Relationships Talk

People often say to me, “It must be so depressing seeing people’s marriages fall apart all around you every day. Does it affect your own marriage?” As surprising as it may sound, I think that being a divorce lawyer has had a pretty positive effect on my marriage.

To begin with, it allows me to get behind the curtain and see people’s real relationships and that not everyone is so “Facebook perfect,” which I think sets unrealistic expectations in people and causes strain in many marriages. Not to mention that when I hear constant tales of people having torrid affairs with tennis instructors or the nastiness that goes on at the dinner table, it makes the fact that my husband leaves the occasional dirty dish in the sink not seem so bad (although it is still incredibly annoying – I mean, the dishwasher is right there!).

I also think that due to the fact that I negotiate and argue all day long, when I come home at night, the last thing I want to do is fight with my husband about why he chose to use my favorite coffee cup when we have 50 other mugs in the cabinet. My emotional bandwidth for disagreements is low, so a lot of time the petty annoyances that would normally have me voicing discontent, if I had the energy, is gone. What this equates to is that I let the little things go, which I think is really important to maintaining a working marriage.

Learn How to Negotiate

As I negotiate for a living, I also try to use that skill-set in my marriage. For example, when my husband and I moved into our first apartment together we had a small kitchen that did not have a dishwasher. While I hate there being dirty dishes in the sink (see above), I also do not really care much for doing dishes either. So the deal my husband and I made when we were first together is that I would do the laundry and he would do the dishes. That would have been fine, but my tolerance for a sink of dirty dishes is way shorter than my husband’s tolerance.

So the second deal we made is that when I could not take it anymore, I would make a request for him to do the dishes, and he had 24 hours from the time of my request to do them, and I could not nag him once during that time period. Now, he may have waited 23 hours and 55 minutes to do it, but he would always clear the sink before the 24-hour expiration period. This exercise was helpful in building trust in our relationship (as well as teaching me to work on my patience – also key in a marriage and forever a work-in-progress for me).

Don’t Fight Dirty

The bigger benefit that I think I have learned from being a divorce attorney is that it has taught me to be very careful and controlled when my husband and I do get into arguments. When things do get heated, I will think twice before saying what is really on my mind. I will consider the many times that a client will tell me a story of some fight she had with husband when she told him that if he does not stop doing X, Y, Z “he will never see the kids again” or the good ol’ “If you do not do X, Y, Z, I will take every last penny we have and fight you until you have nothing.”

These types of comments are litigator’s gold, because they will be spun to tell the tale of a mother who is going to use her children in a custody litigation as pawns to get what she wants or a husband who will use his larger income to financially try to bury his wife. Now, in both cases, my guess is that neither client meant what was said but spoke out of anger. But I am very careful to not say things that would ever be thrown back against me in motion papers one day.

The result of this restraint is that when I do have disagreements with my husband, they generally stay civilized and productive (despite what either of us may really be thinking). Bottom line – keep the punches above the belt.

Avoid the “D” Word

In the same vein as not fighting dirty, in all our years of marriage I have also never used the “D” word during an argument. Not once have I threatened, hinted, or even used a word that rhymes with the word “divorce.” The reason is that I have a more true understanding of what that the concept actually means more than the average bear. To me, if I ever said it or heard it, it would not be a lighthearted comment that I would simply brush off.

I know firsthand (or as firsthand as a person can know who has not actually been divorced) the serious damage that a divorce can bring upon a family. I had heard the heartbreaking stories of when my clients have to tell their children that Mommy and Daddy are not living together anymore. I have heard clients complain about losing their extended families and their friend circles in the divorce.

I have seen the financial sacrifices that families have to make to support two households rather than one. So, unless you are really serious about wanting to divorce, don’t say it.

Make Quality Time Together a Priority

While most spouses had something in common and liked each other enough at one point to walk down that aisle, often those commonalities fall to the wayside over time. The marriage becomes more of a business relationship involving the raising of the children and who is driving who to which practice and which tutoring lesson. What ends up happening is that the spouses lose their identities as husband and wife and their identities are consumed by being Mommy and Daddy. Mommy and Daddy are not usually very sexy titles.

To try to maintain the Mr. and Mrs. status, my husband and I tried to institute a weekly date night. That worked for a few months, but many Saturday nights were tough because we spent the day running around from the soccer fields to birthday parties and every errand in between, so the last thing we felt like doing was getting dressed up for dinner and a movie.

I used to compare those weekly date nights to going to the gym – I always felt too tired to go and made excuses, but after I went, I was always glad I did. The date nights were great for our marriage but ultimately an unrealistic goal for us at this stage in life. Now in a more practical way, we try to do a date night at least once a month and try to go away for a weekend together at least twice a year. We do a nice hotel with a spa and keep our kid discussion to a minimum so we can focus more on adult talk and remember that we are interesting individual people.

Final Thoughts

No matter how you slice it, marriage is tough. Even the good ones are hard, and the difficult ones are even harder. There are going to be highs and lows and times when you really think your spouse is great and other times when you are like “eh.”

It is important to be realistic about marriage and not compare your relationship to the pictures your high school nemesis posts on Facebook of her smiling children and handsome husband (she has probably already consulted with me, and trust me, her life is not so perfect).

You need to pick your battles and then let the little things go. Learn to negotiate with your spouse and to fight fair (without saying things that can get you in trouble or using the “D” word). Hopefully, these tips will result in you liking your spouse enough to spend some quality time with him or her. If you can learn to grow together rather than apart, you increase the likelihood of staying out of my office!

Jacqueline Newman is a New York City-based divorce lawyer and experienced New York matrimonial law expert. As managing partner of a top-tier 5th Avenue Manhattan law firm focused exclusively on divorce, her practice runs the gamut from prenups for high net worth people contemplating marriage to high-conflict matrimonial litigation in dissolutions involving complex financial assets and difficult custody issues. She is also the author of Soon-to-Be Ex: A Woman’s Guide to Her Perfect Divorce and Relaunch and Soon-to-Be Ex For Men: Preserving Wealth, Fatherhood, and Sanity During Divorce.

Now that comedian Rachel Feinstein has married an FDNY captain, she couldn’t be more thrilled to tell everyone that she’s a “fire-wife.”

“It’s a crazy feeling,” Feinstein tells Fox News about marrying her husband, Pete. “I certainly made some bad decisions, so I made the right stop.”

“I did it at the right time,” she notes. “It’s fun. It feels correct. The ceremony was just hilarious… It was perfect. I’m excited to be a ‘fire-wife.’”

The Maryland native is so proud of her husband’s line of work, the star says she tells everyone about his title and even put his rank on the couple’s save the dates.

“I put ‘Captain’ on the invitation,” Feinstein gushes. “People were like, ‘You’re not supposed to put his rank on the invitation.’ All of his friends at FDNY were making fun of him and teasing him.”

Along with the invites, Feinstein says they also had a fire truck at their Sept. 8 nuptials so they could take photos with it. However, there was one aspect of the wedding she wasn’t able to get her husband on board with — wearing his firefighter uniform.

Comedian Rachel Feinstein talks to Fox News about marrying a NYFD captain and why she chose pal Amy Schumer to be her maid of honor  (Getty Images for HotelTonight)

“He said, ‘That’s for [the] military. Firemen don’t wear their uniforms. My friends will tease me endlessly,” Feinstein shares, adding that she let that one slide. “I’m like, ‘Okay. Fair enough.’”

Feinstein was able to have some firefighter elements at the pair’s joint Bachelor and Bachelorette party though.  

“It was really cool,” Feinstein said of the bash which was thrown by HotelTonight at the Dream Hotel in New York City. “They put like fire hats all over the place.”

The party, which featured a three-day weekend theme, paid tribute to the couple’s mutual love of taking three-day getaways whenever they can grab them.

“Everybody came and got cyrofacials and their nails done,” says Feinstein. “It was just this big fun day of firemen and comics and our friends. It was awesome.”

One of Feinstein’s guests was her longtime pal Amy Schumer, who was also her maid of honor at the wedding.

“We’re best friends, so it was kind of like a no-brainer,” Feinstein explains of why she chose Schumer, 37, to be her right-hand woman on her special day.

Along with Schumer, comedian Irene Bremus, who introduced Feinstein and her husband, was also a bridesmaid. “It made for a lot of funny speeches,” admits Feinstein. “It was great. It’s the best day a girl can ask for.”

As for if Schumer, who tied the knot with beau Chris Fischer back in February, gave her any marriage or wedding day advice? “No, actually… She knows Pete. She loves Pete. She met him early on… so she’s happy that I’m happy,” Feinstein shares, adding that the friends call her husband “backdraft.”

As a comedian, one of the best things for Feinstein is that her new husband doesn’t mind when he’s featured in her comedy routines.

“I have a whole chunk on him in my Netflix special… I think he likes it,” Feinstein admits, adding that she thinks “he gets a kick out of it.”

“I mean if you’re going to date a comedian, that’s it. It’s going to happen. I explained that to him,” she says. “He tells everybody to watch the Netflix special.”

Feinstein went on to say that her husband is “shy at moments” however, he “also enjoys this insane life.”

“He’s much more accepting of it than anybody I’ve dated because I think when he goes out on calls, every day of his life is different and crazy… so it’s nice. I think he understands it. I think he kinds of love it.”

I recently asked a series of relationship experts to share some relationship aphorisms that, despite being acknowledged as obvious wisdom, are simply not true.

Hal Runkel’s answer stood out. The idea that “you’re supposed to meet each other’s needs and make each other happy,” he said, is “BS.”

Runkel, who is a licensed marriage and family therapist, was similarly revolted by this particular notion when he spoke with Business Insider in 2017: “That is the most horrific piece of advice I can imagine.”

Specifically, he called out people who refer to their spouse as their “other half.” Runkel explained why this is the wrong way to approach a relationship, using his own wife as an example.

“I am a whole person,” Runkel said. “She is not powerful enough to complete me. I’m not powerful enough to complete her. She’s a complete person. That’s why I want her. Not because she’s half; she’s whole.”

Instead of needing each other, he suggested, how about wanting each other?

Suzie Pileggi Pawelski and James Pawelski, the married authors of “Happy Together,” shared something similar in a Psychology Today blog post.

One potential danger of looking for a soul mate that “completes” us, they wrote, “is that it may lead us to think that our perfect partner is somewhere out there, and that fate will bring us together. This view doesn’t involve any intentional action on our part, but instead leads to us wait around for romantic lightning to strike.”

It’s a twist on the notion that you have to love yourself before anyone else can love you. As Pileggi Pawelski and Pawelski write, it’s important to “work on your own self-development” to prepare yourself for a healthy relationship — whether you’re currently in one or not.

As Runkel said, “Your spouse will never respect you more than you respect yourself.”