separately. So I'm a fan of that. I think there are times where divorce is likely. And it's really worth thinking about where am I in that timeline of... the likelihood of divorce. But I want to say right at the outset, there are times where divorce is necessary. I actually think there's five times, five specific categories where divorce is necessary. One, abuse. Abuse, physical, emotional. Speaker 2 (9:46) financial threats when it comes to the children and their care. You can't be loved if you're not safe. So situations where there's abuse, divorce is likely necessary. The second one I call the false self. And that's when there's like one person in the marriage and one costume. Speaker 1 (10:04) Like Speaker 2 (10:04) there's one person being themselves and there's one person who's just pretending to be something that they're clearly not. They're pretending to be a good husband, pretending to be a fidelitous person, pretending to be a reliable person. And in fact, they're just not. And there's some revelation that happens where you realize, wait a minute, I'm not actually married to this person. There's one person and one costume in this marriage. The third I call the stolen reality. And that's where someone has decided they're going to author your life without your consent. Like that's the, you find out that the entire 401k was liquidated for their gambling. That's after it's been done. It's when you find out that they have a second family. It's when you find out that they've been in a relationship with another person for the last three years. Like that's a situation where you go, okay, what I believed was my reality was a fiction. And now I'm just getting caught back up to speed as to what's going on in my own marriage. And you'd be shocked how many times that actually happens to people. And I have a ringside seat to it when it does. The fourth one, it's kind of like an unrepentant repeat. Like somebody cheats. Somebody has said something terrible in the middle of a fight. You know, anybody who's been married to someone for more than five, you know, five months. They have what I call the nuclear codes. They have like a sentence they could say to their partner that they know would reduce them to tears. And like the nuclear codes, you can't use them more than once. And you shouldn't use them at all. Like the only way to win that game is not to play. But everyone, you've been married 30 years. There's some sentences you could say to him, he could say to you that would just hit all the soft targets. You can't love somebody and not let him see where your soft targets are. So it's like weaponized intimacy. So when I talk about like the unrepentant repeat, it's someone who has just engaged in some awful behavior. But the apology. has become something they're fluent in. Like, it's just something that they, you know, I can't believe I did this. I'll never do it again six months later. I can't believe I said that. I'll never say that again. And it just becomes a cycle that it's not ending anytime soon. It's just going to keep happening. Speaker 3 (12:15) And, you know, the fifth type Speaker 2 (12:18) of marriage that I think needs to end is, I would call it's the shrinking marriage. And that is a marriage that forces you Speaker 2 (12:25) To just become less and less and less of who you are until there's almost no sense of who you are left anymore. Speaker 1 (12:31) Like Speaker 2 (12:32) a marriage that requires you to be smaller, quieter, and less of yourself. You know, the other thing I said in our first conversation was the two wonderful things to say at the end of a marriage when hopefully it ends in death is to say, you helped me become the most authentic version of myself and you're my favorite person. And I think a good marriage is one that helps you become who you are. So the opposite of that, one that requires you to be something other than who you are in a real and increasingly frequent way, that's a marriage you need to have end. But see, leaving a marriage that can't be made safe isn't failure. I think it's not a failure at love. It's defending love. It's defending the love you have for yourself. It's defending the love that you have for your children. And it's defending... even sometimes the love you have for this other person who may not realize that they're not the most authentic version of themselves either by virtue of this connection that isn't working anymore. Speaker 3 (13:32) You say there's six stages, James, Speaker 2 (13:35) to Speaker 3 (13:36) the whole divorce process. Can you list out the six stages? Speaker 2 (13:40) Yeah, yeah. So the first is what I would call the pre-contemplative. You know, that's, I'm less happy, but... The thought of divorce hasn't entered my head yet. And I kind of haven't connected the two. Like, I don't know what's going on in me, but I'm just like not happy anymore. Like things just feel heavier than they used to. And I haven't connected yet that, oh, it's my marriage. Like it's this fundamentally important relationship in my life, in the ecosystem of my life. Speaker 1 (14:11) And Speaker 2 (14:12) you haven't made that connection yet. So that's stage one. Stage two is the contemplative. That's when the word divorce starts to enter your brain, where you start to go, huh. And the danger of that is it's a private trial that happens at 3 a.m. with no defense counsel present. Like you're just laying in bed going, you know, maybe, I mean, he really did do that. That was really unpleasant. And, you know, I did really enjoy it when he was away that one week. And it's a trial you're having in your head with no defense counsel present for the other party. But it's real. It's where you start to make this connection between, hey, my unhappiness and the status of my marriage might be tied to each other in some way. The third stage is, I think, where you decide, okay, this is it. Like, I think this has to happen. Like, I would call that the moment of decision. And that is where the deciding I'm going to do this is over. Now it's like timing, logistics, and fear. That's all. Like, when will I do it? Because, you know, my business has a busy season. Like, busy season is right after kids go back to school. and right after the holidays. Like January 2nd, gyms and divorce lawyers offices are full because everyone's going to lose 200 unwanted pounds this year in the form of their spouse or at the gym, one of the two. And so I'm going to reinvent my life. Again, as if you couldn't reinvent your life on the 15th as easy as you could on January 1st, but this is a moment of decision. Now again, also the holiday ceasefire is over. Everyone's kind of had to keep it together. Sometimes even the happiest marriage can be strained after having family over endlessly and the company holiday parties and all the stuff they had to do and all the debt you accumulated buying your children, whatever the latest gadget is, and trying to get your spouse the thing that you thought they'd like and then they didn't like it as much as you thought they'd like it. And even if they did like it as much, you didn't feel as good as you thought you would. So it's one of those things that everybody's feeling not great January 2nd. And that's the time where a lot of people come in. And when the kids go back to school, there's a summer ceasefire that seems to happen where everybody's like, all right, listen, the kids are home. It's kind of a quieter pace. Now the kids are back at school. Structure's coming into play. We got to get moving here. Then there's the like actually taking steps stage. Like the fourth stage is taking steps. You're actually doing the thing. You went and went to talk to a lawyer. You've hired a lawyer. Like the private thing becomes public. Like you're starting to let people know, yeah, the marriage is ending. The marriage is over. We're in a divorce proceeding. The fifth thing is you're in it, solidly in it. Speaker 2 (16:40) the real deal of divorce, the meat and potatoes of it, a process that makes otherwise logical people sometimes unrecognizable. Like you're really in the thick of it, you know, Walt Whitman called the hour of lead, you know, where the heaviness of reality is on you and you're just trying to get through it. And then the sixth stage is just got out. You just got out. It's over. You know, the paperwork gets done faster than your nervous system. I think everybody has this attitude when they get divorced of, Speaker 3 (17:09) well, I've been going through it for a year and a half. So yeah, I'm over it. Speaker 2 (17:13) It's like, no, no, no. When the papers actually get signed and everything's officially done and you paid that last bill to the lawyer and now you close the door to the thing, that's when grief begins. That's when healing really begins. And that's the part where a lot of people just want to move on to the next thing. And they'd rather... get a dating app before they get a therapist. And that's backwards. So those are really the six stages. Speaker 3 (17:40) I want to go through them one by one. So let's talk about the first one, pre-contemplative. You haven't put the word divorce in your mind yet, Speaker 2 (17:48) but Speaker 3 (17:48) you're starting to feel unhappy, heavy. Something's off. Speaker 2 (17:53) Yeah. The hard part about this is it looks like nothing. It just doesn't look like anything. Like it's just, that's the problem. It's just nothing. There's just a malaise kind of happening. It's not fighting. It's not anger. Anger, anger still implies priority. Like it's flatness, right? Like it's not a marriage that's broken. It's one that's been unattended for so long. It doesn't look like a marriage anymore. It's like roommates running a daycare center or just roommates with a dog in common. Or it's just people that are just, it's a machine running a program that doesn't make sense anymore, but this is the program that we picked. You know, and I said it in one of our other conversations that a lot of people get married because marriage is a tradition. And to some degree, tradition is the wisdom of the people who came before us and the things, the lessons they had to teach us about what has value. And tradition is also peer pressure exerted by dead people. So if you're married, because, well, yeah, we're married. Like, that's the thing you do. Like, we're married. Like, okay, but like, you're not, are you paying attention to this anymore? Does this have value to you anymore? What do you do to add value to it? What value do you derive from it? Is it by default or is it by design? What is this marriage? The pre-contemplative stage for me is like, nobody's asking questions of each other anymore with an actual question mark in it. The conversations are all about logistics of the day and nothing to do with each other. Like if you sat down in front of your partner and said for 10 minutes, we have to talk, but it can't be about our jobs, our kids, or something logistical related to our house. Would you just stare at each other with the sound of crickets happening? Like, is there anything really between you? Because when you met, there was you and me and then we. And then sometimes the we becomes everything and the you and the me is completely gone. So the question is, when you're sitting across from this person, what's still there? And to me, the most divisive sound starts to appear. And that's this sound. Speaker 1 (19:57) Or. Speaker 2 (20:00) All right. Yeah. Like it's just this this sense of, you know, contempt, this sense of like your partner's an inconvenience. What are you saying? Yeah. All right. Whatever. You know, that's to me the sound of the smoke. Speaker 3 (20:14) It's Speaker 2 (20:14) not fire yet, but that's the smoke. That's the pre contemplative stage. Speaker 3 (20:18) So if somebody is in that stage right now. Yeah. What do you want to tell them? You Speaker 2 (20:23) can have 10 awkward minutes or so of conversation with your partner. Speaker 2 (20:31) Or you can let it start to become a flood and then you're going to end up with therapists or mediators or lawyers involved. So I think there's value in looking at your marriage, sitting down with your partner and saying, hey, can we have a conversation about this, about us? Like, let's look at what we do. Because what, look, you've written books. I've written books. What's a book? Books is like people doing things and saying things, right? Okay. So. This is a story we're writing as a couple. What do we do every day? Why do we do it? Why do we do it that way? Why do we put the mugs in the cabinet where we put them? Is it just because the first day when we moved in, we just put them there and then we just left them there? Because it was like, oh yeah, that's where the mugs go? Or was it like, oh, why are the mugs there and the coffee makers over there? Like we never stopped and just went, yeah, because your brother put the mugs up there when he helped us move in five years ago. Because it's just, oh, that became where the mugs go. Like there's so much of that in people's marriages. So true. Like, why don't we eat dinner in this room instead of that room? Why don't we put our phones over here when we talk to each other? Why don't we go on Saturdays anymore to the farmer's market together? Why did we stop having sex in the couch? Why did we stop? Like, why did we stop? Again, there might be very reasonable answers. There might be really good, but just would it take that much to stop and go, hey, let's look at our life together, our day to day. Because again, doesn't matter what I know, matters what I can prove. I want to see the evidence. Let's look at our day to day life. Let's take a week in our life. Why do we do this this way? Is it by default? Is it by design? If it's by design, great, you're a step ahead. If it's by default. Speaker 3 (22:13) Should Speaker 2 (22:13) we maybe do it different? Would it feel different? Would it feel better? Would we feel better? Would it maybe put us in a better place together? And I think there's tremendous value in that. There's an invisible contract that happens in marriages. Why wouldn't you say it out loud? You're bound by it already. Why wouldn't you say it out loud and decide, we're the two people to this contract. We can renegotiate at any time we want to if it's not working for either or both of us. So that's what... When you take action in the pre-contemplative stage, you can actually do something worth. The conversation you're avoiding is the cheapest today it will ever be. What do you Speaker 3 (22:52) mean by that? Speaker 2 (22:53) The price tag of silence in a marriage can be my bill. It can be millions of dollars. Or it could be 10 uncomfortable minutes with your spouse. Or one uncomfortable afternoon. Like the price of that conversation with your spouse is the lowest today it's ever going to be.