This is Doctor Wendy Walsh and you're listening to kf I Am six forty the
Doctor Wendy Walsh Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app. Doctor Doctor, you
need to lose I gotta bad. Amy AM six forty. You have Doctor
Wendy Walsh with you. This is the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show. If you
are new to my show, I have a PhD in clinical psychology. I'm
a psychology professor, but I'm obsessed with the science of love. I've written
three books on relationships. My dissertation was on attachment theory, and the ways
that people attach and detach and fight with each other and love each other is
basically what I'm obsessed with the science of it. The science of it coming
up in the show today, I want to talk about Father's Day, but
not just the yeah, it's Father's Day, we honor you, dance You're
fabulous and wonderful, which you are. I want to also talk about the
pain that sometimes comes when children alienate their father when fathers want to be good
fathers and can't connect with their kids because of divorce. I'm going to talk
about ways to cope with parental alienation. Also if you are thinking of getting
back with your ex. I want you to think long and hard about this.
There a few things you need to do before you go that direction.
Also, in today's culture, there are a lot of serial monogamous. People
are self identifying as serial monogamous as if it's like a sexual orientation. I
think it's culturally created and it's a safe place for people who have an insecure
attachment style to hang out in that kind of space. And I actually believe
that a lot of serial monogamous want to have love, want to have commitment,
want to have intimacy, but they don't know how. Let's I'll be
taking your calls and social media questions and tomorrow's holiday that we're going to talk
about. Let's get to Father's Day. You know, we have seventy two
million dads in the United States, and I'm happy to tell you that seventy
percent of children live with two parents. Now let's be clear, they may
not be both their biological parents, but they're two adults in the house who
have an interest in those children. That's pretty good. It's still the best
nest we have, you know, to create this environment for kids. About
twenty percent of kids live with a mother, only five percent with a father
only Yeah, hey, kudos to those dudes. And sadly, five percent
of children live with no parents. I want you to understand how the American
family has changed dramatically in the last few decades. In nineteen sixty, seventy
three percent of kids live with two parents, and those two parents were biologically
related to those kids, and those two parents were on their first marriage.
Today, only forty six percent of kids live in that manner. That means
less than half of kids are living with parents who are married and both biologically
attached to those kids. So what do we have instead. We've got blended
families, We've got cohabitating parents, we've got single parents. We have of
course LGBTQ parents, some are married, some arn't. But there's no longer
one dominant family form. I think that's kind of cool. I think it
goes back to our evolutionary past. The only thing we need more of,
in my opinion, if we're going to be natural to our what is right
for our species is to have more multigenerational households and have a greater tribe that
have impacted kids. Because there's no longer one dominant family form. The role
of dad's has changed. It used to be they were a protector provider.
Today they could as often be a caregiver and a nurturer. Remember, children
look for stability and trust. I was in a restaurant the other night and
there was the most adorable little baby in a high chair. She looked so
much like my daughters when they were young, and she was i'm gonna guess,
like somewhere between sixteen to eighteen months, and she was sitting so calm,
And as I got up to leave, I went over to the couple
and I said, oh my god, my kids would have never sat in
that high chair in a restaurant, so calm and so sweet, and oh
my gosh, she reminds me and my kids. Said. Okay, maybe
i'd had a couple of glasses of wine. Maybe I was gushing, maybe
I was a little too loud. I don't know, but that baby reached
out to her dad and grabbed his arm, like, please get this crazy
lady out of here. But just to show you, even at that young
age, she didn't reach for mommy. She reached for daddy like it's a
weird lady helped me here, you know, dad's. The best way to
be a good dad, I would say this to dad's as much as I
would say it to moms, is to model just being a good person.
Kids don't learn by what we preach. Kids learn by what they see.
And also have a good relationship with your kids. For instance, if you
show empathy to your child, Yes, a boy, a boy who's crying
because he fell down, it's not the time to say big boys don't cry
or don't act like a girl. It's the time to say you, okay,
bud, do you need some help there? Right? If you show
empathy when a child hurts themselves, they will learn to show compassion for others.
If you show anger a lot, kids are going to learn to rely
on anger when they get frustrated. Now I know, I'm going to forgive
all your older dads out there, because there was a time where the only
emotions that young boys and men were conditioned to blay or anger. Basically,
that was it. Otherwise it's a strong and silent type. Right today,
I was this morning, I was at home depot. I spent too much
time at home, home depot. I'm a landlady, Okay. I was
with a plumber I had to get something and I saw the cutest couple.
It was a dad with I want to say, a three or four year
old son toddling along behind, and the tone he is, I mean,
here was this kid just watching his dad. The dad was modeling how to
just kind of be in his version his idea of what a man was.
And he's like, come on, a little buddy, I think I think
we got the parts. I think we can go home and fix this thing
now. Just that very short exchange told me everything I needed to know about
that father son relationship. He had him as a little buddy, a partner.
He was showing them the parts they needed. They were going home to
fix something. I thought it was sweet, But I do want to say
this, if you want your kids to have healthy relationships, please model a
good relationship with the other parent. That's the most important thing you can do.
You know. I was talking today to my best friend Maria. She
had an absent tea father. I had a halfway absent tea father, only
because he was in the Navy. And she said, well, I'm sure
the dad's of our generation they were mostly providers and not like today. And
I said, well, actually, my dad would get off that ship and
he was the cleaner. He was the cooker. We had way better food
when he was on shore. He was also always building something in the garage,
and his way of showing love to me was building something for me a
bookshelf usually or coming to fix my car. But if you think that stereotype
that the primary wage earner is the dad and somehow you're less masculine if you
make less money than your wife, I want you to dump that stereotype.
Did you know that in forty percent forty percent of American families, the woman
is the primary way journey. If you break it down by race, that
is more often the case with African American families, followed by white families.
Then you get more traditional gender roles when you get into Latino and Asian families.
You know what, Dad, your job is. Become an expert on
your kid's life. Get to know them, the foods they like, their
playground politics, who's in, who's out, what makes them afraid? And
at the same time, show your kids your world, take them the work,
take them to your hobbies, Explain your life to them. You know,
I think the highlight of my childhood my dad was in the navy,
as I said, And at one point we were stationed in Victoria, British
Columbia, and he was the captain of a minesweeper. How cool. And
so I actually was able to get permission to bring my entire class on a
field trip on his ship. And I was so proud of my dad.
I got to bring my friends into the captain's quarters, and that was my
dad's room, and I felt very connected to him, even though he was
away a lot. All right. For some of you, Father's Day is
a sad day. It's a reminder of what you lost if you didn't receive
any calls or cards from your kids today. Let's talk about this when we
come back. It's become an epidemic in America. Parental alienation. You're listening
to the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show and kf I AM six forty. We're live
everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from
kf I AM six forty. Mother to many, help you cry from brother,
there's far too many hope that KAFI eight and six forty. You have
Doctor Wendy Walsh with you. This is the doctor Wendy Walsh show, I
remember a few years ago, a bunch of years ago, I dated this
guy and I found out that he had a son. And I say that
carefully because he never told me. And I was like, and his son
was, I don't know, maybe a teenager at that point. And I
said, when I finally cornered him because another friend of mine saw him on
the subway with his son in New York and called me and said, he's
got somebody looks exactly like him riding the subway. I said, I've been
dating you for a while and you never mentioned a son. And he was
able to say to me, you know, there's so much pain around that
because I'm experiencing parental alienation? Am I at the timeline? What's that?
I hadn't taken a psychology course, but apparently it is a widespread phenomenon in
America. It is when one parent attempts to turn children of any age,
but they're particularly impressionable when they're little against the other parent, so they paint
like a really negative picture of the other parent by always slamming them with disparaging
remarks. The one who's doing it plays victim. They seek emotional care from
the kids, or they hoard the kid's time so the other parent doesn't get
to see them. Right. So psychologists would say that these parents who turn
children against another parent actually operate just like leaders of a cult. They use
the same techniques, and the techniques are and they're well documented in cults.
Isolation, keep the kids away from the dad, his family, etc.
Keep control, No you can't go there, No you can't do that.
And then comes the indoctrination that person's bad dangerous. Parental alienation includes things like
requiring excessive devotion by the children, lying to the kids about what psychologists would
call the targeted parent, putting down the targeted parent, using emotional manipulation,
and here's the big one, threatening to withdraw their love as punishment for disloyalty,
and always creating the impression that somehow the targeted parent is dangerous. So
I did a little bit of research on this. Who are the people who
do this to their children? I'll tell you in a minute how it damages
kids. Most commonly they're women. Sorry, ladies, I know you're mad
about your acts. No, you're mad about your divorce, but you're hurting
your kids. Sometimes it's men. Sometimes it's wealthy men who have better attorneys.
Right, if you google the words coping with parental alienation and go down
one of the internet rabbit holes like a Reddit stream and comment, you will
hear from all kinds of women who talk about men with better attorneys who took
their kids away from them and how sad they are and how they poisoned the
kids against them. But statistically, it's more often that women do it,
and they target the dad. Also, it tends to be people with personality
disorders, either narcissistic personality disorders you must love me, be loyal to me,
or borderline personality disorder where they have unstable relationships they fear abandonment. Sometimes
they're doing it to extort money. I'm going to control the kids. If
you want to see the kids, you better give me money, or the
other way around. Their wealth hearing can afford better attorneys. What are things
that trigger it? Well, the big one is abandonment anxiety. If adults
don't learn to keep their abandonment anxiety in check, they're going to use their
kids for their own feelings of security. Obviously, it's often triggered by divorce,
a painful divorce, Sometimes people will go through the divorce smooth, everything
will be smooth, and then the targeted parent gets a new relationship and that
explodes everything all over again. We know that this damages children. In fact,
the biological, the psychological, the social impact on kids is enormous.
It can lead parental alienation, especially to small children, can lead to anxiety
disorders, eating disorders, self harm, post traumatic stress disorder. What happens
is kids don't know who to believe or what to believe anymore, so they
develop like a confused sense of self. They learn not to trust their own
perceptions because they have a parent that's continually lying to them. But this parent
is their lifeline, This parent is who they love. And yet this parent
is telling them something that's not true. So they learn to dismiss the truth.
They learn to dismiss what their stomach is telling them or their brain is
telling them. You know, all children have a right to know and be
cared for by both parents. And here's the big thing. When you insult
your X, you're insulting heart of your child. No matter what you think
of your EX. When you tell your kids that the X is bad,
you're telling your kids that they are bad. They are fifty percent them.
Now here's the thing. If you are the targeted parent and you're experiencing parental
alienation, there's a good chance that you do some of the most common things
that accidentally make it worse. Okay, So parents who are targeted tend to
be passive because they're like, I don't want to cause more stress to my
kids, so I am not going to get into this, right. They
tend to withhold their emotions. They actually often try to be overly accommodating to
the demands of the alienating parent, that awful parent. They're going, Okay,
well, if I can just make her happy, if I can just
give her what she wants, then she won't cause problems with the kids,
or then I'll get to see the kids more. But what does this do.
It emboldens her to have even more power. I'm giving it agender.
Sometimes it is the opposite. What happens is alienated parents. Most often,
fathers fear rejection so much that they actually stop reaching out to their kids more
because they don't want to hear the lies that the X is saying about them
through their children's mouth. So then they exacerbated because the kid is now more
isolated. The kids living in that delusional world of their other parent is bad,
their other parents is bad, and since the other parent isn't there to
defend themselves, then they just believe it. They do believe alienated parents that
they just don't want to submit their kids to more conflict. They want everything
to be chilled, They want everything to be safe for the kids. But
in this way they actually increase parental alienation, They actually do more damage to
their kids. All Right, If you or maybe somebody you know in your
world is experiencing this, I want you to hang in there through the next
break. There's a book that you should get called Divorce Poison, How to
Protect your Family from bad mouthing and Brainwashing. It is written by the world's
most respected authority on divorce and child custody, and I am going to summarize
some of his best points on what you should actually be doing if your kids
aren't talking to you. When we come back. You are listening to the
Doctor Wendy Walls Show and KFI AM six forty. We're live everywhere on the
iHeartRadio app. You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from kf I am
sixty, k I am six forty. You have doctor Wendy Walsh with you.
This is the Doctor Wendy Walls Show. I know it is a wonderful
Father's Day, and I know there are amazing fathers out there, and I
want to wish you the best and most wonderful Father's Day. But sometimes when
these hallmark holidays come up, they can be triggering for others because they bring
up the reminders of pain. And we're talking about parental alienation, which is
much more common something that happens to men. You know, when my kids
and when my father and my kids and I split up. I am not
gonna lie. I had a couple really angry years in there. I mean
I was so mad. And I remember one time venting and a friend of
mine whose kid was at the same preschool, took me aside and just shook
some sense into me and said, you can't say anything bad about him in
front of the kids. You can't, it's going to hurt the kids.
I'm like, he left, that's my no money, and I'm am I
gonna raise these kids. But you know I got through it. I completely
forgive him. Now my kids have a relationship with their dad. Nothing makes
me happier than little girls being able to be in touch with their dads.
I think it's very, very important I tell you the story because I want
to remind you that it's not easy. You know, even I, you
know, have these times where it's very difficult, and when you're alone as
a single parent, there's no one to talk to except those kids. Right,
So I understand stand the temptation, but it is very important not to
bad mouth the X, not to do it in front of the kids,
because if you do, you're damaging your own children. You are hurting your
kids, no matter their age. They could be adults, they could be
young adults. You could be back in court arguing over something whatever. Keep
them out of it. It's not their business now. I mentioned before the
break that parents who have been targeted for parental alienation often accidentally make things worse.
They do it because they don't want to stir up more problems with their
kids. They obviously don't want to be fighting back and forth and using the
kids as a little voice box back and forth, so they tend to be
passive. They also, at a certain point reach out to their own kids
less and less because they're just tired of hearing the lies that they want to
challenge but they can't. So I found this amazing book. If you know
somebody who's experiencing this, maybe you should get it. We should try to
get this guy on the show sometime producer Kayla doctor Richard Warshock wr SHK.
The book is called Divorce Poison, How to Protect Your Family from bad mouthing
and Brainwashing. He's known as one of the world's most respected authorities on divorce
and child custody. So here are some of his tips. If you're an
alien alienated parent, what you can be doing. First of all, you
need to practice self restraint. I know you want to challenge the lies,
because the kids are going to come to you and say, but mommy said
you're this, and mommy said you're that, and you're going to get into
a tit for tat to disparage the other parent. You know at your mom
is crazy. That's what you want to say, but you can't because then
you're alienating them. You're alienating her, you're aliena you're confusing the kids even
more so, you just practice self restraint. You don't argue back about it.
You tell them you just have a pat response that's like, I still
love you. I'm sure she said that, and I still love you.
That's it. The other thing is you have to maintain contact. Do not
retaliate by cutting your kids off. Two. Stay open, and when they
do finally reach out or tax, don't make snide comments like, oh,
finally figured out how to use a phone. Huh no, don't bring it
up. Maintain contact, reach out regularly when they talk, listen without defending
yourself. That's the hardest part. Do not defend yourself. If you stay
humble, the relationship will win. And that is the relationship between you and
your kids. Again, whether kids are five or twenty five, they're going
to come back and say, Mom said you're this, Mom said you're that.
You need to just be quiet and listen because they want to know you're
a safe place to vent because they're actually trying to make sense of it and
they're doing it out loud. Here's one thing. You should be telling your
kids regularly that you love them and you will always be there for them.
Now, if they've completely cut you off and there's no contact at all,
you're going to do this in any manner of communication. Possible, whether it's
private dms on Facebook, whether it's old fashioned handwritten letters sent through the US
post Office. I know a dad who said that he wrote a letter once
a week to his children and put it in a box, and when they
eventually came around, he handed them the box of all the years of letters.
And also, forgive and accept your children. If they're being mean to
you, understand that what they're trying to do is just manage their own stress.
Oh and here's the biggest tip. I found this so interesting. Enlist
other people. So your kids need to see you in a positive light.
That's how they get challenged, not by you telling them those are lies.
So hang out with people who love you and bring the kids along and they
see how you're being treated by other people. Also, if there are other
family members and friends, get them to tell your kids what a great dad
you are, not you let them hear it from other people. At the
end of the day, find common ground with your kids. I don't care
if you're into sports with them, something else, some little thing that you
do together. That's your thing. So that's the place where they can grow
a love for you. Figure out what they like and find that common ground
that's separate from everything else. It will take time. There is an entire
life span for you to be able to heal and rekindle these relationships. Your
kids aren't going away. You can win them back. Dad, And I'm
sorry you're going through this, and if you're mom, I'm sorry you're going
through this terrible thing. All right. Maybe you're thinking of getting back with
your ex. Hopefully not if they're disparaging you, but maybe you don't like
being divorced and it's time we need to talk about this when I come back.
You're listening to Doctor Andy Walsh show kf I Am six forty would Live
Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from
kf I Am six forty. Gaybye Am sixty. You have Doctor Wendy Walsh
with you. This is the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show. I would like to
welcome my TikTok viewers. Hello. If you'd like to see us live in
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My handle is at doctor Wendy Walsh at Dr Wendy Walsh For those just joining
I have a PhD in clinical psychology. I'm a psychology professor, and I'm
obsessed with the science of love. I've written three books on relationships. I
want to talk about that feeling when you're thinking, did I do the right
thing? Maybe I should get back with my ex. I'm having these warm,
fuzzy feelings when I think about my ex, whether it's an ex husband,
ex wife, ex boyfriend, ex girlfriend. You know, human beings
are fascinating. We look back with rose colored glasses. Ever heard that expression
before row those colored glasses? It means everything looks prettier when you're looking hindsight,
right, I would say that sometimes our brain goes into the devil we
know is better than the devil we don't. In other words, maybe you've
gone through a breakup, maybe you have tested the waters in the dating scene.
Maybe you've been hurt, maybe you've been burned, and you're like,
maybe it wasn't so bad before, maybe it was okay before. So I
want you before you actually call that axe and say let's let's make another another
attempt at this, let's get back together. Then I just want to answer
this question to the stick talker right now. He said, who listens to
AM radio. I'll tell you who listens to AM radio. Everybody who has
the iHeartRadio app, because every hour that we do on AM radio goes on
the iHeartRadio app. So if you want to listen to the whole show,
you can download the app and search doctor Wendy Welsh. Okay, so here's
some questions to ask yourself before you decide to reconcile. First, why why
do you want to do this? Is it because you genuinely think that this
relationship has another chance? Or is it because you're feeling lonely, because you're
feeling abandoned because you tested the waters in the mating marketplace and realize that your
status wasn't what you thought it was. Either way, there's somebody for everybody,
but we all got to live with the fact that we're not going to
get the highest status mate, not every single person, right, So maybe
you're just longing for familiar because you've lost your footing finding yourself as a single
person. Take some time to think about why before you reach out to that
X, because if it's just about something going on with you and you're not
really imagining that's going to be this great second chance with this person, then
don't do it. Here's a big one and I say this all the time.
Have both of you taken responsibility for the breakup? You see, it
takes two to tango. In other words, both people had a role in
what happened. You can't get back with somebody if you're going to be like
the one falling on the sword, going it was all my fault, I'm
so sorry, or you're going to be the one going okay, if you
admit that it was your fault, then I'll get back right you. That
is not healthy footing to start a new relationship with an old person. A
healthy way is here's the contribution that both of us had that led up to
the circumstances that caused the breakup. Right, I always say, if it
was cheating or it was an affair, an affair as a messenger. It's
a messenger that something's wrong in the relationship and that's why the betrayal happened.
So what was wrong in the relationship, And again, it's not blaming the
other partner, it's understanding everybody's peace in it. But if one of you
is going to fall on the sword and take one hundred percent of the blame.
You're never going to be able to have a healthy relationship later. I
do want you to ask yourself whether you broke up because of a deal breaker
of yours that now you're like, okay, well I will just lower my
standards. This is I remember, Okay, I was a young dating person.
I was kind of a player chicken. I was dating a whole bunch
of guys and they were letting me down and hurting me, and I was
trying to find one who would commit, and eventually I lost faith in the
male species and I just said, I'm just going to lower my standards.
I'm not going to expect much of them. Well, as you can imagine,
things got worse. They got worse. We find good mates when we
have high standards. We find good mates when we stick to our values.
So if you and your ex broke up because there was a deal breaker,
that now you're going to lower your standards for or you're going to change your
core values of who you are just to get back with this person. Not
a good idea. Not a good idea. Let's talk about unhealthy patterns that
are bound to come on back. Let's think of some patterns that people use
unhealthfully in relationships. Do you use sex as a manipulation withholding it or giving
it out based on what you're trying to get the other partner to do.
Do you and your partner have an unwritten rule that says there are certain topics
that shall not be talked about. Do you get the silent treatment when there's
uncomfortable feelings instead of talking things out? Well, guess what, all those
old patterns are going to come back right away. You know, one time,
my therapist still be this funny analogy about getting back to let's say it
was a toxic relationship. He said, getting back with that guy Wendy is
going to be like a drug addict who's fully recovered. And then they go
back and they try one line of cocaine and then before you know it,
they're back into everything again. It's a slippery slope. And that's the same
kind of thing that happens to your brain. Your brain. Love is a
drug, and your X was a certain kind of drug for you, and
you're going to go back into it, and if you don't do it in
a conscious way, then you'll slip immediately back into those old patterns again.
I also want you to ask yourself. Have each of you grown up as
separate people? What I mean is, have each of you gotten therapy?
Has enough time passed that a lot of healing has taken place. Have you
dated other people and saw like different relationship patterns. Have you figured out who
you are? Because if all you did was break up, then take a
little bit of time, dip your toe in the mating market and go,
oh, I don't like this, I just want to go back with them.
You're not going to have a healthy, happy relationship. You're going to
break up again and probably for the same reasons. And the last thing is
have you gone to couple's therapy? No, seriously, broken up people should
go to couple's therapy so that they can become a healthy couple, so they
can learn to have good communication skills. Let me tell you what a license
therapist can help you do. They can help you clarify your own feelings.
They can help you find words for your feelings so you get better communication skills.
They can help you identify your boundaries. Member boundaries a little safe fence
around yourself. A boundary is not trying to get somebody to do something.
It's putting a nice little safe fence around you and choosing a consequence if they
break that boundary. Anyway, getting back with your X is not something for
the faint of heart. And you can look, of course through history in
Hollywood. I mean, didn't Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton married over and over
and there's a lot of that back and forth. Did they have a healthier
relationship? I don't know. I don't know. Can it work? It
can, but usually not unless you do all the work. I call it
going retrosexual. If you're going to go retrosexual, you need to have the
help of a good therapist to lead you through it. Listen, when we
come back, I want to talk about being a serial monogamous, not that
I am that. I was that, but I'm not now a serial monogamist.
I think there's a group of you who are serial monogamous, who actually
want to have a committed, long term relationship, but you don't know how.
Let's talk about that when we come back, and after that, I'll
be taking your calls right down this number one eight hundred five two zero one
five three four. That's one eight hundred and five two zero one five at
three four that's one K five You are listening to the Doctor Wendy Walls Show
on kf I AM six forty. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio Apple.
You've been listening to Doctor Wendy Walls. You can always hear us live on
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