We Are Bankruptingly Bad at Relationships

It's been said that up to 56% of marriages end in divorce. Shockingly, 86% of that 56% remarry within five years.

Not only is that by itself remarkable, it proves how wrong people think they are about marriage, which is "not very." They probably just chalked up that "'til death do us part" as a mulligan. They wanted a mulligan. It was a one-off. They just wanted to pick that ball off the green and say, "Hey, you know what? Let's try again." They think it's just a game, not a lifelong commitment.

And these people are so confident in marriage and about long-term relationships that they just do it again. Despite the divorce rate for second marriages in the U.S. being even worse, at 60%. That should shock you. I have the utmost respect for James Sexton, the divorce lawyer who's made the rounds on YouTube, who has been doing this for 20 years. And I can laugh with him when he says that he gets misty-eyed at the prospect of marriage, and not just for what it does for his very, very, very lucrative business. I get wide-eyed after he gets misty-eyed, because it proves how wrong you people are and don't realize it. You guys think about relationships and marriage in the complete opposite way.

It's bad enough that 56% objectively means that more often than not, in modern-day America, your marriage is going to end in failure. That's bad enough. But that's been somewhat consistent for the last 20, 30, 40 years. I remember hearing it when I was in my 20s. What's worse to me and something that people—I'm not sure they'd realize—is that you have six out of seven remarriages. I want to look at that subset. Those six out of seven people who will marry within five years after a divorce.

Do they think that they're going to get it right this time? What, if anything, do they think that they got wrong in their prior objectively failed marriage? Do they think anything? Or was it always the other person's fault? Or was it just some dud? Or did somebody just yell in their backswing, or carry on in their backswing, and that's why they missed the fairway?

I would posit that it's something that they fail to work on or even address in their own golf bag, their own tools, their own skill set that caused them to not even make it to the turn, to that 10th hole in an 18-hole golf course, before deciding to just pick it up, just quit. Because there's another golf course that they'll do so much better on, right?

I think that these people are so misguided that I do laugh along with James Sexton, because it becomes a lot more lucrative for him, the more of you who are convinced that you have relationships correctly, because it's going to cost you again and again and again. And I mean that literally. The people who marry and divorce and then remarry and divorce, do you how much money that is? In Manhattan, off the top of my head, the average wedding ceremony: $77,000. Guess what? On average, 56% of those weddings end in divorce. And we can look at "Sex and the City," and its role in how it's misled women and maybe some men, with regard to what long term relationships are supposed to look like. How people are supposed to show up in relationships from Charlotte to Carrie.

But we don't even have to just look at a television show. It's reality. They are the numbers. And we can argue with them all we want. But if we're not even cognizant of the numbers—56% end then divorce, $77,000 wedding in Manhattan, or New York, New York City—what are we doing? I get wide eyed because it's such a financial drain. It's such a fucking problem, and people don't even realize it. They think that they're so good at it. It's the same hubris that makes people think that, "oh, I'm above average intelligence." There's a statistic around that: 65% of people think that they're above average intelligence. And there's another statistic that's similar to this, 80 percent of men, to women, are deemed unattractive. These standard deviations of delusion that are present in everyday life—86% remarry, 80% of men are unattractive—they start to catch up with you. And it's not just women—men are marrying too, and men are the ones who have to foot the bill a lot in divorces and marriages often.

So both parties are losing a lot, and people like James Sexton can say and do whatever they want. They say there's two certainties in life: death and taxes. What should have been certain is "'til death do we part." But what is more certain, exceedingly, is that there will be no shortage of people who disagree with 'til death do we part. And he can think that that's sad, I can think that that's sad, I can get misty-eyed, but I'm shocked at the reality of this, because both men and women are losing a lot of time and money because of the hubris surrounding how well they show up in relationships. Medium- or long term. It's wild.

And I say hubris and I repeat it because you don't even think that you're the problem. You don't think about the flaws that you have in your game. The things that you refuse to work on, or even acknowledge are problems. You can ignore the numbers as much as you want to, and I'll continue to get wide-eyed about it. I'd like to do something about it. I don't need to be a direct competition with a James Sexton. Because again, there's not going to be a shortage of people showing up at his door, and needing his very, very expensive council. But I hope I can get through to people so they don't have to show up on his Grim Reaper doorstep. I hope that I can get through to people because these numbers are insane. If you think that you don't have a problem in your relationship, you think that, "oh, that doesn't apply to me," you're gonna lose so much time and money.

I don't need to call you names. I don't need to throw up my hands. And I don't need to just stay wide-eyed. I'll try to help because I know that we can do better than this. I know that there are just a couple of tweaks that I can offer to men and women with regard to how they show up in relationships, what they can work on, how they can continue to show up for each other throughout the course of their relationships. And I hope that some people people will listen and not just say, "oh, that's not me. I'm above average intelligence. I'm above average with regard to how how I show up in relationships and what I bring to the table and how much people want to be with me for the rest of my life. I don't need to change anything about myself."

I have seen and experienced and analyzed enough about the dating landscape, and there is a huge problem here that affects every part of our lives, financially, romantically, personally, emotionally, all of it, to a huge degree. And again, I hope that I can be some voice that can echo what James Sexton said at the very beginning of his podcast, and many podcasts he's had, that he does think that marriage and love can work. I do believe him.

Let's stop making divorce, and repeated divorce, a very, very expensive reality.