How to Stay in Love: A Divorce Lawyer's Guide to Staying Together

By: James Sexton Format:  Physical Book

Completed: 11/23/2023

What's it about:  A divorce lawyer recounts all the stories, ideas, and pieces of advice about love and marriage.  In his own words, it’s not a “How to” book as much as a “how not to (get divorced” book.  Having ended thousands of marriages, he seems to know his stuff.

Main Takeaway: There are many but a few that quickly come to mind are:

1).  “The skills needed to repair a failing marriage are the same ones needed to avoid the issues in the first place.”

In essence, if the two people aren’t aware, loving, emotionally intelligent, rational, and can communicate…. Marriage will be hard.

2).  Don’t ignore the voice in your head.  His ex wife said “I remember walking down the aisle thinking, ‘this isn’t right.’ “

A few kids later and they were divorced.

3).  How do you know that the person is the one? Like his mother said, “You can’t always spot intelligence, but you can see stupid, coming a mile away.”

He says that part he knew his marriage was over when he saw another couple say that they wanted a break from the kids so they could "just walk and hold hands". He and his wife, not admitting it at the time, both internalized and said “yeah, we aren’t like that.”

4).  You don’t have to swing at every pitch.

“Marriage is like a baseball game where there’s no strike limit.”

The truth of the matter is that 56% of marriages end in divorce. If you do even guesstimation on how many stay together for the sake of kids or avoiding divorce, you can add another 10%.  Thus 2/3 marriages are unhappy.

That’s a scary stat.  But you don’t have to have it that way, you get to choose.  Choose wisely.