Snore No More: Saving Your Marriage by Saving Your Sleep with Hostage Tape’s Alex Neist
How Snoring Can Lead to Divorce
In this episode of How to Split a Toaster, hosts Seth Nelson and Pete Wright explore the connections between poor sleep, snoring, and divorce. Their guest is Alex Neist, creator of Hostage Tape, which produces anti-snoring mouth tape. Alex shares how his snoring led to his divorce. The hosts dive into the impacts of sleep problems on relationships and solutions anyone can try.
Snoring as a Divorce Factor
Studies show links between sleep issues and divorce. Alex's snoring made his wife resentful, led to them sleeping in separate rooms, and is seen as a contributing factor in their divorce. Snoring often goes unaddressed, allowing resentment to build over time. Snoring arises from mouth-breathing during sleep. Alex discovered taping his mouth shut improved his sleep and energy. He launched Hostage Tape to inspire people to get better rest.
Sleep & Relationship Health
"Sleep divorce" – sleeping apart due to issues like snoring – is a growing trend. Even if not the direct cause, sleep problems create friction and emotional distance between partners. Alex believes resolving snoring can be a contributing factor in saving marriages.
Listener Question
Seth and Pete also tackle a listener question! Seth answers a question about disclosing cash income from dog breeding in divorce asset division. Cash must be documented like other business income when dividing marital assets.
Tune in for a fascinating episode!
Links & Notes
Visit Hostage Tape’s Website or follow it on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok or YouTube
Check Out James Nestor’s Book “The New Science of a Lost Art”
Got a question you want to ask on the show? Click here!
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Pete Wright:
Welcome to How To Split a Toaster, a divorce podcast about saving your relationships from True Story FM. Today on the show, what do you do of your toaster is a real snooze?
Seth Nelson:
Welcome to the show everybody. I'm Seth Nelson. As always, I'm here with my good friend Pete Wright. Today we're talking about sleep. I know, I know. What does sleep have to do with divorce you're asking? Maybe you should ask one of the estimated one third of couples who are "sleep divorced" or any of those couples driven to legal divorce through their relationship with their sleep. To help us talk through the impacts of sleep on health, we're talking to Alex Neist, creator of Hostage Tape and former snoring related divorcee himself. Alex, welcome to the Toaster.
Alex Neist:
Thanks for having me.
Pete Wright:
Alex. I got to tell you, it's a little bit, it felt at first when we started thinking about what are we going to do for this, how are we going to do this show? That I was struggling to find a runway. And then I started reading up on the statistics about not just sleep divorce, which I think I saw on CBS Sunday morning sometime ago, that that's a thing, but just how incredibly closely tied to sleep and sleep difficulties between partners is to divorce, like real legal divorce. How did you get to this place before we talk about your product, which is amazing. How did you get here?
Alex Neist:
Well, I mean I went through a divorce myself, right? And I think there's quite a few people out there that don't truly understand this. And so when they hear this concept of wait a minute, you mean you were snoring and it may have caused you to eventually get a divorce? Get out of here. No way.
Pete Wright:
Exactly.
Alex Neist:
People just don't believe it because they don't understand I think what's actually really going on behind closed doors and how that just creates this cascade and this catalyst for what it does. So for me, I've been an entrepreneur my whole life, and so always worked from home, always been around my wife. We were, man, we met in 2006, so we've been together and spoiler alert, we're actually back together.
Pete Wright:
Because you divorced because of this?
Alex Neist:
Yeah, we did.
Pete Wright:
Oh, man.
Alex Neist:
Met in 2006, so we've been together for a really, really long time. And then we have two kids, and I snored so awful that it just caused her to move out of the room. And as we all know, anybody who's experienced this, when you snore and your partner can't sleep, they resent you and it builds and it builds.
The Gottman Institute has this great study that they did over years. It's the magic ratio. So this is a great way to think about it where it's this five to one ratio. So for every negative interaction that you have, so think about this. So if you snore, it's awful, pisses off your partner and they can't sleep, that's one negative interaction. And then you wake up and then all of a sudden it goes to two because you get into a fight and then it goes to three and then to five. So now you've got five negative interactions. By the time maybe you leave to go to work, you have to have 25 positive interactions to counteract that. And that's a pit that most men just can't fall out of because it stacks up and gets worse and worse and worse. And so in essence, really snoring for us who've been through it, it's a catalyst. It's a catalyst for all these bigger things that create like this. It's like you're Indiana Jones. You're running out the cave because you've got this big boulder-
Pete Wright:
Yeah, you got the boulder.
Alex Neist:
... that's built up and then you just get rolled over.
Pete Wright:
Seth, what do you think when you hear this stuff about the connection between sleep and divorce? As an attorney, do people come to you and ever have the direct complaint, "I'm leaving them because I can't sleep?"
Seth Nelson:
No, but they talk about what happens in the morning when they wake up and all those arguments and how the breakdown happens. I have had people talk about that one of the problems in their relationship is one of them is an early bird and the other is the night owl. And so that's different sleep patterns as opposed to being interrupted in sleep.
So if you're up early, say you're up at 5:00 AM, you go work out. Or 6:00 AM, you get your workout and you get your coffee in and you're ready to start your day, but your spouse likes to sleep until 1:00 PM in the afternoon on the weekends. Or if they work from home, and I've seen this, they're on different time zones for work, so hey, I'm up late working, or whatever the case may be. I've seen that a lot where it's better if someone's like you both are early birds or you both are night owls.
Pete Wright:
Either way the sleep friction is the challenge, right?
Seth Nelson:
Yeah. And sometimes what happens, and I think this goes more to what Alex is saying, is the night owl will come to bed and start snoring and wake up the early bird and now they can't sleep. When you're not going into bed roughly the same time, someone's getting in it might wake you up. But not specifically on the snoring element. So I am thrilled to have Alex on the show to talk about this. This is great.
Pete Wright:
Well, and I want to ask about the friction part, what you're hearing. And maybe Alex, from your personal perspective. In my head, part of the reason there is friction when somebody is a disruptive sleeper is that when they're sleeping, they don't know how disruptive they are. And that the partner who is disrupted is the victim of something that the person who's assaulting them with the snore isn't aware they're even doing and that builds resentment. Am I right the way that I think about that?
Alex Neist:
Totally. And I think the thing about it is most of us men, if we're snoring, we kind of don't know maybe we are. Or even if we are, we don't realize it's a problem and how big of a problem it's. And then most of us think it's not that big of a deal when in fact you shouldn't be snoring. We really shouldn't be and it's so bad for us. And so then we kind of go through this whole thing that us men do where we're like, "I'm not going to go in and get it looked at. I don't want to go in and waste my time and do that. What's he going to tell me?"
Pete Wright:
How did it reach the point of divorce in your relationship?
Alex Neist:
So my wife ended up, she slept in the other bedroom for man, it must've been for a couple of years. It got that bad. I was an entrepreneur, so I was working from home. So I think what ended up happening was is when you separate bedrooms, not for good reasons, but for bad reasons, and then that wedge gets introduced. And then all of a sudden you get the resentment, you get all the negative interactions that you just can't get out of. Then for me, because I was working from home, you're almost around each other too much. Where I think you need to be able to have separation. You need to be able to have your own separate lives. And I think especially in my case, you end up losing your identity both as parents, both as men and women.
And in my wife's case and in I think many stay-at-home wives, they lose their identity on who do they need to be taking care of first? They put their kids first. So the kids got put first and then it was her, and then it was me. And then even for myself, I was a high level athlete my whole life. So then when I retired and became an entrepreneur and a businessman, I lost my identity. So then I stopped taking care of myself, gained a lot of dad weight, wasn't doing the things I needed to put myself first so I could take care of my family. So imagine that. You've got a wife who is putting your kids first, doesn't have an identity, she's losing herself, doesn't know what to do, is getting resentful, snowballing out of control. We're at home, we're probably around each other too much, not able to have our own identities, to be able to come back to each other and create that polarity that I think really good relationship you need to have. And then, yeah, it was just being a first time entrepreneur.
Seth Nelson:
You're up all night snoring and now you're sleeping in separate bedrooms. So we've talked about this, Pete. That part of really solid relationships that last is people live their own individual lives and they come together on what's important. They don't lose their identity. We talked about it in my own divorce, how I felt that. It was nothing my former spouse did. It was all the pressures I put on myself to be a provider, to be a good associate attorney at work, to make sure that I was doing the chores on the weekend and helping out and doing my fair share. And then all of a sudden I'm never going out and hanging out with the guys or playing. I grew up playing sports, played college soccer and all that stuff. Where did that time go?So we've talked about that. But I think that big gap, Alex, for me is when the snoring is so bad that you are actually in separate bedrooms, that is just ripe for disaster.
Alex Neist:
Right. It is. And like I say, I think when that happened for us and then she took roots in the other bedroom, I didn't maybe understand how bad it was. I didn't really understand how that was going to continue to snowball into what it did. And then it ended up leading to a separation where then everything just exploded at that point.
Pete Wright:
So let's talk about what happens physically when someone snores. What's going on there?
Alex Neist:
Generally what's happening is when your mouth is open, you're breathing through your mouth and then you're creating a lot of noise from the soft tissue in the back of your throat. So number one, we shouldn't be sleeping with our mouth open. We should only be breathing through our mouth if we're talking or eating. That's the only time. Other than that, mouth should always be closed. And so as we get older, us guys, as our bodies start to break down a little bit, muscles aren't as maybe as toned as good as they used to be, our jaws start to fall open.
Pete Wright:
I don't know what you're talking about, Alex.
Seth Nelson:
Pete is the perfect male specimen, Alex. So he's a little confused by what you're saying now, but it's all right. We'll just keep moving on for the listeners, Pete.
Pete Wright:
Okay. Okay.
Alex Neist:
So yeah, then you've got this vibration that's happening because it's coming through our mouth and just that.
Seth Nelson:
And the size of that thing that hangs in the back of your throat Pete?
Pete Wright:
Go ahead, say it. I dare you. I dare you to say it on the podcast.
Seth Nelson:
I got to say it very, very clearly, and Andy, if I get it wrong, you're going to cut this, right?
Pete Wright:
I don't think he will.
Seth Nelson:
Uvula.
Pete Wright:
Uvula, right?
Seth Nelson:
Uvula. I always get it wrong. But here's the deal. I've had surgery. Mine was so big when I slept and breathed through my mouth, it was just like, and I had-
Pete Wright:
Yeah, like a speed bag.
Seth Nelson:
... outrageous snoring. Outrageous snoring to the point where my now wife was like, this is a problem because she couldn't sleep. Personally, I was like, yeah, I'll go get it looked at. I had no idea what could possibly help. And we're going to talk about what Alex has invented in his entrepreneur and things that actually work. But I went to the doctor and when I opened my mouth, he said, "Oh my God." And that's really not what you want to hear from an oral surgeon.
Pete Wright:
Well, especially when you set it up like mine was so big and you're talking about something in your mouth, that's not what you want to hear.
Seth Nelson:
No.
Pete Wright:
So rude.
Seth Nelson:
And I literally asked, here's why I'm here. I'm snoring. And they cut a portion of it out. So I literally had surgery.
Pete Wright:
And did it work?
Seth Nelson:
It worked, but I think it did a couple things. I think one, I stopped sleeping with my mouth open for whatever reason.
Alex Neist:
Oh, did you naturally? By getting rid of that, you naturally then were able to close your mouth?
Seth Nelson:
I naturally just closed my mouth. Okay. So I think that helps. So sometimes I still snore. It's not nearly as bad. I used to snore so loud, I knew that I was snoring loud. I would wake myself up. That's how loud I was snoring.
Pete Wright:
Wow.
Seth Nelson:
Which is ridiculous.
Pete Wright:
How long ago was this surgery though? Tell me.
Seth Nelson:
It must have been like 10 years ago. I mean, it was a long time ago. It's really creepy too, because you're totally awake and they say open wide and then they take a needle and they start bringing it to put into your mouth.
Pete Wright:
It goes too far back-
Seth Nelson:
It's really creepy.
Pete Wright:
You feel that.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah. So anyway, but to Alex's point, a lot of people are like, "Oh, I'm not going to do this." So Alex, is there an easier way other than what I just went through?
Alex Neist:
Well, there certainly was. And do you want me to get into talking about the product?
Seth Nelson:
Yeah, man, I can't wait to hear about this.
Pete Wright:
This is what I've heard. The mouth is not a breathing hole. Like you said, you eat and you speak, and the rest of the respiratory system should be through the nose. So how have you helped us focus on the right breathing holes?
Alex Neist:
Yeah, what's interesting, when I discovered this myself, I was going through that phase of like, okay, I didn't want to go in and get it checked. Well, what do I do? Like we all do, we go on Amazon, we look for how to stop snoring. You find those mouthpieces, all the different gadgets and things that you think you might try and it didn't work. So I originally got this mouthpiece that you kind of mold and it's supposed to push your jaw forward.
Pete Wright:
Can't do that thing because I think you have to put it in hot water, microwave it, and then you mold it?
Alex Neist:
Right.
Pete Wright:
It's the worst.
Alex Neist:
Yeah. But what that ended up doing was it actually just made me drool a lot, and then my mouth was open and it didn't actually do anything. So then I went down the rabbit hole of, I read an article by James Nestor. And James Nestor wrote his bestselling book called Breath. And if you haven't read it, everybody should read this book. It's a phenomenal book.
And he talks about this experiment that he did at Stanford Medical Center where they plugged their nose for 10 days. When they plugged their nose for 10 days, they anecdotally recorded how they felt as well as they had doctors there that recorded what happened. And they developed snoring, sleep apnea, really dangerous, low levels of blood oxygen. And then when they pulled the plugs out, then they mouth taped. Then everything went away within a day.
So I went, whoa, you mean to tell me that this is as simple as just keeping my mouth shut? That's it?
Seth Nelson:
Which is simply the hardest thing for anybody to do.
Alex Neist:
Yeah. Being a high level athlete like Seth, you said you played college soccer. I was a football player.
Seth Nelson:
I wasn't at your level, dude. I just say that to impress people. It was like division three soccer.
Alex Neist:
Hey, it's all the same man. It's all good.
Seth Nelson:
I had two a days, but I wasn't getting hit like you.
Alex Neist:
Well, I was a quarterback, so I was protected. It's not like I was out there banging my head against a wall every day.
Pete Wright:
Okay. You guys, you could show off to each other later. Was this a kind of thing that you had heard about as an athlete?
Alex Neist:
No. So that's why it was so strange to me was that as a high level athlete my entire life and at the time I was in my forties, low forties, I'd never heard of this before. And I'm like, how have none of my coaches ever taught us that we need to be keeping our mouth shut and breathing through our nose? It seems to be it's been lost on Western culture for some reason.
When you go to yoga, if you guys have ever done yoga or any listeners have, they'll teach you to breathe through your nose when you're doing yoga. And even when I did yoga, I'm like, "I'm not going to listen to this. This is stupid. What does it matter?" We all think, what does it matter if we breathe through our nose versus our mouth? So that was when I went, okay. So I went on Amazon and I just bought some, there's thousands of options you can get for tape, right?
I just got something, didn't really know what to get. So I put it on my mouth and before you do it, like everybody, you're anxious. You're like, "Okay, I'm going to put tape on my mouth. Am I going to wake up?" That's a natural thought that everybody who's ever done mouth taping has. Because it's very, this is a very fight or flight response. You're covering your mouth, so just covering anybody's mouth, you have a natural reaction to want to rip it away. So I put it on, and when I woke up, I felt like a teenager. I could not believe the amount of energy that I had. And the thing about poor sleep is it stacks. When you don't get that sleep, it gets worse and worse and progressively worse. So when I did that, it made me immediately go, the business guy in me went, "Holy shit, there's a business here."
Because this is so simple, non-invasive. You don't have to go get surgery for it. At least for most of us, this is a viable option that unless you're 400 or 500 pounds, you're really overweight where you definitely need maybe like a CPAP or something in addition to help. Most of us, it was just keep your mouth shut while you sleep.
Seth Nelson:
I'm thinking this can save marriages because not only does it prevent the snoring, but if you let your spouse tape your mouth shut, that's got to be a positive in there somewhere too.
Pete Wright:
That's points, right? Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
That was like dominatrix, right? It's like 50 Shades of Gray.
Pete Wright:
Like, just like. I think they call it like.
Seth Nelson:
But not in a sexual way. Just shut up.
Alex Neist:
Yeah. So it was at that point that I went, okay, we're talking about a commodity, we're talking about tape. Because most people, when you think it's just tape, what's the big deal? I thought, all right, well for most men, you're not inspired to want to go put mouth tape on by going out and buying 3M micro pore tape. It's not very inspiring. It's not a very good story.
And anything out there that was being marketed wasn't very masculine, wasn't something that was going to catch guys' attention. So I said, okay, we're going to create this concept and create an amazing brand around mouth tape so that we can inspire men to actually want a mouth tape or to start the conversation. But also we knew that we could have some fun with this. And so I was inspired by Liquid Death. And if you don't know what Liquid Death is, they're this amazing water brand that took water and make it really cool by using this anti-marketing concept. And so we said, all right, we're going to do that. We're going to brand it in a way that gets your attention, but also leans into what it's really about. So when you think of Hostage Tape, the name of the company, the name of the brand, everybody's first thought is, "Why the hell would you name a Hostage Tape?" That's what everybody's thinking.
Seth Nelson:
Okay. Yeah, that's right.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
Thought the same thing.
Alex Neist:
But it got your attention.
Seth Nelson:
True.
Alex Neist:
And if you see that come across your Facebook feed, your Instagram feed, you don't forget it.
Pete Wright:
Right, right.
Alex Neist:
And the reviews, by the way, are amazing.
Pete Wright:
And especially because you have a delightfully bearded hipster on your website pulling off the Hostage Tape from his beard, and that sold me as a facial haired individual. Like taping your face kind of hurts when you yank the tape off in the morning. Somehow you get the hipster to be happy with it. That's aces. He's all smiles.
Alex Neist:
That's my co-founder Ben, by the way.
Pete Wright:
He's perfect. He's just perfect. I have all smiles when I watch him pull that tape off. He's got his hat on and he's smiling. I'm from Portland, I have to, he's like my people.
Alex Neist:
He totally is from Portland, by the way. He lives in Portland.
Pete Wright:
Is he really?
Alex Neist:
He totally does. He lives right in Portland. So I've known Ben for a long time because he was my creative guy from my previous business. And I went to him and I said, "All right, dude, I got an idea for business. This is going to sound crazy, I want to call it Hostage Tape." And he went, "That's not crazy at all, man. I love this idea because I'm going down this rabbit hole too."
But it stems from two things, this double-sided coin. One is, so when I first started mouth taping, I used to warn my kids because at the time when I started, I was separated from my wife. And so when my kids were at my house, I would tell them, "Hey, I'm going to warn you. I'm going to put some tape on my mouth. So if you come into my room and you see me, don't freak out, it's going to look like I'm being held hostage." And I didn't realize-
Pete Wright:
To your kids.
Alex Neist:
I didn't realize what that was going to mean until when we decided, holy crap, this is what it's got to be. It's got to be called Hostage Tape.
Now, the flip side of the coin was we wanted to lean into this core emotion that people feel. People feel held hostage by either their partner or sleep that they're not getting and they feel hopeless and they don't know what to do.
Seth Nelson:
True.
Alex Neist:
So it's that that we really lean into. And then just knowing that people are going to go, "Hostage Tape? Whoa." And so we see it all the time now where people will say, "I see you guys everywhere and I can't not remember it, Hostage Tape because it's so polarizing."
Seth Nelson:
So take us through the experience when you first try it because it's freaky.
Alex Neist:
Yeah. So when you first try mouth taping, you're thinking like everybody else, "Wait, am I going to wake up? Am I going to suffocate?" Everybody has that feeling. Even I did, the guy who founded the company, I was worried that I was going to suffocate. So at first you might put it on your mouth before you go to bed and you're like, "Okay, what does this feel like?" You put it on and you're like, "Oh my God, this feels really weird."
Pete Wright:
You try to break out of it? Is there instinct? How much fight gets in the way of actually letting yourself go to sleep?
Alex Neist:
I mean, I'm not an anxious guy by nature, so yeah, I didn't really have that big of a reaction to it. But I would imagine for the many people out there who are more anxious, you put it on and then you might immediately rip it off, go, "Oh my God, I don't know how I'm going to do this." And so we always tell people, if you're really anxious, then just put some tape on while you're at your computer doing some email.
Seth Nelson:
Right. Before you're going to sleep.
Alex Neist:
Right. Because at least that way then, you're subconsciously training your brain that, oh, this is okay. This isn't a big deal. I don't need to be anxious about this. Oh, and then by the way, oh wow, look how my nose actually opens up when I use it.
Seth Nelson:
All right, what happens to you got a stuffy nose though?
Alex Neist:
Here's what happens with in your body, and I'm not talking about if you're allergic, that's a different reaction. But if you just have a generally just stuffy nose, maybe you're a little sick. When you open your mouth and you start breathing out of your mouth, your brain tells your nose to make mucus, and then it creates this vicious cycle of constantly keeping your nose plugged. But if you shut your mouth and then just force yourself to breathe through your nose, it naturally starts to open up. But now, believe it or not, I've been mouth taping now for four or five years.
Pete Wright:
Okay.
Alex Neist:
No matter how sick I am, I've never not mouth taped because my nose always opens up. Your nose-
Pete Wright:
It always fixes itself.
Alex Neist:
That's the way it works. It's just the way our bodies work. This was the designed to breathe. The mouth was not designed to be a breathe hole.
Pete Wright:
Well, let's talk then about the alternate tape, because for those on video, you're actually wearing a bridge tape right now.
Alex Neist:
I'm wearing a nose strip.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, nose strip, right.
Alex Neist:
This is a second product we made.
Pete Wright:
Well, I'm curious about what role that serves when your mouth taping if they're related or not.
Alex Neist:
They're very related. So one of the biggest questions that people have with mouth taping is, "Well, what about my nose? Because I get stuffy noses." Or maybe I've got a deviated septum. And so what this does is it's got some plastic in it that just helps flare the nostrils and open the nose up to increase the air that I can take in through my nose. So it helps open up. And so certainly when you're sleeping, any way that you can increase the air coming in through your nose is good. I find that I actually like wearing this when I go run and work out. Being able to run and then focus on nasal breathing is a huge hack when you're working out.
Pete Wright:
Sure. Do you find just sort of physiologically, now that you've been mouth taping so long that your mouth is closed more often during the day? I mean?
Alex Neist:
You totally do. So now you become more aware of when you're sitting at your computer working, are you like this?
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Alex Neist:
Or are you like this?
Seth Nelson:
And look, I know you totally market it to men on this and they don't go look, but women snore too.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
Totally.
Alex Neist:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
I'm looking at you, wife.
Seth Nelson:
Shit.
Alex Neist:
Now statistically, I think roughly it's like 75/25. Statistically three quarters of them are men and the other quarter are women. But yes, certainly there's plenty of women who buy our product too, who they see it and then they buy and they're like, "Oh my god, I love this." So totally.
Seth Nelson:
Well, the interesting part is that it gets you a better night's sleep. At one level you're like, I'm trying to solve this problem of snoring because it's impacting my relationship with my spouse. But what it ends up doing is improving your ability to sleep, which improves your life.
Alex Neist:
There's a common word that you'll see, a common phrase you'll see when you read the reviews is life-changing. People will say, "Wow, I was so skeptical, but this changed my life."
Pete Wright:
I want to talk about your divorce with sleep friction, snore friction. Can you confidently say that mouth tape actually brought you back together?
Alex Neist:
It wasn't like the mouth tape per se. Our divorce was really rough. We didn't even talk for, it was probably the two, three years we were separated. So we were separated for a good year, year and a half before the divorce finally went through and was official. And then it was another year or two maybe. We did not talk. Even when we would do kid drop off and pickup, we had to do it from the curb and inside the house. And there was no words, nothing at all. It was that awful. For whatever reason, there was just a ton of unresolved pain and issues that her and I had that we didn't work through and was just still there.
And so then when we got back together, it was this really weird day where I pulled up and I was dropping the kids off at her house and she came out and I was like, uh oh, right?
Pete Wright:
I knew that was coming.
Alex Neist:
What's going on? I was like, I got to keep my mouth shut.
So she came out and then before I knew it, I was in the house within an hour. And for me it was a very emotional moment because for however many years we were separate, there was that half of my life that I didn't get to see my kids' room, what they were doing. I mean, because now our kids, they're 14 and 12. There's this half of your life that you don't get to be around your kids. And so being invited into this part of their life now was very emotional, to be able to see my son's room, my daughter's room, and then it started from there. I can't explain it. It was almost like the universe kind of willed us back together in a weird way. And then when we got back together and then we started sleeping in the same room, it was a, oh, wow, look at this.
Pete Wright:
Maybe this is another thing that we can handle together again.
Alex Neist:
This is new, but she was like, but you're not snoring. This is interesting. So we were able to sleep in the same bed. And so then there would be times where maybe at night if we're trying to connect or talk, I might fall asleep and forget and she'll be like, "Honey, dude, you got to put your tape on."
Pete Wright:
Got to mouth up. Yeah.
Alex Neist:
So then I roll over, put some tape on, and then I'm good.
Pete Wright:
That's crazy. Well, I mean, we're not talking about a little problem. We've talked a little bit about some of the stats, but we've got this, the difference between sleep divorce and divorce, the legal divorce. Sleep divorce seems it's kind of trendy, kind of not. You guys were sleep divorced for a while, right in your relationship. Do you find people trying to use the tape to resolve sleep divorce?
Alex Neist:
I've seen a lot of people who have contacted us who use Hostage Tape. My wife does a lot of our HR stuff for the company. She was getting the workman's comp set up and in the process of doing that, the lady on the other end said, "Oh my God, I just have to tell you Hostage Tape saved my marriage." And it was like, wow, that's awesome!
And so we get a lot of those stories of, "We discovered Hostage Tape. I was so frustrated I didn't know what to do and it saved my marriage because now he doesn't snore and we can sleep in the same bed. Thank you for changing my life."
Seth Nelson:
Do you have any stats on that?
Alex Neist:
A stat on what specifically?
Seth Nelson:
On sleep divorce. Like that's the root cause.
Alex Neist:
So I mean certainly I think it's debatable. But I think there's a stat out there that says it might be the third leading cause of divorce. I think that's loosely thrown around, but it's like how do you measure that specifically with just outside of just what somebody may or may not say?
Pete Wright:
Well, especially because what Seth said earlier. If the truth is that you're snoring and one or both of the parties in the relationship are getting poor sleep, they're probably not eating well, they're not able to regulate emotions as well as they normally would. You might call it the third greatest root cause of divorce because even if you can't pin it on snoring or sleep divorce, you certainly are not behaving as a well healthy slept person would.
Alex Neist:
And you may not know, right?
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Alex Neist:
You may not realize that the root cause was snoring that then set off this chain of events because then you might be thinking it's all these other things.
Seth Nelson:
On that point, you need to know what your body's telling you. And it's very easy just to say, "Well, I'm tired because I'm getting older. My back hurts because I'm getting older." Go get it checked out. I like to ride bikes, run, swim, stay active. And I was riding my bike and my lower back hurt and I was just like, "I'm just getting older." That's where it goes. You always hear these people, "I'm old, oh, my back hurts." It turns out I had a degenerative disc that was barely even there and I ultimately had spinal surgery and I have an artificial disc in my back. Yes, I was getting older, which caused the disc to degenerate, which caused this problem that was fixable. So don't just chalk it up to you're getting older. There might be a medical issue that you can resolve and you'll feel better.
Pete Wright:
The bottom line is to Seth's point, if you go get it checked out and to Alex's point, if you can fix it, then why not try that? Give it a shot. Give it a shot. I've never done it. I've never done it, but both of my parents have been longtime mouth tapers. I want you to talk about Hostage Tape, where people can get it.
Alex Neist:
Okay. So you can go to hostagetape.com and you can order right there. You can go there and you can buy just a month's supply and try it out, which is what a lot of people do. Or if you're really sold on it, then you just buy a year's supply or you can subscribe to it. But pretty straightforward, there's not a ton of options. But you could just go to hostagetape.com and you can buy it there. We're on all the socials, so you can always follow us anywhere too and see that. You want to check out the reviews, go to the review page and see what other people say.
Pete Wright:
Fantastic. Well, I'll tell you, this has been great, Alex. Thank you for the tour through Hostage Tape. It feels like I look at your sort of path of entrepreneurialism and everything seems to be related to what you're doing at the time, but this business seems to be the most personal to you and you can really tell. You can really see it.
Alex Neist:
Very.
Pete Wright:
Alex, nice. Thank you so much for being here. We sure appreciate you.
Alex Neist:
Thanks guys.
Pete Wright:
And now we're going to toss to listener question time. Seth, are you ready?
Seth Nelson:
Always ready, Pete.
Pete Wright:
Seth, we've got one that, well, it fits in with our animal theme. Sometimes we may be known as the internet's favorite divorce podcast about pet care, and so I am eager to share with you this question. Here we go. This one comes from anonymous. Here we go. "We have bred Golden Retrievers for the past decade or more. Depending on litter size and other characteristics, we clear between $20,000 and $30,000 per litter. We also can do one to two litters per year. The wife keeps this money, as she says, she uses it for Christmas and vacations. If she keeps all the dogs, does this income go into calculations since it's usually cash transactions?" What do we say to Golden Retriever?
Seth Nelson:
Excellent question. I can even broaden this larger to any business that deals with cash transactions because you're running a business. So when you say keep the dogs, you really mean keep the business. So I'm going to start general and I'm going to go specific to what I understand about breeders.
One, yes, cash transactions, check your local jurisdiction. In Florida, it's all income, so it will go into the calculation of what is your gross income minus deductions to get to your net income. And when you run a business, you're entitled to a whole bunch of deductions. So how do you track it is the problem. It's the same thing if people are servers or if they're going to anything with cash transactions such as getting your haircut or lawn guy, whatever the case may be, pool guy, anything. First off, a lot of people aren't using cash anymore. They're using cash apps. You can subpoena the apps, Venmo, Zelle. That's a great way to do it. Furthermore, beyond my understanding, people keep these things public.
Pete Wright:
That's right. I would love to know how much Alex pays for his Golden Retriever.
Seth Nelson:
Right, so exactly. So you can look at that. Now, my understanding for breeders is there's typically a contract with the buyer that says you can't breed this dog. So you can subpoena the contracts that they should have when they're selling the dogs. Yes, if they don't produce them, there's not much you can do about that. So you just kind of got to get all the pieces to the puzzle to find out ultimately how much they're receiving. Now you're going to get the gross number they receive before they have legitimate deductions, food, care for the dogs, vaccines, vet care. All that are legitimate deductions to get down to the company's profit, which is usually a pass through to taxes for the individual.
Pete Wright:
Fascinating. All right. No bones about it, Seth.
Seth Nelson:
So bad.
Pete Wright:
This is why I'm here, buddy. That's why I'm here. Thanks for the answer. Thanks for writing in that question. And don't forget, you listener, dear listener. You can write in your own question about dogs or cats or any other animal. I'm sure Seth would love to talk about it and the legal implications affecting that animal in your divorce. Just visit howtosplitatoaster.com and click on the, submit a question. Ask a question, it'll come right to us and we'll get it on the show in the coming weeks.
Thank you so much for downloading, listening to this show. We sure appreciate your time and your attention. On behalf of Hostage Tape's own Alex Neist and Seth Nelson, American's favorite divorce attorney, I'm Pete Wright. We'll catch you right back here next week on How to Split a Toaster, a Divorce Podcast about saving your relationships.
Outro:
How to Split A Toaster is part of the True Story FM podcast Network, produced by Andy Nelson. Music, by T. Bless and the professionals and DB Studios. Seth Nelson is an attorney with NLG Divorce and Family Law with offices in Tampa, Florida. While we may be discussing family law topics, How to Split a Toaster is not intended to, nor is it providing legal advice. Every situation is different. If you have specific questions regarding your situation, please seek your own legal counsel with an attorney licensed to practice law in your jurisdiction. Pete Wright is not an attorney or employee of NLG Divorce and Family Law. Seth Nelson is licensed to practice law in Florida.
