Why Getting Rich DOUBLES Your Chances of Divorce (feat. Bill Perkins)

When men win the lottery, nothing really changes. When women win the lottery, the only really big change in their behavior is divorce.

The 10 richest men also have 13 divorces between them.

Oh, shit.

My divorce was, like, the biggest failure of my life.

You just pick your human that you think is the best person for you, and then you work at it.

You can do something good alone. Yeah, great. No.

Men usually come to therapy to try to stay, and women come to therapy to try to leave.

I'm just not a good human to be partnered to.

If you assume that your relationship is passively stable, you'll wake up one day to divorce paper. Having another human to stand beside and knowing that you choose one other person to go through time with is a superpower. Welcome back. It's Cody Sanchez, and this is the Big Deal podcast for those who don't just want to get rich, but want to be free and actually do what it takes to get there. All right, this week we are talking about something that really nobody talks about, which is the D word. Divorce. How does it happen to how many people? How much does it cost? Maybe a few ideas on how to avoid it. And I've been through this before. I was married, previously remarried, and have been through a divorce. It is not something I wish on anyone. And the second that I meet somebody going through divorce, I usually say something like, I'm so sorry. And also, congratulations. Because there's a conflicting set of emotions that happens when these things go down. And because nobody ever talks about it, I figured, let's ask some of my successful friends what it was like when they went through it. What did they learn? What would they do differently? And then let's go to the numbers and research and see what's actually going on in this world of divorce, which seems like it's increasingly more and more common. I don't know. So I think today we're going to get kind of controversial. Right, Rachel, where do you want to start? What's our contrarian idea for the day?

So I think this is going to be a really interesting topic for me and other people listening who don't have divorced parents, who I've never been married, I've never been engaged, I've never had a divorce, but I'm really interested to know how much it actually costs to get divorced and what is that aftermath, especially in the business world. And Sampar had a really funny tweet. Actually, it's not funny, but it's really interesting, I guess, to. To catch my words there. The 10 richest men also have 13 divorces between them.

Holy shit.

Yeah.

Wild.

That's a lot, right?

That's a lot. I also like Sahil Bloom's comment afterwards, though. So divorce makes you rich.

There it is. There it is.

That's the.

That's the funny part.

And this is the chart of actually the 10 richest gen and whether they got divorced or not or how many divorces they have. I thought there were a couple interesting things on here. One is like, Larry Ellison figured out how to get divorced and he likes it four times. That's tough. Obviously, we know Elon Musk's three. What else did you think was interesting here?

I thought it was interesting that obviously I feel like Mark Zuckerberg's wife has always been in the picture. And so I knew he wasn't divorced, but seeing that he was up here on the. On the chart, he's. I think he's number five. Seeing that he's had zero divorces amongst all these peers were. Were really interesting to me.

Yeah. So like Zuckerberg and Larry Page, only two of the, you know, top, let's say, 11 richest dudes who are not divorced, which is pretty wild. Which then makes me think, okay, so that means the divorce rate is accelerating. This is normal. We've all heard the percentage that 50% of marriages end in divorces. I just took that as sort of rote. And then we looked into it a little more, and what we actually found is that it's more like 70% of marriages in the 1990s actually made it to their 15th anniversary, and that this number is increasing from 65% for the 70s and 80s. So maybe the 50% number isn't right, first of all. But it does appear that a few things really drive divorce more increasingly. One being money. Apparently uber, uber wealth leads to optionality, which apparently leads to increasingly more people getting divorced. Then the second thing I thought was interesting was this. This tweet from Chris Williamson, which was basically like, when men win the lottery, it's kind of nothing really changes. They get married at the same rate, they have kids at the same rate. When women win the lottery, the divorce rates double. The only really big change in their behavior is divorce, which I thought was. Was really, really interesting. And then I think he had another one that surprised me also. Do you want to read what the second tweet is?

So this is from Chris Williamson, and he said people with nine or more premarital partners are 151% more likely to dissolve their marriages compared to people who tie the knot as virgins in Other words, the level of premarital sex increases the chance of divorce between twofold and threefold.

It's fucking wild. Which basically means we were talking about it like nobody ever wants to talk about body count, right? That's a weird thing to ask somebody. But now, apparently, if you've had nine or more premarital partners on either side, this isn't like, you know, what the Andrew Taters say, which is like, you know, women should be versions we off apparently on either side, dudes and chicks, they both are 151% more likely to get divorced if they've had nine or more premarital partners. And again, I don't think this says anything between your life choices, but I think knowing the numbers and not just assuming the narrative is right is like super important. And so when I look at this, I think, okay, well, I know already the odds are stacked in some ways. If you're really successful monetarily, looks like you have a higher divorce likelihood. If you've had sex with more partners or your significant other has, you might be more likely to get divorced. And also, you know, it looks like if you come into a big chunk of money, you might be more likely to get divorced. But having been through divorce myself, I know nobody actually wants that. Like, everybody talks about it, like all of a sudden, if this happens, then divorce will be rampant. Like, nobody wants to get divorced. It's an awful thing. You obviously want to make the right choice. You would never go through a wedding and all of the things and promises to a human if you thought you were going to get divorced eventually. And so I started digging into the numbers a little bit about how much divorce costs. And it's not cheap. So for the average person, the average wedding in the US is 30k, which is wild. The average cost of a divorce is like 12,000 to 100,000, obviously varying on total costs. And it takes, even without children, about 10 months. So almost a year on average. You can imagine the opportunity cost, how much time, attention, energy, it takes away from anything else you do. You probably earn a lot less during that period too, because you're focused on something else. So I don't think divorce should be something we strive for in any way, shape or form. It's awful. But then the question becomes sort of like, what do you do to not have divorce happen? And I don't profess to be some sort of expert on it, but I did think that this from Bill Perkins was really interesting on his thoughts on divorce, marriage and staying in it. Bring the Band in.

Let's go.

We're doing a series sort of on dating, relationship, divorce in general, and with the full spectrum of. I don't fucking know.

I have experience. Yes, exactly.

Like, I've been through it. I'm not an expert, not clinically trained, but one of the things that we realized is like, people don't talk that much about divorce and what they would have done differently when they're successful, right? And so I don't know if you have generalized thoughts on you've been through divorce, you're now happily remarried, you have a great family and kids, but what did you learn?

Oh, I learned how I fuck things up. To me, my divorce was like the biggest failure of my life. It took a lot of unpacking to figure out, well, how did I screw this up? How did I go from happy pictures and a wedding and well wishes or whatever to, you know what I mean?

Like, can't.

I can't do life with you, right? And so was it a mistake in the beginning? Did I do this? What could I have done better? How could I have upheld these promises, right? You know, and I say, well, at least I kept one promise. I will love you forever. Right? So that was part of it. So there was a lot of like, you know, blame. It's so uncomfortable and so painful. You want to discharge that discomfort. And the clinical definition of blame is discharging that discomfort. So I had a lot of blame, blame of other people, my ex wife, you know what I mean? The situation, you know, you know, myself at times or whatever, and it's like, okay, where did I not do my best and why didn't I do my best? And what limiting beliefs led me to this failure? So that was a lot of, you know, this could be a whole episode in itself, right? Getting there. And then, you know, what did I learn? Am I ever going to learn? Am I ever capable? You know, I came out of that, like, I'm just not a good human person to be a partner too. Like, I don't. I don't have it. Like there's these things, right? Like, I was so down on myself and I was so lost because so much of my identity was tied up to, I'm married, I have this person and. And they're there. And then when that was gone, it's like, holy, I'm in single dad line. I don't even know. I don't. I don't even know how to interact with my kids without the other person around, right? Like, there was this whole balance that was There that I wasn't really consciously aware of, you know, I knew it was there, like superficially, but like, I didn't viscerally feel. And when it was gone, I viscerally felt it. And there were so many ties that bound us that when they broke, I was like, oh, just that human being, being in the room was important to me. And so going through that, rediscovering myself, Rediscovering what I didn't even know what I liked and disliked. You know what I mean? Like I said before, I was told to go on a lot of dates, not to go get laid and not to go whatever, but just to discover what you like in people, you know. And I think that was great advice.

Now, you must like being married though, because you chose to go round two. And the first round is painful. I remember going through divorce and thinking, maybe it's cabana boys for life for me from here.

Cabana boys sounds great. When you're a woman, you go through that. The pain is, the hot stove effect is there. And particularly from my lens where I was like, okay, at the end of the day, this happened on my watch. I fucked it up. You know, the one common thing is me. Don't do it again, because you're just gonna. You're just gonna eventually, somehow, someway up. And I enjoyed my freedom. I enjoyed like this kind of like I'm not gonna get into the. The risk associated with a long term committed relationship, you know, While I was dating and while I was out there living kind of this like polyamorous dating a bunch of people life. Very, very transparent, very honest. I came to realize that of competing priorities and people have priorities like, I want to have fun and I want to have a lot of sex, or I want to do my own thing and I don't want to be my own boss or whatever. But there is a priority of partnership. And I realized that was my number one priority and that I needed to sacrifice these other priorities for that. And so it took a while for me to discover what my new priorities were. And then once that was there, I was like, okay, how do I be a good partner? What can I change from the last time? How can I be more accountable to myself and another person and can I love another person the way they deserve to be loved? And those are still open questions. But I was willing to take the risk again and go with what I deeply wanted was his partnership. And it didn't have to be a marriage, right? It could have been partnership in any kind of way. But that was the requirement for being with my partner is that. That was the admission price.

Yeah. I mean, I talk about it with my husband a lot. And again, like you said, who knows? Talk to me when I'm 85 and we'll see if we've been successful. But I do think there's something wonderful when you're attempting, let's say, big things in any way, shape, or form, to have somebody who's standing beside you and who's not instead of aligned to some outcome besides the two of you surviving for some period of time. And so with him, that sort of foundation is so it's just. There's no more distractions. I'm not chasing around other people doing this other stuff that I used to do with competing priorities. And so I really love being in partnership. And we were talking the other day about, you know, there was, like, the girl boss movement. Remember that? Like, Sophia Omarosa, girl boss, gonna go be our own thing. And then I think the counter movement to that was sort of this alpha male movement that we're in right now, which is like, you know, manly men, women, blah, blah, blah. And then I kind of think that there might be this regression movement of partnership in some way, shape, or form. And I don't know what that would look like, but we've been in a period of, like, increasing divorce rates and separation of sexes for a long time. As I talk to a lot of my most successful friends, one of the biggest things many of them talk to me about is their partnership. And they all look very different. Right. Which I think is great. What is it about being in a marriage that you find is beneficial? What does partnership even mean to you.

On the transactional side? My wife has a very high eq, way higher than mine, and I learn and get a lot of value for that. But I think I get a lot of value out of loving somebody. Right. Like, I want to prove to myself that I am capable of that. And so that in itself is my quest. But aside from, like, somebody standing behind me when I'm trying to do the thing, like, the thing that's, you know, for other people, the thing is that is. Is it? And they got somebody to help them do the thing and conquer the world. And I see that model on. On Twitter or Instagram, like, you got to have a good woman behind you to do the fucking thing. I want to have a good woman to show that I am capable of love and having the human experience. And that's what I want. That's what I'm trying to do because I can be pretty robotic and pretty out there, and I have a natural inclination to chase the thing and be the thing and change the world and have an impact and yada yada and all those great grandiose things. But at the core level, I want to understand somebody, love them through all their facets. Somebody to get to peek inside me and help love me through all my facets and have that partnership.

Do you tell her that?

Yeah, she knows that. She knows that. She knows. Like, that's the.

She walked in, she'd be like, yep.

That was my whole thing. Like, we were just dating. I really didn't want to. I didn't want to get married. I didn't even want to become monogamous. I was just like, I just want to be closer to you. I just want to have a partnership with you. I just want to be closer, and I want to love you. And that was kind of the. The base thing. And then how that can happen is where we're at, you know, where that could be fostered and grow is here. And so, you know, and I. And, you know, my mindset changed. I had the mindset, like, when my first marriage, like, if you had a coach or counseling for a marriage, something was wrong. Like, they go counseling. Somebody was counseling. I'd be like, oh, they got problems. They already got a counselor. You know, whatever. And now I'm like, you're a fucking idiot, Bill Perkins. Like, you are so stupid. Like, nobody does anything great alone. Kobe Bryant has a coach. Babe Ruth had a coach. Fucking Martin Luther King had student nonviolent coordinating committee. You know, King Gas Gong had the mongrel horde. Like, nobody does anything great alone. Like, why do you think you can have a great marriage alone? Like, you have all these resources. Why aren't you bringing in extra resources and coaches to make your marriage great? And I was like, yeah, I was a f. Cking idiot. And so, like, one of the things, you know, I do is, like, we bring resources to bear to help us with our marriage to being humans. Because being humans is tough. Like, you have competing desires. You have this baseline sexuality that's kind of crazy. That's changing and influence you. You change over time. You're, you know, certain things, you might be annoying or grading to that person or whatever, and just, like, learning how to communicate, you know, you say something, you say it one way. It's like, why are you bargaining Me? I'm not a bargain.

This is how I talk all the time.

You know what I mean? There's a lot going on and a lot of things that are like people study in labs and have tons of clients, et cetera and are at like helping people have great relationships. And I don't want a good anything. I want to great something. So nobody does anything great alone. So now I have a coach and I tell all my friends, I'm like, you should have a relationship coach. I don't care how good your relationship is, you should have a coach.

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Yeah, you should have a Coke thing.

In the morning, early Monday morning, which is like the last thing I would typically want to do on a morning Monday morning. I want to get going but I think it sets the right precedent for what the priority is.

Well, you're trying to do something great.

That's right.

And so you're bringing in resources and so, you know, business, math, tests, SATs, I don't care what it is like, you know, we just, you could do something good alone. Yeah, great. No, even Jesus had disciples.

What about last question? Do you have anything that you guys do consistently that's maybe normal to you but would be weird to other people? You have a coach? Do you have check ins? Do you have some safe word that you use with each other when you're in a place and you don't want to be there anymore? Is there anything that's uniquely Lara and Bill?

We have this thing about not like doing our best not to create scars, not that we haven't, but like I think that relationships die from A thousand cuts, not like this big thing. You know what I mean? Like, even relationships that they have. Oh, they cheated on me or whatever, it's like, probably the thousand cuts that's created the environment for the infidelity or whatever the big thing is. And so we have this thing of, like, if things are getting heated or whatever, like, are you trying to, you know, like, we'll call each other out and hold each other accountable, like, not trying to create a scar, like, we talk about this later, et cetera. I think adherence to that kind of, like, let's not create these cuts.

Well, it's really cool to hear somebody like you, who's had so much success is so intelligent, talk about this stuff, because it's not that normal, and it's typically stuff. If you had talked to Cody, me, you know, two or three years ago, I would have been like, what the are we talking about? Like, why are we talking about making money, buying businesses, building bigger things? But I realize it's all super related. You know, it was interesting last I was talking to Lara. Her emotional intelligence is actually really impressive, even from talking briefly, because she was saying a few things where she's like, well, I felt a certain sort of way about that when some interaction you guys had a billion years ago, and I was sort of laughing because I said, well, I had the exact same thing happen with me and my husband. And I was annoyed, jealous, angry. She was like, well, you know, I might have felt that way. I was like, God, you're so enlightened about the way that you communicate. Were you guys like that when you first met? Is that why she became your wife.

When you first met? We were wild and crazy. Like, I was in a situation where I. I was like, I will never get married again. You know what I mean? Like, the hot stove, my back was still burning, you know, from. From falling down on the hot coals of my own doing. Fortunately, Lara was in a field where she had free time. I was in a mode of like, I just want to go hang out and travel. And we got to spend a lot of time together, despite the wild and crazy times. We were hanging out and getting to know each other. And, you know, I saw it, right? Like, I saw, you know what I mean? If something that I needed, that I wanted, you know, I became attract, you know, obviously physically attractive, but I became attracted to her soul, her way of being, her kindness, you know, the whole package. And I was like, okay, I want to get closer. I want to be partners with you. Like, even running around the World as a madman. I want you to be my part, my wingman, wing woman, as running around the world as a bad person. And then, like, when I'm hanging out with my kids, I want you with me, and when I want here. And it was like, I always just wanted her around all the time. And then I realized, even beneath it, just being her is like, oh, I really created a love partnership. And it took a while for me to figure that out, because I was just like, no, freedom is number one. I was like, and freedom is like. It's intoxicating. It's like I told somebody when you walk through an airport, you smell that Cinnabon, and you're just like, ooh, Cinnabon cinnamon. And you just, like, want to go over there, and you're just like, that's freedom. You know, like, that's.

That's it.

But, like, you know, cinnabon will make you fat as it'll destroy you, right? It's so, like, you know, as much as I love my freedom, what I really, really craved and what was sustainable and what I realized was, like, my number one priority was partnership. And so I had to sacrifice some of these lesser priorities in order to get there. So there's this balance, right? And so partnership won out. And Lara was, you know, we. We both happened to be in the right place at right time in each other's lives. And, you know, at least one of us was fighting for it when the other one was kind of like, you know, at least one of us was fighting for it, right? Like, yep. We just didn't let it go. And so we built, you know, a lot of people like, oh, you found this person. We're always like, both of us, particularly me, But Lara, too, is like, we didn't find. We built this brick by brick, 100%, you know, so I don't. I don't believe in that fairy tale crap. I say, like, yes, like, the odds that you're meeting the, you know, is 8 billion of us, 4 billion are female, you know, 1 billion something in your. In your. In your range. Like, the odds that you just happen to meet the person at work and that was. They're. They're yourself. No, that's not it. You meet somebody, then you start building, and if you're not a builder, it'll eventually fall apart because you have to constantly be building.

That's so true.

So when people. We go around and people are like, oh, we love the way you interact or the way you guys hang out and you're in it's like, yeah, you.

Can do this too.

You can build it. The only thing special is our dedication to building the relationship. And we made that. That was a decision.

Yeah, we get a lot of hate on the Internet from whenever we talk about our relationship and say, here are the things that we do that we work on. And there are some practices around that that we find useful. It's wild how many people say, this sounds like work, not a relationship. It's like, yeah, same thing. I don't agree. I don't disagree at all.

Yeah, you know, warm feelings. Warm or lusty feelings will only get you so far.

Yeah, 100%.

I do want to circle back all the way to some of these, like, notions about divorces and just ask you some questions. You know, Chris Williamson said, when men win the lottery, there's not that big of a difference, but when women win the lottery, divorce happens. I feel like that could be because they're like, okay, I don't need to have a man now because I have some. Some finances. Moving on to, like, people with nine or more premarital partners. If you're not. If you're having, like, less amount of premarital partners or, you know, none before marriage, maybe that could be for, like, a religious reason or something that there's, like, a guilt factor. So maybe divorce just isn't held, like, as highly. Like, I feel like divorce is so. So nuanced. You know what I mean? So any statistics that I read, I'm like, okay, like. But, like, read between the lines.

Like.

Like, we're seeing the top, richest people here. I imagine they're not doing much besides working. If you're not seeing it like you're their wife or your Jeff Bezos, who, you know, who's had a divorce, you see how often they're working and what they're doing. They're probably not giving a lot of time to, like, their family and, you know, allocating that very well. So, yeah, they probably have had a lot of divorce.

Yeah. You know, when I look at the statistics, I try to not say that correlation is causation. Right. It's super important. What I just want to know about is what are the od? And I guess you have to start at first principles, which is like, basically, do you think that divorce is inherently a good or a bad thing? Do people want to avoid divorce or not? And at my core, having been through it, I think we want to avoid divorce, and perhaps we also definitely want to avoid marrying the wrong person. We want to avoid those two things. So if we assume one, you married the right person, it's just hard. Then the question is, how do you stay with somebody through the hard? And if you're going to work 70, 80 hours a week, how do you set expectations where you two can stay happily together? I mean, we know the stats too. For children, your kids are more likely to commit suicide or self harm if you get divorced. Your kids have a higher likelihood of becoming divorced themselves. If you have been divorced as parents, the happiness indicator for men in particular is much happier when they stay married. Single women who have never been married and have kids actually have the highest happiness as evidenced by studies. And so I think the question really becomes, in my mind, it's twofold.

Yes.

When you have a lot more options, you probably are more likely to get divorced. So I think it makes sense. You've had sex with other people, you realize that, like, there's probably not just one human only for you in this world. But the problem with that is how many people are actually happy swiping left and right on Tinder all day. Do options really make us happy? Does it actually make us happy to get divorced from the person that we said we were gonna do life with forever and keep moving on to somebody else? And I think the answer to that is no. Now, I don't have the data to support that. But I think as a society, we're lonelier than ever, we're having less sex than ever. And I think we actually would be happier if we committed to a partner over a long period of time. We did a lot of analysis on who that partner is and who we are and coming together as two fully formed humans. But once you say yes, and this is from a divorced person, I think you want to try to figure out how to work together to grow in partnership. And so for me, I think that's the difference is like, getting divorced is awful. And so how do we make sure that if we're gonna say I do and you decide to do that and you vet the human properly and they vet you, that you figure out how to work through it together? Because I don't think it's ever easy. I think it's a lot of work. I loved this quote. I stole this from Shane Parrish where he basically says there's two types of stability, active and passive. People get in trouble when they confuse the two. Relationships, for example, require attention and care. If you assume that your relationship is passively stable, you'll wake up one day to divorce papers. And that's true.

You also had some Good advice in here about what women have to know before going through a divorce.

Yeah, this one people hate on the Internet too. But typically what I found is that women do not take care of the overall finances or understand the overall finances. Now, the data shows us that women are the have the purchasing power in the household. Like if you are Amazon or Walmart, you actually want to get to the female because she's typically the one doing a lot of the household spending, but the one with the understanding of the full financial picture is typically the man. And so one of the things I think that makes divorce really gnarly is anytime you have uncertainty, then you have tension, right? It's why, like, you know, if there's uncertainty in the market, then you see the stock market fall. It's the same thing in relationships. And so when one party is at a knowledge disadvantage from the other, then you try to lie, cheat, steal, figure out the difference between the two. And so as a woman, if you're going to go through divorce and you know in advance, I'm sorry, and also if you're a man going to go through divorce, there's a couple things you can do to make this a lot less emotional. The biggest trigger for divorces getting gnarly is money and child custody. I don't know much about child custody because I don't have any, so I won't speak to that. But from a monetary standpoint, it's really important that you guys both know at all times, what's your financial situation, who has access to the bank accounts, who doesn't, how much money do you guys both bring in? How much money do you both spend? And that knowledge, once you have it, can give you a level of sort of ease and understanding in the marriage. You can say, listen, this is what we have. We all know what the rules are in these states. We either have a prenup or we don't. But it's probably a 50, 50 split. So let's just calm the emotions because this is what we both have. Then. The second thing that I think is really useful if you're going to go through a divorce is making sure you go through mediation and not a full on trial with, you know, litigators. So it's actually really important. People try to go out and get the gnarliest, meanest divorce attorney that they can get. And that's actually a terrible idea. You'll spend a ton of money on your divorce attorneys. And instead you guys decided to commit to something for life. Try to exit it as peacefully as you entered it. And so when I did mine, it wasn't peaceful. Ours was pretty gnarly. But we managed to do it all through mediation. And because we both chose attorneys, and I chose mine first, then I said, I am committed to mediating through this. And so it'll be private, it'll be behind closed doors, and we'll be adults, and we will have a conversation as opposed to scream at each other and let a judge determine the outcome of her fate. We're not children, and so I think that's really important. Go for mediation and try to get the other party to do the same thing.

What are your thoughts on prenups?

I have one in my current marriage. It was actually something that Chris was pretty big on saying that we should have. He basically didn't want any question about, you know, economic differences between the two of us. I don't really have emotional ties to it one way or the other. I think, you know, we always say that we're. It's. If this doesn't work out like this is it, this is kind of the last hurrah. I'm not interested in doing it three times. But I think prenups are nice because anytime you can have expectations set, it just makes sure incentives are aligned. And it seems to me a little bit of a red flag if anybody would be concerned about getting a prenup on either side. And they might say, well, I'm concerned because you say it's going to be for life. Well, yeah, it is going to be for life. But if so, let's just go in and make sure that if the worst happens and you, the other person, are the one that, you know, wants to get a divorce, that we're clear and we don't have this fight at the end. So I'm actually pro prenups. I've had them. They're cheap, they're easy. You can draft them up really quickly yourself on a piece of paper. Here's the stuff we care about. You get them to a mutual set of attorneys. The attorneys are just there to paper it, not give you a ton of advice on the subject afterwards. You don't make it expensive and contentious. And I think it can be really straightforward, just like a business partnership.

So on here you said that your therapist believes that 100% of divorces happen because of infidelity, and that kind of stopped me in my tracks reading that.

So what she said explicitly was, in a divorce, infidelity is part of the equation 100% of the time. Now, I don't Think she could say they always happen because of infidelity, but that infidelity is there. And then she said, men cheat to stay and women cheat to leave, which I thought was fascinating. Obviously, the statistics on this are going to be hard, but she's the sweet little Texan. If you could picture, like, big blonde hair, kind of an older lady, a little twang, lots of pink in the office, and super religious. She was my therapist when I was going through my divorce. And, you know, I was really struggling with it and with the fact that I had made a promise to a human forever and was going to break that promise. And that was horrifying to me. And I said, you know, I don't think there's infidelity happening on either side of the equation, but I don't know. And she said, it really doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because it's almost always there once two people are pulling apart. It's happened for a long time. And when you guys get here, you know, she also said that men usually come to therapy to try to stay, and women come to therapy to try to leave. That's. That's her two cents. We'll see if it's true or not. Now, I'm a big believer in therapy upfront, no matter what, for every single relationship. And I don't think you have to do it like, hi, nice to meet you. I'd like to date also. Let's go to therapy right away. But once you start getting pretty serious, moving in together, thinking about long term just helps to have a guide.

You kind of say the same thing when you were talking with Bill about having, like, a coach for business as well. And I like that analogy between you two.

Yeah, it's 100%. I mean, we do a ton of stuff to try to make our relationship the best that it can possibly be. And Bill said it nicely about a relationship. He doesn't want a good relationship. He wants a great relationship. And I want the exact same thing I saw firsthand. Well, we could go over deal of the week, basically. So the deal of the week for this one is I was at a finance company, and this company was privately owned, and the founder was a billionaire, really, really successful. He was my boss, the CEO, and there was a partnership. So all the partners inside of the finance company basically have shares and get distributions and have transparency into what's happening in the business to some degree or the other. Well, the guy starts going through a divorce, and so for this period, none of the partners could take distributions because they had to value the business. They had to assess everything that's going on. And we basically got a giant colonoscopy because him and his wife got in a super contentious divor. What I thought was interesting, he went through this divorce that he had been, he was probably married for 20, 30 years. And when he got married, he didn't have a prenup and they didn't sign documentation. This is super technical, but if you guys have a business or you have investors or you are an investor in a, in an enterprise, I always make the partners of the founders that I invest in. And the founders or investors in a fund, usually their partner needs to sign documentation too, waiving their rights to the business. And this is really important because, you know, I saw it happen firsthand. They basically, it really, it really fucked with the business that they were going through this divorce. She wanted to be able to make decisions based on the business. It actually hurt hundreds of us that worked there. And so when I went and was a partner at the next private equity fund, they make you sign this paperwork up front that basically says, hey, we need to have you and your partner sign this. And this says that they have no access to your shares except through their divorce proceedings at their own time. Xyz. And so it's really important if you guys are going to do that, that you get something similar. And if you have to think that somewhere between 30 to 50% of marriages end in divorce, your likelihood to have this happen if you're going to be partner of a partnership for 5, 10, 15 years is actually really high. And so making sure you get the right paper is super, super important.

How much do you think it ended up like, setting you back?

Oh, the divorce itself. I mean, I could probably go back and look at the numbers, but I think the divorce itself probably cost me 20 to 60 thousand dollars in legal fees. But it was in Texas. Texas is pretty quick. So I think it happened in 90 days, something like that.

And then career wise, how do you much do you think that set you back?

Well, I had to give up a lot of my assets, so I gave up more in the divorce because I was the one that wanted it. So he took more. But I think, you know, that probably that's a multimillion dollar expense for sure, with breaking up the assets. And then from a business perspective, we actually worked together. So this was kind of wild. I ran the Latin American business and he worked inside of another district in the US and so for a period we had to work together. And then he left the company for a minute. And the part that was the hardest is the company brought him back after some drama happened at the company, and they brought him back without telling me. And I was like a senior person at the firm, and so I never forgave him for that. And I ended up leaving and putting my number two in charge because it's really hard. I mean, could you imagine working with your ex all the time? At the time, I think I lost all the friends I had in Dallas at the time because they were members of the same country club. They ended up sort of, quote, unquote, siding with him. And whether or not they would say that, I mean, it's Texas, so it's more like, bless your heart, you know, not answering any phone calls. And then, you know, I ended up moving into a small place in Dallas to sort of stabilize myself. I have two friends that I kept from that time period. And then I ended up leaving Dallas because I just felt like I couldn't be the person I wanted to be in this town, that I had been somebody else. There were too many memories. And so I ended up leaving. And then I was building up this business, and he came back into it, and I just. I couldn't. I didn't want that. And so I ended up leaving that firm, too. So my whole life kind of had to change after that. And thank God. I mean, I think sometimes the universe kicks you in the ass when you won't do it yourself. Like, I needed to leave because we weren't the right fit. I needed to leave the firm because our ethics did not align. I needed to leave Dallas because it's not my city and it never was. And so now I'm in Austin, and it's just much more my vibe. And so, thankfully, it all worked out, but it was really, really hard. And I. Well, I had this little. This little thing I wrote about it, which says it better than I can. So maybe I'll actually read this to you guys. So I write this thing called the Contrarian Tinkering Weekly Snippet. And this is part of it. So anyway you guys can hear. This is a little personal, so sorry. I'm married to a handsome man with a beautiful house, country clubs, Range rovers, and friends who look like they're on the Real Housewives. But tonight, I'm walking into the living room as the sun sets to break the heart of a man I promised forever to. He's far from perfect, but in this moment, all I feel is agony. I speak SOFTLY it's not working. I Want a divorce. And I'm leaving tonight. As soon as the words leave my mouth, I see the 6 foot 1, 245 pound man, crumpled the ground, sobbing, begging me to stay. It is an awful thing to watch someone so strong, whom you once loved break. And I've never felt greater guilt or shame than in that moment. With eyes so blurry I can barely see. I leave empty handed out of the door of the house I just finished decorating it into a home. I spent nights sleepless and alone. And when I told my own mother, she also cried tears. That's all I felt like I had to give. I never shared all the hardness in that marriage with her. It was my burden to carry. But I also didn't quite realize the moment would change my life forever. I left a man, a city, all my things. And eventually a career I spent more than a decade building. And I had to lose everything before I came to the knowledge. I hope I can leave some of you guys with today that, you know, I didn't have at the time. After I got divorced, everything changed for me. I started getting pushed out of the company. I wasn't right for the culture anymore. And candidly, I didn't fit. I had built up a business with nearly a billion dollars in assets under management. And despite that, I took nothing with me. No severance, no equity, no clients, no assets. I had built someone else's castle twice and walked away with nothing. And I swore I'd never do it again. And in that moment, I knew I'd go all in on my own thing. I'd share it with the fucking world and I'd never play small for another person again. Ownership, the only true key to freedom. And maybe I share some of that too. Because the truth of it is, is that when you get divorced, all that's gonna happen to you too, if you end up going through this awful thing. And so I'm sorry in advance, but sometimes when you know what's coming, it makes it easier to bear. And nobody told me things like that like I was, you know. I don't think I told anybody when eventually I told my parents that I was gonna get divorced and I filed the next week. It usually takes a few years to build up the courage. And then I can kind of promise you also that you'll be okay on the other side. Both of them. I think he's happier now. He's happily married. He' white picket fence he wants. He's got the kids, he's got the wife. At home is great. It's exactly what he wanted from life. And I was never going to be that person. And that is okay, too. I also don't think we have to villainize the people that were not right for us. And that's often what people do, too. And that really just goes to show that you have a little bit of shame and guilt that you're projecting out. And I try to not have that anymore. Maybe we go on to lighter subjects, which is how to try to not get divorced. Because I loved the. I don't know. I don't think it was Goldie Hawn, but I can never remember. So I'll just say it's Goldie Hawn. But she said that the key to staying married was that her and her husband never wanted to get divorced at the same time. And that key of one person always wanting to stick it in I think is really, really important. This episode is brought to you by Netflix from the creator of Homeland. Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys star in the new Netflix series the Beast in Me as ruthless rivals whose shared darkness will set them on a collision course with fatal consequences. The Beast in Me is a riveting psychological cat and mouse story about guilt, justice, and doubt. You will not want to miss this. The Beast in Me is now playing only on Netflix. Ray Ban Meta glasses come with open ear audio so you can listen to your favorite music without blocking out the world around you. Hey, Meta, play Gorgeous. Here's Gorgeous by Doja Cat. You can also ask Meta AI questions. Hey, Meta, when's Doja Cat's next concert? Doja Cat is playing at the Los Angeles theater next Tuesday.

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So we're going to talk about another thing where people freaked out about on the Internet and it's like that one daily action that you and your husband do. It's called a team method. And the comments were crazy. Some people loved this. Some people were like, wait, what the heck? Like, this sounds like an assignment. So let us know what is team? How do you approach this?

So it actually does help us, and I can vouch for it. We have a therapist by the name of Brandy Salazar that we used to go to who's become a friend. Actually, she's the one that came up with this method and we tweaked it a little bit. Basically, what happens is in a relationship, I find that you guys know this, you're in a relationship, and what do you fight about? The same things again and again and again. The little things are typically what Build up to create the big issues. And I found that in a relationship, it was sort of like tiny nags, nags all day. Like, I wish you would shut the door. What happened here? And Chris and I are, you know, we are not peaceful fighters. We are intense. And so we found we were fighting a lot about little stuff because we were letting it boil. We were little teapots. And the issues would boil and boil and boil until eventually it would be like, you know, and it would boil over. And so we started doing this thing team. And I can pretty much guarantee you, if you guys here ever see us fight, it's because we forget to do this for, like, about a week. About a week. And then we start to get annoyed with each other. And basically what it is, is it's this tiny method. It could take five minutes, it could take 15, but every single day we get together, typically at the end of the day, and we sit down with a glass of wine, look at each other, and we. It starts with T for touch. So basically, you sit next to each other, you put your hands on each other. Sometimes we sit like, you know, my feet are on him or something. And that's just to remind you guys that you're not roommates. Like, you guys are in this together. There's physical intimacy here that you're not going to do with another human. And then E is for education. It means that you share something with the person about something interesting that happened to you that day. And the goal is really that you try to do something. Something intriguing. So I might say to him tonight, like, God, we have this podcast today, and did you actually know that when a woman wins the lottery, she's like, you know, 2x more likely to get a divorce? And then we would talk about that. And it reminds you that your partner is a fully evolving human all the time. And that, I think, helps, because there's a natural tendency for humans to want novelty. That is how we're wired. And so you seek novelty in others. But when your human comes home with something interesting for you every day, it reminds you that that human is smart and talented and can be new every single day, too, in a way that, like, your work colleague, you know, isn't going to tempt you. And then A stands for appreciation. So then we have to both say something nice to each other. And typically, if you're in a good spirit, you say something really lovely about the other person. And if you're kind of fighting a little bit, you just can't use the same thing. You have to come up with something new every day, but it might be very small. Thank you for taking out the trash. Thank you for sitting down and doing team with me. Because there's typically always something your significant other is doing to help you, and we largely ignore it and focus on the negative. And then lastly is metrics. So this is the hard part. So this is where we'd be like, all right, I keep a list of stuff that might annoy me that Chris is doing or that happened that day. And when I am not elevated and thoughtful and we're doing team, I just keep it for the end of the day. And it's a 180. And so if we're not doing team, then we bring it up in that moment. Wait a second. I thought you were going to do this or I thought you were going to do this. And it's like tiny. And if you hold it until the end of the day when you're not elevated, then it just becomes an easy conversation as opposed to an argument. And so I think if you can get your partner to do this, it's really cool. The other benefit of it is that you never have dinners where you don't have anything to say. Like, it brings gives you a reason every single day to end with your partner and to have sort of an interesting, thoughtful conversation as opposed to, hey, babe, how was your day? Cool. How was your day? All right. Yeah, like, it was cool. It was fine, whatever. And you, you lapse into this boring life. So I highly, highly recommend. Do you do anything in your relationships? You have a dude?

I do, but like, not marriage. But I do something personally that's called report. And I saw it on tikt. R is for reading. E is for eating. P is for play. O is for obsessing. R is for recommending. That's like an R. And then T is for treating. So it's like a little personal check in that I like doing throughout the week. I'm a big journaler. I'm a big onto your M. I'm a big metrics person. So I'm very much like, you can't manage what you don't measure. So it's like, okay, in this moment, what am I reading? What am I eating? What am I playing? My parents, though, at the dinner table every night, my dad was always like, what are you doing for your mind, your body and your spirit? And I think that helped us first off to kind of see what our parents were saying. What are they doing for their mind, body and spirit and not spirit? Even religiously but what are they doing to get in the Zen mode you don't want to have? My dad worked a lot growing up. What is he doing to not freak out? And seeing my parents kind of give their answers and hearing what my siblings had to say, first off, made us closer as a family, but also was nice seeing how my parents got to know the side of each other as well.

I love hearing that because I adore my parents, but I don't think they had anything like this, you know, And a lot of the comments on this are, you know, something like, my parents would roll over in their graves if they thought that you were doing a daily check in with a scorecard and a, you know, report card at the end of the day. This is awful. And my point is, one, maybe they're all better than us. That's totally true. But two, there's just so much more noise today. We are, like, battling constantly noise every single day. There's temptation on Instagram, and temptation doesn't mean, like, infidelity either. It could just mean, like, something else that will vie for your attention away from your. Your other human. And then, of course, you know, we're traveling more than ever. We have separate lives more than ever. It's just fast and intense. And I think if we don't take the time to focus on our number one partnership, then everything else falls apart. And that's why I think, you know, those top guys that, you know, the list of the 11 richest people who by and large have been divorced is interesting, because I remember I met Jeff Bezos really briefly at Summit, like, a million years ago, and he was still married to Mackenzie. And there are two things I loved about what he said. He said the reason that he was married to mackenzie was because he wanted to be with somebody who could break him out of the third world prison. And she was that person. And I thought that was an incredible quote. And then the second thing he said about her was, I knew that she was the one, because, you know, our kids were out somewhere. They were learning woodworking or something with a knife, something with tools. And he was like, aren't you nervous about the kids doing X, Y, and Z? And she's like, well, I'd rather kid have four fingers on one hand than no common sense. I thought, dude, this chick kind of seems badass, in my opinion. Like, one of my best girlfriends said, this is so inappropriate. But she was like, same dick, different day. She's like, if you get divorced from this guy and you move on to somebody else, like, we all have different problems and issues and quirks. And so the closer you get to somebody you realize were all super flawed and you just pick your human that you think is the best person for you, and then you work at it and everything else is a fairy tale. And so I think it'd be really useful if more humans had tools that were given to us. Like, where was the class when we were growing up about how to be in successful relationships? There was no class. Instead, I learned a bunch of stuff that I couldn't apply continuously. And I wish I could go back to the next generation and say, here's how to set boundaries, you know, here's how to actually know what you want. Here's how to have a conversation with somebody that's an elevated conversation, but in a way that is peaceful. Those are things we were kind of taught in leadership, maybe if we went to a corporation, but they're the skills that are going to last the test of time.

I think it's interesting too, because as young people, we only have, especially in America, like, I'm only living with my parents, my grandparents aren't living with us. So I only see one example of what a relationship's going to be. Someone oftentimes when you're going into a relationship with somebody else, like the two of you together only have one example of adult relationships and what they are going to be. And if you were back when you were my age, if you were 25, what advice would you give yourself around trying to find a partner and aiming to not have that partner be somebody you were going to get divorced to?

Especially for women, I'd say, don't rush into this shit. And I think our generation is realizing that now. You don't want to wait forever. There is a real thing as a biological clock that's real if you want to have a kid one way or the other. But, you know, I was not the person I am today when I got married the first go round and I became like, they talk about it, Eat, Pray, Love that movie. Like the morphous self that just like meshes into another human. I just meshed into another human. And I let so much of who he was become who I was. And at some point I woke up and I started thinking, this is not what I want at all. And that's one. It's not really fair to the dude because, you know, he thinks he's getting X. And you haven't been honest enough with yourself to say, I am not that. And I watched all of these women in Dallas one not want to be friends with me while I was going through this. And then I watched a ton of them then get divorced later on because they thought they wanted to stay home and have this, like, wealthy, you know, lifestyle and raise kids. And at some point they realized, oh, my gosh, this isn't everything that I want. And so the second thing that I'd say is, you don't have to work. You don't have to be a boss, babe or girl boss or any of that nonsense people talk about. But I personally think it's really useful for you to have a very strong sense of self, and that self to not only be wrapped up and being married and having kids. I have just seen that not work a million times. It doesn't have to be monetary. It could be that you're really into gardening, working out. But make sure that your full identity is not given to others, because guess what? You cannot allow somebody else to be the source of your happiness. You are the key to that. And so I think that's why we're seeing this rise in antidepressants. And it's like there's this silent generation. I think it will be the next thing that comes out. Right now we're starting to hear about, like, the alpha men, and we're starting to hear about testosterone levels lowering, and we're starting to hear about incels and men not having sex in increasing amounts. And we're starting to hear about men having a tough time sort of as, like, the silent depressive generation. And I think the next thing we're gonna realize is that women have the same thing.

I agree. Like, the loneliness epidemic being geared toward men. I'm like, okay, there's like, a loneliness epidemic in general. Like, I feel super happy where I'm at, and I have friends and everything like that. And then I think about, if I wasn't living in a major city like New York, how would I operate? Like, I think I would be somebody that would be totally in the loneliness epidemic with how often I'm working and kind of like, my hobbies. Like, thank goodness I live in a city where that kind of lifestyle that I really like living is done by a lot of other people. So have friends. But so much of my life is, like, very, very alone. It's like, I don't know. I don't think the loneliness epidemic is definitely geared toward men.

No, I think it's. It's. I don't think it's fair that they have to be tough about it all the time. I don't think that's reasonable. I think, you know, you can be a strong man and also have emotions a hundred percent. But what's wild is you're. How old are you, Rachel?

25.

Yeah, so 25. And what I see end up happening for a lot of these women is they get into like late 20s, early 30s, into their 40s. And if you look at the users, by and large, of sleeping pills, antidepressants, Adderall, a lot of these users end up being middle aged women. And I've seen it happen personally to multiple friends. And I'm certainly no doctor, but what ends up happening is they're like a little sad after the kids have gotten old enough to not need them all the time. And then so what do they do? They go to the doctor and the doctor says, here is an antidepressant. Well, antidepressants often make it hard to sleep. So then they get layered, some sort of sleep medication on top of it. But then they're like lethargic and sleeping funny. And so then they get layered Adderall because they're distracted, they can't focus and we give them this cocktail of drugs that feels to me like what we used to do to veterans when they came back with ptsd, that we're over medicating these women who are now increasingly part of a loneliness epidemic that I don't think anybody is even talking about yet. So in the future, I don't think it's going to be men versus women. I don't think it's going to be boss babes and alpha men. I think the focus hopefully is going to be on strong partnerships and humans who can be honest about where they're sitting in life. And so it'll be interesting to see what happens in the coming generations. I guess where I would leave this for people today is start with the end in mind. And a couple things with divorce. And the end in mind basically means this. We now know the statistics are 30 to 50% divorce rates, something like that. Right. If that's likely. One, you can protect the house, you can get a prenup, you can make sure you vet your partners. But two, you're crazy if you think that you can be with another human and not work at building a life together. When two humans collide and there is more surface area, AKA more time spent together, there is naturally more friction. This is a law of physics. The more things touch against each other, the more they rub against each other. The more they rub against each other, the more friction and thus the more intense actions on either side of the house. And because of that, I think choosing to determine a partner who will grow with you and work on the relationship is crucial going forward on both sides, whether you're a man or a woman. And the questions that I would be asking are, are you open to having coaching or therapy? Coaching might make people feel better. That word, you know, going forward, you know, how do you think about relationships? How do you want to work through being partnered with somebody? Because let me tell you what, the most powerful thing I have ever had in my life, and my husband and I talk about this constantly, is my partnership with him. Don't get me wrong, we're pissed at each other sometimes. We get in each other's faces sometimes. But when my multiple businesses have things going sideways, when we're getting sued, when somebody's getting sick, having another human to stand beside and knowing that you choose one other person to go through time with is a superpower. All right, thank you guys for joining in. This is the Big Deal podcast. Also, little spoiler. I'm going to give you guys a free download of the team method. If you guys want it, the link will be in the show notes so you can go to the team method. Grab that framework. If you guys want to use it, we'll put it in the show notes for you. Also, please, like subscribe and share. We want to make sure that more people hear about this and maybe we can decrease that divorce rate a little bit, huh? Okay. Till next week. I have it, you know that I got it no need to look all in a bag Stunning like this Cuz I work so hard, I'm the best I only speak facts if I say that I have it, you know that I got it no need to look.

All in a bag.