James Sexton: evaluation

Transcript context

…So you’re an empath in the sheets and sociopath in the streets? Exactly correct. That’s well said. I got a new tattoo idea. That’s good. I like that. But I do believe when I’m behind closed doors with people, I say to them, “How you end things is going to be how you’re going to remember the whole thing.” And That’s unfortunate because you watch a two-hour movie and if the last 15 minutes of it sucked, you go, “Well, that movie sucked.” Well, the first hour and 45 was great, but you walk out with this bad taste in your mouth. I am genuinely in awe of how easily people forget that they loved each other. And I’m amazed because by the time I meet them and by the time they hire me to be a weapon against the person they were in love with, there’s nothing but animosity there. And so I have to try to imagine what these two people looked like when they were in love with each other and how that even existed. But I have to tell you, I don’t function that way. Every woman I ever had a relationship with, when I think of them, I don’t think of the ending necessarily. I try to think about the greatest hits. I try to think about the moments that were wonderful, where I loved them and they loved me, and there was joy and there was connection. And I don’t know why you choose not to. There’s that old axiom, I don’t know who said it, that if you don’t learn to find joy in the snow, you’ll have less joy in your life and precisely the same amount of snow. And I genuinely believe like, “Okay. The relationship ends. This is where it ends. We’re done now. I am making a choice as to how I will remember you.” And we do it in relationships. I always tell people if you ever want to see a couple of light up, if they’re ever the couple at the table that seems like they got in a fight or something, ask them how they met. And most people, when they talk about how they met, their face softens. And the other person looking at them telling the story gets that look you were talking about before. And because they remember that thing and how they felt at that moment. When this person was a choice, not a default, not their automatic plus one, but the person they asked to the wedding, not the, “Of course, you’re bringing her. It’s your wife. You bring your fucking wife places.” It was still, “Hey. There’s three and a half billion women, and I’m picking you.” That feeling. And I don’t know why when a relationship ends, you can’t do that. . You bring your fucking wife places.” It was still, “Hey. There’s three and a half billion women, and I’m picking you.” That feeling. And I don’t know why when a relationship ends, you can’t do that. A lesson I learned when my mother passed away. She had a two-year terrible battle with cancer and was on hospice and was very, very sick. And it was a very slow and awful end. And I remember one of my worst fears was that this is how I would remember my mother for the rest of my life, that I would never be able to think of her, that I didn’t think of what she had become in the last months where she was withered away to nothing in this bed. And I learned over time that memory is very kind. That faded somehow. And that now when I remember her, I remember her healthy and vibrant. I remember her laughter. I remember positive things. Some of that is I like to look at photos of that. But some of it is just how I think memory works. And I don’t know why we don’t apply that to relationships. And I think part of it is because we have this binary view of relationships, that it’s either success, which means you have happily ever after for the rest of your lives and die together or in short succession, or it was wrong. It was awful. And I don’t understand why that would have to be how we do it. I think we could look at relationships like what they are, which is chapters in a book. And that book is our life, and those chapters all have significance. The later chapters, none of them would happen without the prior ones. So there’s this beauty to me, of that. And I don’t know if it’s a choice or if that is how it is, and the rest is just narrative that we’ve put on top of it culturally for some reason.…

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