Read full transcript Tap to expand
What do couples fight about the most? As a divorce attorney, I definitely see the same things coming up over and over. And I'll tell you the number one topic of argument that leads to divorce. Divorce doesn't start in court. It starts with the warning signs. I'm Ilona Antonyan, a divorce attorney who has seen it all, and I'm here to help point out the red flags that turn relationships toxic and divorce cases messy. So I want to make it clear: I'm not a family counselor, I'm not a psychologist, and I'm not really qualified to give you relationship advice. God knows I have my share of experiences I've learned my lessons from. I'm just giving you my perspective as a divorce attorney. And my perspective is certainly different, because I've handled hundreds of dissolution cases and seen people go through a difficult time and a lot of litigation, and I've seen what problems they are dealing with. If you're going to be going through the process, buckle up. This is The Warning Signs, and these are behaviors you can't afford to ignore. Today's topic: what couples fight about, and how that leads to divorce. The number one thing I see couples fighting over is parenting. The second one is poor communication, including distraction by phones and devices, and lack of connection. Everyone who gets married has an intention, because they're in love at the time. They commit to each other, get that marriage license, and have hope that everything will work out and be great. When you go through a divorce, you're not divorcing the same person you married. Either both or one of the two parties have changed. And the change could be driven by the fact that you have children. It could be driven by the fact that someone's career has changed. They've outgrown the other person. They don't find them interesting anymore. Or their ambitions may be different, or they just lost that connection — whether it's an intimate connection, or the ability to communicate, understand and listen to each other. Whatever the reason is, when they walk through our doors and are ready to divorce, all has failed. Whether they've tried therapy or not, whether they tried to talk it out and couldn't, whether they took a break and decided, "Well, I'm better off alone than listening to the constant put-downs," or whatever else they may have been dealing with within the relationship. When it comes to custody, currently most people fight over how much screen time their children get. Mothers, I've seen, often try to restrict the screen time. Fathers, who may be glued to the TV themselves watching sports or other things, may be more open to extend the screen time with children and not control that. I don't really think it's gender-based at all. It's just that I've seen, in practice, in some of my recent cases, that's been one of the arguments. Additionally: what time they go to bed and go to sleep, whether one parent gives them sweets and the other one doesn't, who gets the homework done. It comes down to their daily duties — who's burdened by those tasks that the other side may not appreciate. I think before people have kids, they can talk about a lot of things. But when the reality hits, that's not what they do. You go with the flow. People act on emotions. They say things that perhaps they shouldn't say to each other. The most important thing is to not do that in front of the children. If you have any arguments, self-control and self-restraint is important, to protect their psychological well-being. The level of their anxiety will obviously go up. They may pretend, when they're in the room, that they can't hear you and continue on playing — but everything registers. It's simply not worth it. So once you have kids, you have to give part of yourself to them. If you previously had time to go hang out with your friends, and go to work, and go on dates, you have to put children first and understand that although the relationship is important, it will take second place naturally. Recently, in some of the cases I have, before they had children they had a great connection. They travelled a lot, did a lot of things. Once they had children, the female partner was devoted to the children, spending most of her time with them, travelling with them, doing everything with them. While the other partner now travelled alone for business, and had to go to events alone, because mom was staying at home with the children. Not that they could not afford child care, but she wanted to be with her children at their young age instead of being at a mixer or some event. Over time, over a number of years, due to lack of the same frequency of doing things together, they drifted apart. And obviously that impacts communication. When you come home, conversation starts getting shorter. "Well, you weren't there. You don't care. You're not paying attention to me. I don't feel important. I don't feel seen. I don't have that connection." Over time, unless someone understands that it's a transitional period — it can take like five years for kids to really be able to do some things for themselves — then the partner went ahead and had an affair. It didn't just happen right away. It happened over time, because they lost the connection. And then the new relationship sounds very exciting and new, and then they forget about the old one. I'm not the best person here to give relationship advice. I'm a divorce attorney. I'm just telling you what I see in practice. Not saying I'm practising what I see, and what to do and not to do. But look, life is difficult, and everybody's life is different. You do the best you can. But ultimately, what leads to separation and people coming to a divorce attorney is they're done. Seeking a divorce seems like a much better choice to them, rather than having to fight every day, having to feel the pressure and all the other problems that come with disagreements related to finances, accusations which may be about their phone, devices, being secretive, having potential affairs they're not having, whatever insecurities one may have that they may dump on the other partner. It sometimes seems like it's easier to get out of a relationship and be free than deal with that. There are many reasons I see couples divorcing. Poor communication. Poor communication can arise because people are busy. One party is committed more to domestic duties while the other one is at work, and they don't give each other attention, or there's not enough time in a day to do that. Some are able to get through that and recognise the signs, and others are unable to see eye to eye, and conflict begins to recur. And it is the recurring conflict that's unresolved that ultimately leads to divorce. How many times have you been at a restaurant, looked around, and saw a couple sitting there looking at their phones while they're on a date, not paying attention to each other? I've seen that a lot. Usually it's an older couple — they just sit there and they look at their cup and they don't talk. Younger people, usually they'll watch Reels and they'll communicate about them. That's different. But you can tell that the relationship is boring, or kind of gone and dead, when it comes to that point. What can you do about it? I think distrust with cell phones often comes because we have messaging, instant messaging, many social media outlets through which new affairs begin. And by the way, guys, be careful. Now, as you know, a lot of attractive people online are not real people. They may be AI pictures. There was an article about it recently. Don't fall in love with a fake person, or leave your husband or wife for someone who's not even real. So be careful who you're dealing with and engaging with online, and even through video calls. Are you speaking to a real person? I mean, how many people get scammed? I've had two clients who were scammed like that. One lady fell in love with an individual who kept telling her he's going to come to her birthday party. Then he always had an excuse why he couldn't make it there. Then he was going to meet her at a restaurant, then something always came up at the last minute and he couldn't be there. But over time, through video phones, through WhatsApp, they established a relationship. I divorced her, and she was lonely. So she found this man that told her she was beautiful, she was everything he wanted. And slowly he started taking money from her. He gained her trust until she gave him all her savings, and she realised it was fraud, and she had no recourse to get her money back. Another one of my clients, she got divorced because she started having an affair. Her husband wasn't too nice to her, and she met a man online who treated her very well, told her she was beautiful, et cetera. She was a wealthy woman. It led to her divorce. During the divorce process she tried to take money against their community home mortgage. She sent $400,000 to this guy. I once picked up the phone and yelled at him, and I reported him to the FBI, and her entire family wanted to do something to help her. But she wasn't crazy. She was a normal, nice person. It's just that she was so in love and blinded and fooled by this person that there was nothing anybody could do to stop her from sending her money — her spousal support that she was receiving — to him. Unfortunately, she gave away everything that she had gotten in her divorce to this individual. Didn't listen to her family, didn't listen to me, didn't listen to anyone. The story did end tragically. She ended up taking her own life. So be careful with the potential for fraud, and who you're dealing with. If it doesn't seem real, and your gut is telling you something is off, if you haven't met that person, I recommend against continuing on a virtual romantic relationship which can ruin the real one that you have at home. I don't think that it being so easy to cheat is the reason why people are getting divorced. I think if someone wants to cheat, they can cheat any time. It comes down to trusting your partner. Are you with someone who makes you feel uncertain about yourself, your self-worth, your partner's values, and whether you trust them? You would know, before you committed to them, if they're trustworthy or not — if they cheated on you before, if they gave you reason to doubt their loyalty. And if it happened once, maybe it's not going to happen again, but most likely it will. But if it happened once and you knew about it, that discomfort and mistrust is going to live in your gut, and you're going to see everything through that lens — unless you went to therapy and worked it out, and your partner gained your trust somehow, which doesn't happen that often. Here's a warning sign to look out for: couples who are always fighting. Money problems, miscommunication, fighting over children, unequal domestic duties, and infidelity. The number one reason I see couples fighting is money and financial stresses. And those may relate to who's paying for children's expenses, who's paying the mortgage, who's paying insurance, who's covering all these bills, and what are your expectations for the other party's contributions to the equation. When it comes to financial matters, people fight over someone sending money to their extended family, about how they save money versus spend money. If it's a recurring problem, and you don't have the same values, don't see eye to eye on whether you're going to be saving for a mutual goal — to potentially buy a house or something else — and someone is blowing all their money on clothes and jewellery, this may not last very long, because one person is working and the other one is spending. Go to counselling if you want to save the relationship. I don't recommend being in counselling for a long time, or indefinitely, because if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. At some point you're going to know. Because what happens is, you may be in counselling, but in long-term marriages where you have these long continuing problems, what ends up happening is someone ends up cheating. If they're good at hiding it, the other person will not find out. If they get caught, it makes things way worse, and the other person feels like they've been fooled, betrayed, and wasted their life hoping that this other person is going to change, or whatever problems they were dealing with through therapy. You go to therapy for maybe under a year, read books, take advice, and see if you can rewire the way you perceive things and change some of your behaviors. But if you're incapable, or your partner is incapable, then you have a choice to make. Is this a relationship you want to stay in and be miserable, or not? And another choice you have to make is: what do you want for your kids? It's way easier to just leave a relationship when you have no children together. I would say if you're always fighting and you have no kids together, go. But if you have children together, it's more complicated. It's a personal choice. It also depends on your religion and your beliefs — the reason why we have legal separation versus divorce is because a lot of people don't believe in divorce. Some couples fight over money. Some couples fight over their children. Some over infidelity. Generally infidelity is one of the last things that happens, after parties are already kind of cold with one another and they've lost that connection. Social media. Things always look great on social media when you look at other people's lives. And as most of us know, what people post on Facebook is not often the reality of their daily life — it's the highlights of their good life. But that may impact one of the parties' perspective of their own life, because they compare themselves to others. That can add additional stress and arguments within their own household, because the other person is not providing them the lifestyle or things that they see on social media someone else has. I'm Ilona Antonyan, and this is The Warning Signs, for the AM Sidebar. If you recognise this red flag in your relationship, there are steps you can take to protect yourself before it becomes a legal battlefield. Subscribe for more divorce red flags you need to watch out for. They could just be your warning sign.
