Advice From a Divorce Lawyer

Yes, this is a strange twist.  We recently heard about James J Sexton’s book,“If You’re in My Office, It’s Already Too Late.”  James is a divorce attorney from New York, who started noticing some patterns after 20 years of working with couples whose marriages were ending.

In an interview on CBS news, he said, “I think you can learn a lot about how to keep things together by watching how they fall apart.”  Some of the observations James points out align very well with what we have observed in our 28 years of marriage.

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James points out that all married couples have struggles, but they think they’re the only ones.  They believe everyone else is living near-perfect lives, and this causes them to be unhappy with their own marriage.  He says, “We don’t share candidly what’s really going on in our lives.”  We’ve noticed the same thing.  Over the years, we’ve had many opportunities to have heart to heart talks with other couples, to speak to small groups, and to write about our relationship.  Many times, couples have said, “We could really relate to your story.  We thought we were the only ones.”

James also had the following recommendation:  “We would do well to spend some time talking with people who have managed to stay together through the rough spots – who’ve managed to not only endure marriage, but still like it and thrive at it.”  We agree.  Learning from ‘marriage veterans’ is invaluable.

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We’ve been to a variety of marriage enrichment experiences that have helped us to grow closer – especially our Worldwide Marriage Encounter weekend.  If you’re looking for an opportunity to hear from couples who are willing to talk about the REAL stuff of relationships, that’s what Wordwide Marriage Encounter is all about.

Here’s one more quote from Mr. Sexton:

“I think you fall in love really fast, then you fall out of love slowly.  And if you want to keep your love alive, you have to be attentive to all the little things that go wrong along the way, and constantly course-correct.  If you can do that, you’ll never set foot in my office.”

If you’re curious to hear more of James’ insights, you can find him on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and all sorts of places online.

To learn more about Worldwide Marriage Encounter, you can click here:  Worldwide Marriage Encounter.