You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand. Welcome to the Doctor Wendy
Walls Show on I AM six forty. We live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
So if you're new to my show, you should know. I have
a PhD in clinical psychology. I have written three books on relationships. I'm
totally obsessed with the science of love and Oh I became engaged two weeks ago.
Yes, I found the love of my life. Took me, I
think, half a century to actually figure it out, which follows my theory
that relationships are far more about skill than they are luck. You can learn
how to have healthy relationships. Unfortunately, so many of us had a start
in life which gave us kind of a faulty model for love. You know,
I'd like to say that we all have that love is not about pleasure,
it's not about happiness. It's about finding the familiar. And what is
familiar to us is a combination of the kind of relationship we had with our
father, the kind of relationship we had with our mother, and the kind
of relationship we witnessed between the two of them. I mean, what could
go wrong there? Right? And then we go out into the mating marketplace,
and we have this idea of love, and we think everyone else has
the same idea of love that we do. And if our idea of love
is filled with pain, criticism, loss, anger, or we'll go find
that, We'll go find that. You know. This week, I want
to tell you a story of two different two year old boys that I saw
within a twenty four hour period. The reason why they stuck in my brain
so much is they actually looked so much alike. One I saw at a
family holiday party. Another I saw the next day at a restaurant, and
they looked so like I was doing a double take to think, like,
was that the little boy I saw last night at that party, and then
realized, oh wait, he's with a different family. Probably not so.
The one at the family party was being held by somebody almost the whole night,
except when he was in his high chair. I watched someone feeding him
and he was saying, yes, I want that, No, I don't
want that. He was being respected, he was being paid attention to,
he was given love, and I thought to myself, what an idyllic childhood.
Now, be careful if you think you're hearing from me that, Oh
well, that kid is being spoiled. I'm not talking about being spoiled.
I'm talking about being respected. If you're hungry, you deserve to eat.
If you don't like to eat that, you can eat something else. He's
not asking for candy, just different broccoli versus carrots, you know. And
the other little boy I first heard before I saw because I was waiting in
line to get into this fast foodish restaurant and this kid was screaming, And
I'm like, who is this kid needing all this attention? And I look
over and I see a mother literally mentally checked out. She is not even
looking at her child. He's reaching with his hands up, he's around her
legs. She's busy looking at her phone and doing other things. She also
has three other kids, one the oldest son looked to be about twelve,
and the other kids also ignoring this child. This child is screaming for attention.
Now my heart is in my throat because I'm like, I know everything
that I know about attachment theory, and I'm like, oh my god,
unmet needs, unmet needs, Oh my gosh. And so eventually I saw
them sitting in a booth at a table, and I thought, OK,
good, he's calm now. They've given him a bottle which he was holding
himself. Nobody was feeding him, and then he crawled over to his older
brother's lap. He sat on the lap and he reached his arms up around
his older brother's neck, looking for comfort, looking for care. His older
brother ignored him. He had his hands down at his side. He didn't
even take his arms to encircle around the back of this little two year old
with his knees on his thighs. I was like, what is going on
here? And I realized this is how a family trains someone to have an
emotionally avoidant attachments down Now, I could go either way. Of course,
this little child could grow up like eventually, the mother's probably like, you
know what if we just ignore it, eventually, it's going to stop,
and he's gonna be fine. He's gonna learn he can't take tantrums in public,
and he can't whine, and he's just gonna learn. Right now,
it could go that he could grow up and become somebody who has trouble connecting
with others because he realized that asking for care, intimate emotional care didn't work,
didn't matter. Or he could grow up to be the needy, whiny,
demanding. It never feels like his whole can be filled with the amount
of love and attachment that he needs. We don't know what his neurochemistry is.
We don't know if he's going to have an anxious attachment style or an
avoidant attachment style. We don't know. But that other kid that was getting
all the love and attention, I'll tell you that feels good to him.
Love isn't about finding pleasure. Love is about finding the familiar. So last
night I did not go to the Heiress tour. You know what I'm talking
about. I'm not a Swift ye Taylor Swift. I didn't understand the hype.
I don't know the hype. So last night I watched the entire concert.
When we come back, I'm going to talk about what I believe is
Taylor Swift's anxious attachment style has told through her lyrics and also how I think
she's healing. Now you're listening to The Doctor Andy Walls Show and KFI AM
six forty were live everywhere on the iHeartRadio. You're listening to KFI AM six
forty on demand KFI AM six forty. You have Doctor Wendy Walsh with you.
This is the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show. Now, before I talk about
Taylor Swift, let me start by telling you that I have recovered from an
anxious attachment disorder thanks to the help of a good therapist. Also my attachment
to my children because I did practice attachment parenting responding to them, which helped
me have a secure attachment, and also learning literally making changes and making different
kinds of decisions. So I'm probably the only person in America who am not
necessarily a fan of Taylor Swift. I'm not really familiar with her art.
I didn't go to the Airis Tour. I've been reading about her and that
Travis guy. I think he's like, plays football or something. But last
night my fiance Julio said, you need to watch her Concervata. You need
to see the whole concert of the aristour. Now, I like to watch
TV with the subtitles on because sometimes I don't hear everything or some attention whatever.
I like to read as well as I hear. So I had the
subtitles on and I'm listening to Taylor Swift's lyrics, and I'm paying attention,
and I'm looking through a lens of attachment theory, and I'm thinking, oh,
my goodness, I think this young woman has had an anxious attachment disorder
all through her twenties. But then when it gets to her last album,
Midnights, which was done just last year in twenty twenty two, all of
a sudden, I see an opening, an awakening, some insight, some
understanding, some growth, and maybe even some healing. Now, if you're
like me and you haven't been really familiar with Taylor Swift's career, I'll just
tell you a few things about her. She came out with her first album
back in two thousand. She was only sixteen years old. That makes her
thirty four now, and she's had ten albums. This huge World to Well
American tour she's heading to Asian X at the Eras tour r as different eras
of her life. Get it? Actually, I think is one of the
largest selling concert tours of all time. It just topped a billion billion dollars
along the tour route. She was such a nice woman that one day she
anybody who was on the tour group with them, from sound technicians to lighting
guys, to background dancers, to makeup artists to Rodi's who load equipment.
She decided to give every single person on the tour one hundred thousand dollars each
as a little tip, thanking them for what they've been doing. I mean
that cost her millions of dollars. It's okay, she made like a billion,
but this is life changing for many of these people. Now. You
might also not know that back in twenty nineteen, Taylor Swift was a baller.
Literally. She spoke out at Billboard's Women and Music Awards. She was
given like the Performer of a Decade award, and she spoke out literally trash
talking against Scooter Braun. He's the manager of Justin Bieber and Arianna Grande.
If you don't remember, here's what she said, and that is the unregulated
world of private equity coming in and buying up our music as if it is
real estate, as if it's an app or a shoe line. This just
happened to me without my approval, consultation, or consent. After I was
denied the chance to purchase my music outright, my entire catalog was sold to
Scooter Braun's Ithica Holdings in a deal that I'm told was funded by the Soros
Family, twenty three Capital, and the Carlisle Group. Yet to this day,
none of these investors have ever bothered to contact me or my team directly
to perform their due diligence on their investment, on their investment in me,
to ask how I might feel about the new owner of my art, the
music. I wrote videos, I created photos of me, my handwriting,
my album designs. And of course Scooter never contacted me or my team to
discuss it prior to the sale or even when it was announced. I'm fairly
certain he knew exactly how it would feel about it, though, all right,
So she was definitely a little angry, and Scooter got a little nervous,
so he immediately wanted to flip sell that real estate he'd bought, which
include the masters of four of her albums, So he sold it to Shamrock
Holdings for four hundred and five million. Apparently, according to the Internet.
He told the people at Shamrock, don't involve Taylor Swift, don't reach out
to her, but they did. They wanted to partner with her in some
way. When she found out that Scooter was making so much money off her
masters, you know what she said, she actually put her letter on the
Internet out to her fans called Swifties, saying I'm sorry you people in Shamrock,
Canter Timmy. You seem really nice and I'd like to do business with
you. But if any piece who's going to Scooter Braun were not dealing,
Apparently they wanted her to sign a non disclosure agreement while they were in negotiations,
and she was unallowed to say anything bad about Scooter for the rest of
her life. And she said, no one's going to take my voice away.
And you know what, I'm just going to re record those four albums
and put them out again and tell my fans buy mine, not Scooters.
And that's what this baller did. The four albums are Fearless read Speak Now
in nineteen eighty nine, and in brackets they say Taylor's version, Taylor's version.
And those fans saved her. They went out and bought her just she
sang the same song again, made the album again because she owns her own
voice. He might have owned the masters, but she owned the publishing and
the thing songs that she wrote. Her female fans are super loyal. I
watched them on that documentary last night. They were crying and I realized our
young women in America all suffering and anxious attachment style, because every one of
her songs is about not love but unrequited love, the pain of not being
able to acquire love. When we come back, let's break down some of
Taylor's lyrics. And the good news is I think she's healing and maybe Travis
Kelsey might be the beneficiary of it all. You're listening to the Doctor Wendy
Walls Show on KFI AM six forty Belive everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You're
listening to KFI AM six forty on demand. Okay, Hi, Ams forty,
you have Doctor Wendy Walsh with you. This is the Doctor Wendy Wells
Show. Okay. So I watched the documentary. I don't know which streamer
it's on. It's the Airas Tour with Taylor Swift, and I could not
believe the lyrics. Now she has come out saying that people criticized her because
it seems like all her songs are about the same theme. But during the
eighteen years that I lived with an anxious attachment style where I would pine after
playboys and people who didn't call back, who treated me poorly who when I
brought up an emotionally tender topic would be dismissive or laugh at my feelings.
That's the only note I knew. That's the only music I could sing too.
Although I wanted to have a healthy, happy, secure relationship, my
attachment, my actual romantic attachment style, was wired for loss. I remember
writing poetry one time and there was a line in it this stuck with me.
I was like, I think I was hosting extra at the time.
I was like, I don't know, the twenties, early thirties or something,
and I wrote there was a line of the poem that I said,
I hate to see you go, but you're cutest from behind, meaning really,
I'm attracted to you when you leave me. Now, you could say
why, doctor Wendy, Why. I think, after spending lots of years
with a therapist, it has to do with the fact that my dad was
in the Navy, and he was gone all the time and back and forth
in a very inconsistent way, and I was always longing for him. We
don't know why Taylor Swift might ever have an anxious attachment style. I'm not
diagnosing her. I'm just giving you my opinion. Because I think she represents
some feelings that so many women have today, even though she has what appears
to be a doting dad. They were at the football game together today in
Foxboro, Massachusetts, where her boyfriend lost. But that's good for her because
she gets to console him. She there are so many women out there who
don't know what happened to them in the first twelve months of life. Many
well meaning, loving parents we're told use the Ferber method. Let the baby
cry it out, doctor, it's good for their lungs. Yes, I'm
sorry to interrupt, but they did say that the Chiefs did win, so
they oh they wanted today they did. Oh, that's not right. He
lost the last two before and she got to go to I saw this picture
of the two of them walking out, and she got to like hold on
her man's army. So sad, And when you have an ancient detachment cell,
that's like the best when they're not like at the top of their game,
when they're kind of feeling a little low. Thank you. Okay,
so he won, but they're not. Are they going to the super Bowl?
We know? Is there a guy there Roul? Yes, of course
they're going to the super Bowl. You don't know that. Julio says,
there's not much of a chance, is what he said. And I'll tell
you what's on the line here for this love relationship. She starts her tour
of Asia, and she's going to Japan, and she has a big concert
on February tenth, and the next day, February eleventh, is the super
Bowl. So if she's hoping to see her man, she's gonna have to
get on a little private there and get home as fast as possible if he's
going to play. But now the big test is if he doesn't go to
the super Bowl, like his team doesn't win and they don't go, does
he go on tour with her to Japan? To me, that's a litmus
test if he doesn't show up in Japan and he stays with his football buddies
to see who wins the super Bowl when he's not even playing in it.
M I'm worried. All right. Let's get back to some of her lyrics.
These are words out of Taylor Swift's poetry or song lyrics and her lips.
I guess you didn't care, and I guess I liked that m anxious
attachment style. How about this, you'll come back each time you leave,
because, Darling, I'm a nightmare dressed like a day dream. I know
that one guy I date it once. A colleague of his said, she's
very well packaged, but there's something going on in there. H And then
the highs right. It's a roller coaster when you have an anxious attachment.
You have these moments where you're like, oh, I got him, it's
great. And she says, I get so high every time you're loving me.
She also says in another song that was from Don't Blame Me, this
song is called Gorgeous, There's nothing I hate more than what I can't have,
And from the song Cruel Summer, devils roll the dice, angels roll
their eyes. What doesn't kill me makes me want you more. I used
to be that girl. I used to be the one who is like,
he is not going to see me sweat. He's not gonna know that.
I care so much. I can tolerate that it takes him two weeks to
call me back, and I'll act like I didn't even notice. Right.
I want to remind you that there are four stages to personal growth. The
first is you're walking down the street, you don't see a hole that playboy,
and you fall in. The Second stage is you walk down the street,
you see that hole, and you still fall in. And I think
that's what's happening now. She's now seeing the hole, having some karma.
She says in her song karma, you're taking the Oh, I can't say
that word s you know, word for the hell of it? Oh?
Can I even say that addicted to betrayal? But you're relevant. You're terrified
to look down because if you dare, you'll see the glare of everyone you
burned just to get there. It's coming back around. I think she's talking
to herself. Think she's talking about being afraid to see. And of course
eventually she sings Lavender Hayes, talk your talking, go viral. I just
need this love spiral. Get it off your chest, Get it off my
desk. Talk you're talking, go viral, Get it off your chest,
get it off my desk. She's basically saying, I don't want this feeling.
It feels terrible because she's doing the work of introspection. Finally, stage
three is where you walking down the street, you see that hole, and
this time you recognize it and you very carefully walk around it. And that's
when she sings, you're on my own, kid, Oh, you're on
your own kid. She realizes she's on her own to learn from Sprinkler splashes
to fireplace ashes right, talking about from childhood to after the date and the
fire dies down. I waited ages to see you there. I searched the
party of better bodies just to learn you never cared. I can see the
great escape so long I picked the pedals. He loves me not, She
realizes he loves me, he loves me not. He loves me, he
loves me not. That's the anxious attachment style. But then she writes something
different, bloomed, writing in my room, I play my songs in the
parking lot, I'll run away. And finally she closes with mastermind and says,
you see, all the wisest women had to do it this way because
we were born to be a pond in every lover's game. And now she's
saying she's using her mind, she's developing and making different choices. Unfortunately she's
dating an athlete. I'm just gonna say, but he I'm from a good
family whose parents stay together, so maybe maybe he has some idea of how
love should be. I don't know. I'm going to watch it closely.
Note to Taylor when we come back, I'm going to tell you how you
can tell if he's actually all in ladies. If you're digging a guy and
you're not sure if he's commitment oriented, I've got news for you. You're
listening to the Doctor Wendy Wall Show on KFI AM six forty with Live Everywhere
on the iHeartRadio app. You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand AFI
AM six forty. You have Doctor Wendy Walls with you. This is the
Doctor Wendy Wall Show. I've been talking about Taylor Swift's lyrics and how they
are indicative of sort of that anxious, ambivalent kind of attachment style and the
ability to finally heal and realize that you can choose something different, you can
take another street, you don't have to fall in those holes can be life
saving. It's the best feeling when I eventually chose my Julio, somebody who
I probably would have seen, if not him, the kind of man like
him many times in my life, but I was unable to choose that.
I found myself saying things like, uh, you know, he's too nice,
Like he's nice. You know, he's a little too nice. I
like them a little bad boy like right, I would say things like I
don't know, like if he's so available and so nice to me, maybe
he doesn't have self esteem, Maybe he's the needy one. Right until I
finally learned that when you meet a healthy person and have a healthy attachment and
have real emotional intimacy, you don't have the roller coasters anymore. Do I
miss the highs? No? Do I miss the lows? No? No,
no, no no. I love the peace. He'ce is where you
end up. I'm thinking that part of Taylor's popularity is so many young women
have a kind of anxious attachment style, and partly it's created by you know,
family of origins stuff, but also because we're in this crazy mating marketplace
where men are behaving very badly. I'm sorry, but they are to young
women and women you want to take their time maybe and not have sex right
away some of them. But they're being pressured. They're having to compete with
their slutty girlfriends or having to compete with pornography. They're having to compete with
all the Instagram models out there that in some way are satisfying the men out
there, and it's a shrinking portion of men who are willing and able to
commit because they are so distracted by the availability of choice, the availability of
potential mates for short term relationships. So I think partly the mating marketplace is
training people. The other thing is, when I had my own kind of
anxious, ambivalent attachment style, I didn't know what healthy looked like. If
there was a good, strong, commitment oriented guy there, I didn't know
how to recognize it. So I want to go through my laundry list.
Remember I wrote a book back when I was in the middle of my stuff
reading the research called the Boyfriend Test, How to Evaluate his potential before you
Lose your Heart. And the stuff I said then is the stuff I say,
Now, what do you look for? Well, number one, if
you're looking, if you're hoping this is a commitment oriented guy, you want
to make sure that he prioritizes you. I said with Taylor and Travis,
if he's not in the super Bowl, he'd better be in Japan at her
show the night before super Bowl. And if he's not, he's not making
her and this relationship of priority and he's not ready right. Number two,
he's honest with his feelings. I got to say this from the beginning of
my relationship with Julio, from a very first coffee date, he was very
honest about his feelings. And if you have not seen our wedding proposal,
the video is on my YouTube channel, doctor Wendy Walsh, and you can
see historian. You can see how honest he was even then. So if
you're dating a guy and you're bringing up tender topics and he feels uncomfortable or
he makes you feel weird, or he laughs at you, or he changes
the subject because he can't go there, then do you really want to be
with this guy? Also, he introduces you to his people. You see
guys that want Okay, the best way to get a short term relationship,
ladies is to pretend that you want a long term relationship. They say the
stuff, but do they really behave that way? And if you want a
long term relationship, then you want somebody who can be integrated in your world
with your people. So if he's hiding you in a little compartment and you're
not meeting his friends and family and business colleagues. Why what are you his
private little sex fantasy. Then this is not a healthy relationship. You have
to meet his people. By the way, one time I dated a guy
and I believed this whole theory that you need to meet people because his people,
so that you'll know that he's commitment oriented. So we go out to
this event and run into a bunch of his work people and they all treated
him badly like he was a weirdo. And I was like, Ooh,
I've got to move away from this. They're sending me signals that this is
not the guy for me too. All right, he talks about a future,
okay, if they say things like if they're not talking about next summer,
we should do this, or oh I hope I can take you skiing
sometime. We need to go. Do you know if he's not saying those
things, he's not interested in being there for the long term. But I
think the biggest one is that he listens to you. When a man wants
a commitment from a woman, he really takes time to listen, to really
listen. He actively engages and asks questions, and he's curious about what you
feeling. Also, he's not a control freak. He's willing to compromise for
you, So that is a huge thing. You don't want to get in
a relationship with somebody who's calling the shots all the time. And while he's
compromising for you, he's also supporting your dreams and goals. He's understanding that
you're not just a you know, an addendum to him, an attachment to
him and extension of him. You are someone who's going somewhere yourself and he's
going to help support you in that. And finally, he communicates openly.
He's able to talk about his values and be open and honest. The bottom
line is it's even less about what he says and much more about what he
does the action. Is he showing up on time? Is he paying for
things at the beginning? Is he making you a priority? This is a
guy who's showing that he can sacrifice because you are so valuable to him.
Remember, lady, if you're in those dating apps, you're not looking for
one hundred guys. You're looking for the one, the one who really is
in to you. All right, are you in a relationship When we come
back, there's actually a new app that, according to research, can make
your relationship better in just thirty days. Woo. I downloaded that app as
soon as I saw it. You're listening to the Doctor Wendy Wall Show on
KFI AM six forty. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app KFI AM six
forty on demand