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

The old joke goes, “Speeches are like affairs: Anyone can start one, but it takes a genius to end one well.”

I learned a basic principle: Just because you are holding something doesn’t mean you are controlling it.

To win an argument, regardless of the time, preparation, and passion I’ve invested in it, is much harder when the person receiving it is disinclined to respond favorably—or, worse, bristles at what I’m saying regardless of the merits. I try to aim my message at whoever the hearer thinks they are or aspire to be—or, in pop psychology–speak, the pers

This always seemed nonsensical to me: Why, of all the people on the planet, would the person you married be the one you always have to be singularly critical of? Why hold the person with whom you signed a lifetime commitment to such a specific and unreasonably high standard? How come we’re encouraged to give our friends a break and understand that

Almost all of us wake up each of the 365 days a year, 366 in leap years, and decide to be who we were yesterday. And who we were the day before that, and the week before that, and probably the year before that.

Often when we speak to people, we speak far too candidly to who they are, not who they want to be. Want to persuade someone? Speak to who they aspire or imagine themselves to be, not to who they actually are.

Wait too long, and ignorance becomes evidence of something far more nefarious.

If I’m to be the most effective communicator I can be as a divorce attorney, it’s imperative that I know my audience. Who is this person? What are her goals in this interaction? What does she really need from me at this moment? Those are three distinct questions whose answers help me to effectively communicate, so let’s look at each one individuall

Often the master of the universe was a shitty husband and/or father, as those roles became collateral damage of the prestigious breadwinner.