 If someone, whether it be an ex or whatever like, you know, can take you from me, then like, they can have you. Cause that means you was never mine. Yeah. That would really upset me as well, if my spouse was cheating and then I had to pay them spouse's support, but it happens all the time. Pre-nups. Yup. I'm getting one. Me and my girl getting one. For sure. There's still such a stigma around it and we feel, you know, so bad and so embarrassed and so ashamed over, you know, having to deal with certain things. Welcome to episode three of the Harlem After Show. And if you're insanely new and don't know what Harlem is, let's just get this out of the way so we can get into these past couple of episodes because baby. So Harlem is a bold comedy available only on Prime that follows four best girlfriends. It was created by Tracy Oliver and explores how black women are shining and striving in their 30s. Right here, this is where we unpack the topics that stood out the most to me from the last two aired episodes, which in this case are episodes five and six of season two. Meaning, all in this one episode, we are gonna talk about legacy and family planning for queer women, divorce law, including pre-nups, retroactive jealousy, and hooking up with an ex. Now, Harlem is a kind of show that is best enjoyed with friends, which is why I had a watch party with my best friend Amber, along with her best friends, Easy, Janiqua and Adrian, who I actually discovered are also really good friends with one of the Harlem best friends. Shout out to Jerry. Jerry, our close Aquarius friend, starting with Harlem, and then catch it, it's airs on Amazon. Thank you. Oh, this is my job. I'll do the call for the show. It is a beautiful thing when beautiful people with beautiful complications get together to laugh and lean into each other, especially when it comes to talking about the hard stuff, like living with a mental illness. Mental health. Yeah. Love that we went there. Because I feel like, especially now, I think it's time to normalize conversations around needing help when you are going through something that would be under that category. You know, if you went through a traumatic experience, if you're suffering from PTSD, if you're dealing with depression, if you're dealing with anxiety, like there's so many aspects of that, and I think there's still such a stigma around it, and we feel so bad and so embarrassed and so ashamed over having to deal with certain things. And I think that if we can just open up that conversation and normalize it a little bit more, then I think that we could really help each other so much more in that. So I love that we went there. I think it's beautiful that she felt safe to go and do that. And that's one thing I think we emphasize in our group and our family, because we share those things. Wait, is it time? All the time. Is it time to come out? Is this the time to come out? I mean, I will if you do. I can personally relate to that, because earlier last year, I was recently diagnosed with ADHD. I'm scared. I don't want to say it. This is the first time I'm coming out. Only my close friends know it. So I recently got diagnosed, which should have made sense all my life. But I got diagnosed with, I've been on ADHD since I was 28. But recently I got diagnosed with autism or being on the ASD spectrum. And so navigating that and learning to drop all the masks that I had unknowingly developed to kind of just be in the flux of society and school and upbringing and church. So you're not shunned or whatever. Mostly sensory issues, you know, mostly. But other than that, like I opened up to my best friends and all my wife and my family and like everyone was so supportive. I was so nervous. But they're offering me all the accommodations that just go without question. You know what I'm saying? If a restaurant is too overstimulating, they keep me in mind. Instead of me having to just be like, okay, let me just down these shots so I can do this. I don't even know who the first one was in our group to open up. And then it allowed me to open up and saying, wow, I was recently diagnosed with anxiety and I've known I've had ADHD my whole life but just trying to navigate how one's affecting the other was very new for me. And so me being able to like open up and talk to my friends and say, yeah, these things are what trigger me and these things, I did the same with this one. These, I just, I'll feel this way and not know how to get out of it sometimes. I'm really trying to figure it out and navigate it. It was necessary so that they understood why all of a sudden I went from the life of the party to like I'm hiding in a corner. It's so under talked about, especially among black women or women in particular. So it's important. Make the space for your friends. Yeah. I know these topics can be triggering but I do also hope that they are very inspiring. And speaking of which, I want to double back for a beat to last week's topic on reproductive health, which I know from the comments was extremely powerful for you two. But this time that we revisit the topic, I want to do so from the perspective of a black queer woman. Then right after we are going to go right into a sit down with Demetria L. Graves, owner of Graves law firm to cover another pearl clutching conversation. What should people know about divorce before getting married? But again, that's what's coming up next. What's now is family planning for queer women. Do you ever think about continuing our family? Like having kids all the time? You? Never. Ever. I mean, until recently, I kind of always thought it was off the table. Off the table? Honey, what year are you living in? Queer and trans people are having children every day. I know. And it's turned most brunches into a nightmare. I appreciate it. I guess I just didn't see it for myself. I mean, other than you and Grandma Florence, family hasn't been a particular safe space for me. Same. But I like to look at it like this. If we don't have kids, the progress in our family stops with us. For so long, we lived in two-dimensional caricatures where it's like, OK, this person is going to play the role of this. And then this person is going to play the role of this. And this person is going to play the role of this. And none of those paths cross. And Bell Hooks talks about the oppositional gaze, right? Us not being able to see ourselves on screen. And so what I'm happy with this show is that, like, oh, we get to just be. And so then we can live more fully in the characters and in collaboration of the characters because the conversations are more nuanced and specific, which means that the universality of the conversation as a whole includes more people. What came up for you while watching that scene? So all my life, I've always said, I want to have a child. I want to have a child. But I always told myself because I grew up in a single parent home, I saw my mom struggle with my brother and I said, well, if I decide to do it, I don't want to do it by myself because I've seen what that looks like. So also because I knew I was gay, I was like, well, I can actually choose and make the decision when I'm in a committed, healthy relationship. This is the person that I know that I can bring a life into this family with. But things change. I met Adrienne and she already had Asia and Aliyah. And they are the two most best kids I could ever ask for to be a parent to as well. But in a world where we don't feel protected, I have to also try to protect you. So if I have to make the decision to bring more children into this life, I don't think I will. I don't think it'll be fair to them. So that recently changed, yeah. I go back and forth because, of course, I want kids. And I think about how it's important to carry on my last name and how I'm like my dad's junior. Well, I'm like the third technically. So it's like I need to carry on the name as well. But then I go back and forth because I'm just like, I don't know my lifestyle if I can see that. But then I see them and the way they're doing it. And it makes me feel like, oh, it's possible. So I'm with Jerry's character on the fence. How, what does it look like? And if it's possible. Have you considered freezing your eggs? Yeah, I'm actually starting that process. I was supposed to start that process last year, yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Because it's not going to be my first child is going to be from a donor in my family to whoever my lady is. But my second child will be my egg with another donor. Yeah, so I got to get that process going. I mean, me, honestly, I'm not going to lie. I want kids, you know what I'm saying? Like, you have those thoughts, you know what I'm saying? I understand those thoughts, but for me, because obviously I'm a lesbian, it's just like, I got to have something. You know, like, I got to keep that energy going with my personality. And I just want to see what a little mini me would look like. You know what I'm saying? Like, I can't leave this world not knowing, like, yo, what would I look like again? But like, you know what I'm saying? Again. But watching, you know what I'm saying? But like, watching that game. So I feel like, yeah, it would be like, yo, we are up right now. Like, studs, we up. You know what I'm saying? I honestly like my baby. You feel me? She said, regardless of treatment plan, that I should freeze my eggs because it would be hard to stop and do it misdream. Everyone wants us to have kids. Right. But the weird thing is I'm doing it. Wow. Well, it sounds like somebody's in the market for freezing some eggs. Um, I don't know if I can have kids. My number count is low or something. Oh, no. Kimmy, shit. I don't even know how to tell Ian. I've cost him 68 grand and mirrors what I'm just supposed to drop this on him to. Drop what on me? Demetria L. Graves. Hi. Owner of Graves Law Firm. Yes. Author of the book, When Women Run the Firm. Yes. Host of the podcast, Legally Uncensored. Yes. Will you watch some Harlem with me? Yeah, let's do it. I'm already paying for him to stay in a hotel to be out of my place. Something he didn't have to agree to. Man, I don't have to agree to give him a half of everything. Why am I paying your high-ass hourly rate? I can lose this bad on my own. Right now, half is on the table. But if it goes to trial, it's an uphill battle. In the court's eyes, you deceived him by marrying him and abandoned him, and you made a lot of money. But that's not. And I get that. But just so you know, you run the risk of not only losing more, but also months, probably years of my high-ass hourly rate. Now, are you willing to risk everything to save half? And with that, here's your payout. $1,005,088.12. Accurate. Of course. I believe we're done here. Agreed. Ty. I have so fucking loopy now. That hit me. Why? The hit me in the solar plexus. I don't know, risk everything? Because when we fall in love and we make that union and that connection, we think of gaining, not losing. So to get to a place now where you have to think about losing everything because you're ready to let go of love, that seems crazy. Are you really losing if that person helped you to build it? I guess it gets tricky because then you have to start defining help. Right. But I guess the law defines that for you. Well, I think where I get frustrated with a lot of my clients is people don't think about this before the marriage, right? They think of fall in love, get married happily ever after. And as we know in California, that's not the case, right? 50% of marriages in the divorce. So I would say 90% don't want to have those conversations. And I have to admit this. I know nothing about this area. Right. And I feel like in some cases, knowing feels like a betrayal. Do you know what I mean by that? But someone put it to me in a really fascinating way that really changed my perspective. They said, when you get married, you are signing a contract. You decide if it's a government or your own. Absolutely. I couldn't have said it more perfect myself. What is the government's contract? Half. What she's mad about is half. We're in what we call a community property state. So whatever you earn doing the marriage technically is divided equally between the parties. Despite whose money was used or how it was purchased unless you inherit and, you know, that's a different topic. But if you purchase it with money you earn, the money you earn during the marriage is community property. It belongs to both of you. So it's not your money or his money. It's both of your money. And I think that's where a lot of people get confused because they think that's my money. I earn 50,000 a month. He doesn't do anything. I'm taking care of him. And that's exactly the point. If you've been taking care of someone for 10, 15, 20 years, you don't get to just stop because you're getting a divorce. And then you said during the marriage. So if I came into the marriage with a reserve of a million dollars and then during the marriage I earned half a million dollars. Is it only the half a million that I'm giving half to? Yes. But you need to make sure you keep that one million somewhere else. If you start doing what we call co-mingling that one million with the 500,000 you just made, then you have to have a accountant or someone help you figure out how to divide that. So if you keep it separate, then yes, we made your separate property. Okay, so there is an agreement that you sign up for that's the government's contract. But there has to be things that could personally happen in the marriage that make that contract null and void. Like what if somebody cheats on somebody? No. Everyone always goes to cheating, right? Well, what if the person didn't get a job? They didn't work or? No. What if they got a terrible gambling problem? No. No? Only thing that can void a marriage is like age or if there was an incompetence issue that wasn't known at the time of marriage, but they are very, very rare and very, very hard to prove. Cheating will not void out the marriage. Cheating will not stop you from paying spouse of support. I mean, we see the news all the time and we hear about it. That would really upset me as well if my spouse was cheating and then I have to pay them spouse of support, but it happens all the time. I text you a question that you responded, wow, there's a lot to talk about with that. I want to ask it here. What do people need to know about divorce before they decide to get married? You need to know everything, right? So I gave you the lawyer answer, right? You need to know everything. You need to know what your spouse is earning, what the potential to earn. If you are going to get a divorce, know if it's a disparity in income, you may be on the hook for paying spouse of support. I think women, especially black women, have a really hard time paying spouse of support or trying to understand if he is a man. I'm using male and female for this purpose. Why do I have to pay him? Why doesn't he have to get a job? And so you have to understand that California is not going to say, you know what? Because you are such a great woman to him, you don't have to do any of the things that are in the law. So there needs to be a very candid conversation about roles, about money, about assets, about everything. It's hard. Most people don't do it, don't want to do it. But if you don't know and you don't have the conversations, what are you going to do except be mad at the end? How common though is it for women to be paying spouse of support today? It's very common now, right? More women are working out of the home. More men are staying home to care for the children. So I think roles have really switched. But those old ideologies that men should not ask for support, men should work, despite what they're doing, doing the marriage has survived, right? So women don't want to pay support. Despite how much time we can sit and have the same conversation we're having, they don't want to do it. What percentage of black women do you see are out earning their romantic partners? In my personal practice, I would say at least 60% of black women are out earning their significant others. And of that 60%, I would say 1% might have prenups, which is sometimes really sad to me. But yes. And what do you want to say to that? Don't be afraid of the prenup. Don't be afraid to have the conversation. Don't be afraid to protect your own legacy, right? Not to say that you're not going to give your spouse of support or those sorts of things, but it's okay to say, hey, I want to protect the five houses I had before we got married. I understand that I'm making $60,000 a month and you might be making $10,000 or $11,000, which is fine. But how are we going to address that disparity if we break up? You cannot be afraid to have the conversations because otherwise you're in my office and you're upset with me because I'm telling you the truth of what's going to happen. I just don't want black women especially to be afraid of talking about it and being okay with having their stuff and income and that risking it all like we saw in the clip. Is there like a statute of limitations? So let's just say we get married, we get divorced, we both decide not to go through the legal system, but two years later you feel very differently. You have a different conversation. Can you come back and ask for spousal support from me? Well, it depends, right? In California, if you've been married longer than 10 years, there's really no termination date unless the parties agree to one for spousal support. So in those circumstances you can, but there are some steps you have to follow. You have to show the court you have been trying to work. You have to show like what was the standard during the marriage to warrant this? What is the spouse now doing? Do they have the money, the ability to pay? So there are steps you have to take in order to get it later. But if let's say you were married for two years and two years go by, you can't get it because you're only entitled to half the length of the marriage if your marriage was under 10 years. So if you're married five years, it's 2.5. So it's half the length of the marriage that you can get spousal support. When you watch shows like Harlem, you see scenes like that. As a lawyer who does this every day, what do you wish you could say to those characters? For one, calm down, okay? In fact, this is not going to help us solve this problem when you're that upset. And I try to have these conversations early on, right? Right when you come into office, this is where you're exposed. These are my concerns. This is what you should prepare for. So, you know, they can start to adjust to what might potentially happen. And people are really upset that, you know, wow, I have to pay them one, two, $3,000 a month. That takes some time to kind of process. And I think if they have it ahead of time, it's easier when you sit in the room like that and have a conversation. So I had a conversation with a group of women, a group of queer women about pre-nups. Yup, I'm getting one. Me and my girl getting one. For sure, you know what I'm saying? I understand it, you know what I'm saying? Especially when you come from the ground up. But me and my girl, like, especially with marriage in general, I feel like it's contractual. Like why I got to tell the government when I'm in love? You know what I'm saying? Why are you trying to give me the science stuff for tax reasons? You know what I'm saying? If I'm in love with you, I should just be in love with you. That's one, that's another topic. But I feel like in this relationship, if you build it from the ground up, okay, cool. But what's mine is mine and what's hers is hers. I don't believe in them. Not for us. Yeah, not for us. We started this journey together. We started with nothing from scratch. So we built it. We lived it together. And if something ever happens, God forbid and it won't, she deserves whatever. Why even though you don't foresee a breakup or you look at your partner as your better half or your second half, are prenups still a good option? Well, I'm going to remind everyone again that 50% of marriages still end in divorce. And I think it's 70 to 80% of second marriages end in divorce. So I don't think people go into a marriage thinking that they're going to get divorced, right? I think a prenup is a good way to have the conversation. Even if the two of you don't agree to go forward with it, a prenup makes you have the conversation of what you have, what I have, what are we going to do with these assets? What are we going to do with these debts, right? So if I'm coming into the marriage with $200,000 and student loans and all this stuff, I'm sure my spouse will want to know, am I on the hook for that? Or, you know, to me, it reminds me of like life insurance or something, right? I don't want to die today, right? I have an eight-year-old like we have these plans, but in the event that that happens, he's set up, right? There's things that say, okay, if this happens, this is what I want to happen. And the prenup is like that. You're not saying I want a divorce. We're going to get divorced. You're saying in the event, unfortunate event, that this happens. This is how we want to divide our assets and debts. This is what you're going to get or not get for a spouse's support. So you're kind of aware and you don't have that element of surprise like we saw in the clip that, oh, my God, I might have to give this person half or pay them this or pay them that. So in Harlem, in this case, Ty's ex-husband did not want the divorce. She did want the divorce. And a lot of him going after her for the money was not just for financial stability or he felt like he deserved it, but because he wanted to hurt her the way that he had been hurting her. Yeah, yeah. That happens a lot, but ultimately in real life, what that does is drag on a divorce. There's people that have spent 80, 90, $100,000 in a divorce for that reason because they don't want to accept that it's over and want to, quote, unquote, hurt the other person, but you're hurting yourself because you're spending all this money. If you have children, your children are watching you. It's just a disaster. So if you're ready to get a divorce, first call is to a therapist. Is a second call to a divorce lawyer? If you're ready for that, right? If you want to just talk to a lawyer to kind of get the lay of the land, kind of what it looks like, what the process looks like, what the fees are like, so you can put that into your planning. Yes, right? But some people aren't ready. There's people that call us two, three, four times before they really say, okay, this is it. Big thank you to Demetria L. Graves, owner of Graves Law Firm, author of Women Who Run the Firm and host of the podcast Legally Uncensored, which is all about family law. I genuinely enjoyed the podcast and learned so much. I think you will too. So go down to the info box to get her quick links. And keeping up on the same energy, let's talk more about exes that just won't go away. Because truly, there is no way we could end this after show without talking about this, what the f**k moment from episode six? You know, if someone, whether it be an ex or whatever like, you know, can take you from me, then like they can have you because that means you was never mine. And when it comes to like, you know, constructing my team and this thing that we call life, it's like, it's got to be solid. So it's like, I don't even, if it's not like that and if it's wishy-washy, one foot in, one foot out, you're not really committed to it. We're, you know, we don't need you around anyway. You saw her yesterday. And she didn't tell you. Double twist. But she told you to come here? Well, she left her phone and I seen your text. So she's keeping secrets and you're hacking her phone. Happily ever after, it's off to a great start. Yo, actually it is. When we are in an exclusive romantic relationship, we believe that means there are two people involved. But the real truth is Polly or not, every relationship consists of thousands of people, perspectives and pasts. Some of the people like friends and family are in our relationship as background noise. But sometimes there are people from our past who despite our best efforts to erase them from our lives are still a part of our present as key players. In these cases, we might find ourselves in involuntary and even unconscious emotional three sums where the ghosts of an old flame is still very much alive and kicking in our present romantic dynamics. This is retroactive jealousy. According to psych central retroactive jealousy means you feel threatened by your partner's past relationships. Feeling jealous about your partner's past may manifest privately through information seeking behaviors like social media searching or it could affect your relationship externally through behaviors like prodding your partner for details about their past drawing or demanding comparisons or sarcasm acts that ultimately can prevent a present connection from moving forward since one or more person simply can't. Now the truth is almost everybody will experience some form of retroactive jealousy since it's natural and even healthy to feel territorial over romantic partnerships. According to evolutionary psychology there are several adaptations that ensure that people love long enough and strong enough to stay together and potentially multiply. One of those useful adaptations is jealousy. Jealousy allows us to respond appropriately to threats that our mate will be concerned with somebody else's well-being and fitness rather than ours. The altruistic side of this aims to protect romantic relationships and support commitment. Thus, if interpreted correctly jealousy can teach a couple to value each other and it can also serve as a reminder to not take each other for granted plus to be grateful that someone has chosen us over everyone else despite our shortcomings. However, if left unchecked jealousy can become a harmful preoccupation that can destroy trust socialization and even safety within a relationship. Now navigating jealousy is something that every couple must do but as an individual you got to write your own code of ethics and set your own boundaries of where you will allow that feeling to take you and personally unless you have a really compelling reason I do not think the past is one of those places worth venturing but again, it's not about what I think what do you think about retroactive jealousy? It just be those moments where I'm looking at my girl and you know what I'm saying and it's just like how could you? How could you do that to me? And it's like she's just waking up just like I just woke up and I'm just like nah but how how you gonna be with him before me? How could you have a life before me? Yes! Oh my God. Like what? How could you? Toxic. I'm a very understanding person right but that screams toxicity and security ego to me so I'd really need to understand the situation like if I realize that like my partner is really close with one of their exes and wants that dynamic in our lives then yeah, I'm gonna be understanding and figure it out if there's no like ego and security or whatever involved and then but I wouldn't need the permission of my partner to be like can I meet with this person and understand y'all's dynamic I'm not gonna just go behind the back because that's like you know hurting the trust that we have I was gonna say I'm trying to think back over these last 10 years have we ever experienced that? You have. Some y'all somebody just been in your DMs Yeah, she didn't like it at all. I didn't, you know. I thought it was innocent. Or was she entertaining you? Well, it will know I know Adrian was innocent in it but I think it was just the audacity of hmm, let me see if I can still get in there let me just say this or make it about art. It's just she's only had an issue with that one girl. Because she's the one that had the story. We were just talking about this, Cray that I saw my husband's last ex somewhere and I took a picture with her because I was like I recognize you and I was like we should send it to my husband like be so funny. But because I know that what their relationship was and how it ended she's not on that list of people where I feel like they're right. It depends which ex. You know what I'm saying? Because it's like obviously I mean a lot of people have a few exes or whatever then there's that line where it's like alright I know this ex ain't no way. It's kind of blurry. Ain't no way. The feelings aren't cut and dry. Exactly. You know what I'm saying? You don't know. You know the history and then there's some of the art. I know the history. That is a wrap. Thank you to everyone who took part in this episode of course including the cast of Harlem which I personally cannot believe and cannot wait for next week because we are going to see the finale of season 2. So make sure next Friday you find yourself somehow some way able to watch episode 7 and 8 when they drop on prime and then find yourself back here at 5 p.m. where we discuss all of it for the after show. Okay. You don't have to wait until then to start talking. The conversation continues right now. It is time for our culture rated question of the week. Preenups? Yay or nay? Also, sex for the next. Is there someone that you have top of mind or back of mind that you would use a hall pass on? Also, I strongly encourage in the comment section if you have the capacity to do so show some love and support to the amazing souls in this episode who opened up so vulnerable boldly and beautifully. Also, if you feel inspired to the same I genuinely hope you find community in the comment section too because we all deserve that. Until next time.