What leads to divorce? Divorce lawyer James Sexton says it’s when spouses abandon small acts of affection and love. On the Mighty Pursuit podcast, interviewer asked him “What leads to divorce?” He said “Blowjobs and granola.” Of course, there was a story behind that answer:

So I had a client, a young woman, a beautiful woman, married to a very successful guy in finance, and they had a very successful marriage, and then the marriage ended.

And we were going through this very contentious ugly trial. And we were sitting outside of the courthouse and I was chatting with her and I said, you know, was there a moment when you knew your marriage was over?

And she said, oh, yeah, absolutely.

And she said, well, this is gonna sound weird, but there was this granola that I really liked, and they only sold it at Whole Foods.

And she said, my husband used to always get it for me. She said, one day I opened the cabinet and the granola bag was empty. And I thought, oh, that’s weird, that’s never happened before. So I left it there cause I thought, oh, he hasn’t noticed, and like, when he notices, he’s gonna get more of a granola.

And he never did.

And I said to her, was there anything like that that you did for him?

And with no hesitation, she said, yeah, blow jobs. I’d give blow jobs all the time, like couple times a week. She’s like, because it took like three minutes. She’s like, I never made a decision like, oh, I’m not giving him blowjobs anymore, she decided, but it just like, life got in the way. And then, like, I realized, like, oh, yeah, it been like three weeks since I gave him one. And then it became, oh, it was months since I gave him a blowjob.

I think these are acts of affection and love.

And if the goal is for my spouse to feel loved, cared for, excited about me, inspired to want to radiate love back to me, I don’t know, it feels like a pretty good investment. Why does that go away?

I think what poisons us that we shift our mindset.

Like, it’s no longer, look what I can do. Look at the power I have to make this person feel so good in this awful world sometimes, right?

We shift our mindset from that to, I don’t owe you granola, I don’t owe you a blowjob.

You can justify almost any discourtesy or lack of love and courtesy to each other, because you can’t be in a relationship with someone day to day and not find an abundance of things to be pissed about, or to be grateful for, by the way.

So I think the death spiral for me is about you’re just focusing on all those other things. Like, you know, well, he hasn’t bought me granola. Well, you know, yeah, I didn’t buy you granola cause you’re not nice to me.

…

You’re both right.

Great job. You’re both right.

You have a right to your misery.

Awesome. Great job, guys.

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