  We study the topological types of pants decompositions of a surface by
associating to any pants decomposition $P,$ in a natural way its pants
decomposition graph, $\Gamma(P).$ This perspective provides a convenient way to
analyze the maximum distance in the pants complex of any pants decomposition to
a pants decomposition containing a non-trivial separating curve for all
surfaces of finite type. In the main theorem we provide an asymptotically sharp
approximation of this non-trivial distance in terms of the topology of the
surface. In particular, for closed surfaces of genus $g$ we show the maximum
distance in the pants complex of any pants decomposition to a pants
decomposition containing a separating curve grows asymptotically like the
function $\log(g).$
