Marriage As A Form Of Negligence

James Sexton, Soft White Underbelly, and modern love.

I left a job at TCU in September of 2022 and was pretty much unemployed from early October until early January, give or take. In that time, I got more into YouTube, having more time on my hands during the day — and not much income. You can reasonably say I’ve been watching a decent amount of YouTube consistently for a year, then. In that year, this might be the best video I’ve ever seen, or a top-five:

That’s a divorce attorney (James Sexton) talking about love, marriage, and divorce. He makes at least 45 really strong points, so even though it’s a 1-hour watch, I’d encourage you to get through it, especially if you’ve ever been married, are currently, etc. It’s very insightful. It’s also interesting because it comes from a person who spends the bulk of his waking hours working on high-conflict, high-ish-money divorces (and he himself is divorced), yet he still looks at love in a positive light, which I suppose is heartwarming to see.

Sexton is kind of a media shill in general and appears all over the place, from The Steve Harvey Show to Access Hollywood and beyond. This is probably one of his more nuanced interviews, though. He is usually the “go-to” lawyer when something happens with a celebrity prenup or alimony payment.

One of the most interesting parts of this video is when he talks about the divorce rate, which he claims is near 56% in America. I’ve actually heard the rate went down during COVID and was hovering around 51%. Oddly the CDC measures divorce rates in the USA, and here’s what they have.