This is doctor Wendy Walsh and you're listening to KFI AM six forty the Doctor
Wendy Walls Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app, Doctor Doctor Ginny the News,
I Gotta's loving you. Welcome back to the Doctor Wendy Walls Show on
k I AM six forty. Were live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. I
am now going to my social media because I love to answer your questions on
relationships. Reminder, I'm not a therapist. I'm a psychology professor, but
I've written three books on relationships, and I like to say I did the
work. I'm a survivor of eighteen years of therapy on and off over the
course of twenty eight years, and I have a lot of wisdom. I'm
a woman of a certain age and I've got some wisdom for you. So
let's go and look at the dms. Remember I will always keep your identity
anonymous. You can DM me on any of my social media platforms. The
handle is at doctor Wendy Walsh. Okay, Hi, Doctor Wendy says this
listener. I just started seeing my ex of five years again. So that
doesn't mean you were together five years. You were broke up five years ago.
I'm guessing we were broken up for a year and a half. Oh
no, so they were together for five years, then you were broken up
for year and a half. Got it While we were broken up. I
was by curious, it's fair, So on one drunken night on vacation,
I ended up having a three way with a couple who are somewhat in our
friend group. I see them maybe every couple months. All three of us
knows it was purely physical because the girl was also by curious, and yes,
I did things with the guy too. I'm wondering if I should tell
my boyfriend because he knows them, and I feel weird about keeping him in
the dark. But another part tells me that it would give him unnecessary anxiety
about it, because to me, it was completely just an experimental thing of
the past. Well, this is an interesting conundrum, and this is an
excellent question. I want to start by talking about the bi curious thing.
First of all, if you believe the work of Kinsey and some of the
more recent work of evolutionary psychologists, they would say that we are all kind
of wired to be bisexual. Calm down, you, people who are homophobic
and freaking out. Kinsey was one of the first sex researchers to look at
not only people's behavior, but they're fantasies because he did his work in the
nineteen forties, fifties, sixties, and he asked people you know, about
their sexual behavior, what they did with who frequency, but he also asked
them what they fantasized about. And he found he had a scale one to
six right Kinsey scale, one being one hundred percent heterosexual in behavior and fantasy
and one being one hundred percent homosexual in behavior and fantasy, and he found
that most humans are actually out of three folks. So there you go.
It's a big, long scale and a gray area. Not that you may
act on it, but you may have fantasy material. There's nothing wrong with
being curious now, whether it's a couple or an individual. When you enter
a relationship, if you are socializing with somebody that you've had sex with before,
you might feel this urge to be completely come clean and be intimate.
My answer is for you to assess what it would mean to you a current
relationship, because your real struggle is I want to have one hundred percent authenticity
and honesty about everything in my relationship, but you also want to not hurt
your partner or give them unnecessary anxiety. Now, the other piece is you
have two potential loose cannons out there, the other people who may talk.
They may have another drunken night and mention something. It's not fair to swear
them to seek receive because their experience is their experience and they own it,
and everybody owns their own experience. My feeling is this, if it doesn't
come up and there's no reason to bring it up, there's no reason to
tell every single detail of your sexual background, especially because you're telling them to
a heterosexual man. Now, there's research to show that men are more squeamish
about hearing about female's sexual history than we are women about hearing about a man's
sexual history. That is also evolutionary programmed into us. It's not just about
the sexual double standard. It is the fact that in our anthropological past,
if men risked hooking up with a woman who liked to share her eggs with
the team, then he might have ended up raising another guy's eggs. So
therefore he's sort of naturally not gonna want to hear about even you know,
as open minded as my fiance is he doesn't want to hear. He doesn't
want to hear, So my personal advice is to not bring it up unless
you find it's necessary. Unless it's being brought up. If you start,
you know, socializing with this couple more often, if they start flirting with
you, if they make an allusion to what happened, you're going to have
to come clean. If you and your partner might be having a conversation someday
about past sexual experiences and he's sharing things with about him, okay, then
it makes sense. But to bring it up for no reason, just to
cause anxiety in him. I don't think you need to. Don't think you
need to. If you guys disagree with me, please send me a DM
because I know you know that I'm always about open, honest and authenticity,
But this time I disagree. You disagree, you should tell him. I
think that there's nothing more embarrassing than being in a couple with somebody and then
you're on the outside of an inside, an insider that everybody's aware of except
for yourself. They're not close, she said, they might see them only
every couple. They're in the same friend group, so they will see each
other and then this man knows that he's lept with my girl, and I
have no idea. I just want to know, you know, I just
want to be aware, so there's no inside ki ki or like you know,
behind my back. I don't like that. I also want to wait
till their relationship becomes more solid, because she said she just started sex for
acts of five years. Why don't we wait till they grow some intimacy.
Then you had me around this man and you didn't tell me till two years
after that you had sex with him because you wanted to wait to feel more
secure. Now, I don't trust you. That's how That's just how I
operate. I don't know if I'm right, but that's just how I feel.
I'm gonna say, pick your time, okay, yes, but pick
your time fair. That's fair. I think that's fair. All right?
That was That was a prickly one, wasn't it. There's lots of opinions
on that. Okay, here's another one. Hey, doctor, Wendy,
have you been through a situation where you miss a guy the person who had
a situationship with Oh, you're making big assumption that I had a lot of
situationships Okay, I did, but we didn't call them situationships. Then we
just called them friends with benefits, or we call them hookups, we call
them booty calls. Actually in my day anyway, that you miss him so
much that when he's back in the picture, you feel nothing but anger and
resentment when you speak to him. Am I crazy? This is a weird
thing. Okay, my darling. Here's what I want to say to you.
I want you to call a therapist, especially a therapist who specializes in
attachment, because it sounds to me like your attachment style maybe on the anxious
side. And I have had that exact situation happened to me before that,
even though it was a hook up, a booty call, a situationship of
friends with benefit, I became kind of attached. And then when they didn't
reciprocate or they didn't provide the emotional intimacy that I craved, I was angry
and I was often passive aggressive with them, even you know, when I
was in a sexual relationship, doing weird game, playing weird games with them,
because I was actually unaware of how angry I was that the relationship wasn't
meeting all of my needs and it was only through therapy that I learned that
my reaction was related to my own attachment style. And I will say that
it is very, very common for women to not be able to adapt to
a hookup culture or situationships because women's biology is unique and women are often their
bodies get attached through hormones and oxytocin, and it's very difficult for them to
have just a part time, one foot in relationship. So please reach out
to a therapist because I want you to work through this the way I did.
All Right, when we come back, I got more from your social
media if you'd like to send for my social media. If you'd like to
send me a DM, the handle is at doctor Wendy Walsh. You're listening
to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI AM six forty Shoot I Stay,
I'll shoot dot cow shoot Stay, Trouble, trouble so decisions you don't want
me send me Welcome back to the Doctor Wendy Wells Show. I'm K five
a M six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. I'm continuing to answer
your relationship questions that you can send to me in a d M. I
think producer Kayla's checking Instagram right now. The handle is at doctor Wendy Walsh.
All right, hi doctor Wendy. If you're going on a first date
with someone, do you let the guy come pick you up? All right?
First of all, let's define her first date. Things have changed changed,
right, Let's assume that you've met online, where most people meet these
days. The first date shouldn't be a date. It should be a twenty
minute coffee thirty minute max little coffee and you're basically going to say, hey,
I'm going to be in you're part of town. Tuesday at four you
want to say hello for a quick coffee with me or whatever. Keep it
light after that, then you decide whether you're going to have a first date
or not. My feeling is that on a very first coffee date, nobody
should be picking up anybody. But after you've met somebody, if you listen
to your stomach, if you feel safe, you might allow someone to pick
you up. In general, I prefer at the very beginning that women have
their own transportation, their own money, so that they can make a quick
exit if they need to. Okay, driving around in strangers cars is never
a good idea. All right, So I'm totally cool with that. After
you're comfortable, after you've seen each other for a few dates, why not,
you know, just let them be chivalrous. Maybe you're gonna have traditional
gender roles in your relationship, so establish them. That's what I say.
Okay, dear doctor Wendy, would you bother messaging someone again if he never
responded? Usually I don't because I don't care or I'm not interested enough if
the conversation dies. Most conversations bore me because guys just want to ask how
is your day? But this guy and I had some banter going back and
forth. We'd only been texting for one full day. Well, I'm glad
you gave me all that context. So it's not like you sent one message
and he never responded. You texted for a day and there was some back
and forth. Now he hasn't responded. Wait wait, wait, wait,
wait and see. Now, if you had told me you sent him one
message he never responded, don't send him a second. But you did have
some back and forth. You know, he got he's engaged with you in
the text realm. Now he's got to get to the point of where'd she
go? Where'd that one go, oh, that's interesting. He's got to
miss you. So wait now, if three days go by and you have
not heard from him, you can send one more text that just says,
hey, wondering if you received my last text. If he doesn't respond to
that, ghost him, move along, swipe away. That's it. We're
done. Okay, there are plenty more fish in the sea. Don't be
chasing boys that way. That's what your grandmother said. That's what I say
too, all right, Dear doctor Wendy. I had planned a date night
with my boyfriend of five months. We got all the women with their insecurity
tonight. Boyfriend of five months he just texted me saying that his friends reached
out and he's doing a boy's night only tonight. He canceled our date two
hours before he was supposed to pick me up. Look boys night. But
changing plans so last minute and ditching me for the boys seems very off putting.
Am I wrong to feel weird about this? Like I'm not a priority?
You are not wrong. Let me just say that I don't care what
gender what you're canceling for. I don't care what gender person he's seeing.
I don't care what important thing it is the only thing he's allowed to cancel
on you for two hours before, is that he's going to the hospital,
of which you should run after him and take care of him. Or his
mother's going to the hospital, or his very best friend is going to the
hospital, or a really important work thing like he can't get out of in
his boss. He's gonna lose his job if the boss that's it. This
Hey, I think I'm going to go out with the boys instead doesn't fly.
So here's what you need to do now, is you need to again
not in text, Please you guys, stop texting important intimate things. You
got to get on the phone, maybe not now, maybe after the boys'
night, and you got to say to him, Hey, canceling on me
two hours before really hurt my feelings. It made me feel unimportant in this
relationship. I think we need to establish some kind of rules that feel comfortable
to both of us for this kind of thing. Listen, there's that word
that starts with B and ends with itches. Itches get commitments. And so
if you can't set up your boundary at the very beginning, you are giving
him permission to keep canceling on you forever and ever and ever and treating you
bad. So you've got to establish it at the beginning. And five months
you've been together five months, that's when it starts to get, you know,
out of the cocoon and little loosey goosey, So you need to pull
him back in, set up some boundaries. Dig in your heels, girl,
you have got this all right. When we come back, I want
to talk about marriage or long term committed love, maybe live together, maybe
just been together a long time. Do you think your relationship could survive an
affair? Well, apparently there's new research. I'll talk about it if you're
listening to doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI AM six forty. No doubt
about it. Monogamy is tough, It takes work. Human beings have sexual
urges. We love variety, we love novelty and monogamy. While the attachment
and the bond in a long term monogamous relationship, whether you're married, living
together, or just in a committed relationship, is paramount and important. Sometimes
people let their relationship slide into boredom and before they know it, somebody might
have an affair. Maybe somebody in your relationship stepped out on their partner.
You know, there's new thinking on whether a relationship can survive infidelity. In
fact, new research published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. It
came out of Texas Tech University. They decided to study the healing process in
couples who actually had had somebody had an affair in their romantic relationship. And
these couples reported that not necessarily because of but after the affair, their relationship
experienced meaning full healing. Some of the couples even reported relationship growth. So
these researchers didn't want to discuss all the damage that infidelity does. They wanted
to see what common things all these couples did to strengthen their relationship and heal
and get stronger afterwards. So it was an ethnically diverse sample of heterosexual couples.
There were eleven white couples, five Latino couples, five African American couples,
and four couples with other ethnic backgrounds. They were young when their hormones
are flying. On average, the average age of all of those sixteen couples
was age twenty seven, and the average relationship duration was seven point six years.
Yeah, that seven year itch thing, I guess it's real. Some
of the couples were married, some were living together, and some were in
committed relationships. All of them had experienced an affair. In ten of the
couples, the man was the one who had an affair, In three of
the couples, the woman was the one who had an affair, and in
three couples who both of them were unfaithful. Okay, so here are what
they have discovered is a four tiered Really, it could be a program level
of healing that was common to all these couples who claimed that after this affair
their relationship actually got better. Took some time though. Okay. Stage one
they call the discovery stage, and that's either that somebody admitted that they had
an affair or the other person found out, and it involved obviously a lot
of uncomfortable emotions. But here's the big takeaway about stage one, when that
infidelity was discovered, If the straying partner, the one who stepped out and
had the affair, disclosed to the other partner that they were experiencing intense shame
and regret, it was easier for the other a partner to hear it because
they respected their partner's honesty. And apologies. So if you do have an
affair, you're better to come clean, say you're sorry, say you regret
it, show feelings of shame and embarrassment. There's a much more chance that
your partner's going to be able to accept it than if you either blame them.
Well, look, you haven't had say to be in forever, and
it's our relationships problem. We were falling apart or I didn't do it.
It's not my fault. It just happened. Okay. If you're gonna go
there, you're gonna have less chance you get to a healing place, all
right. The second stage is where both partners acknowledge the damage to the relationship,
and for the couples who choose to stay together, they both decide to
affirm their commitment to one another. And that involves, according to the researchers,
having had open and honest conversations about all the things that led to the
unfaithfulness. Okay, so that means yeah, so affairs don't just happen,
by the way, somebody has to call somebody up, DM them, take
them out, plan it, lie about it. You know, there's a
lot that has to happen to make it affair happen. When I have people
say, well, it just happened, I'm like, no, you went
your brain turned off, that's what happened. So talking about that as uncomfortable
as it is, because let me tell you that and producer Kayla, I
think you would agree with me that you want the truth. You want every
detail, even if it's painful. Oh yeah. Rather than not knowing,
not knowing allows our brains to imagine, well, he said he had sex
with her once. They were probably meeting every week for six months. Right,
It lets your brain go crazy if you have no information so highly detailed,
honest conversation is really important. And also mentioning the emotional impacts. I
know this hurts you. I know it's so hard to hear this. I'm
so sorry, right, and continuing to express remorse. Sorry people, if
you're the one who had the affair, it's going to take some time because
I remember we had I think a caller once saying, you know, I
had an affair, and when is she going to like let me off the
hook. It's been forever, she still keeps bringing it up. And whatever,
you know what waited out, You're going to continue to express remorse and
apologies until you get to the place of healing and repair. Okay. Stage
three three is where you do the work of reaffirming your relationship. So that
means prioritizing your relationship, increasing the researchers say, shared time together and constantly
emphasizing the importance of rebuilding trust. So that may mean the researchers noted in
their study, allowing your partner to check your phone, check your calls,
check your texts, put you on location sharing because they, in their brain,
need time to see that your behavior has changed. So don't get resentful
if they are being a detective now, because it takes time for them to
really believe you now. The couples in the study did say that over time,
their feelings of trust did increase. They also scheduled more date nights,
they did more things together because they were doing the work of rebuilding their relationship.
The fourth stage is the big one, folks. Forgiveness involve two things.
One is, the non strained partner obviously had to relieve themselves of their
own resentment. They held right, so they had to forgiveness. I mean,
resentment is like drinking poison and hoping somebody else will die. Right.
It's a gift to yourself when you can actually let it go and I'm not
going to feel this resentment anymore. But also they found the straining partners needed
to forgive themselves because they can't do this walk a shame forever and ever.
Right now, how long did all this take for some couples, It took
more than a year. The couples who did it best were the ones who
went to therapy together. So I do want to leave you by saying that
there is a commercial for therapy in all of this, and also that your
relationship can get better. All these couples reported that while they wouldn't want to
go back to that and they wouldn't want to use an affair as a prescription,
their relationship is much better now because they did the work. Hey,
if you're doing the work when we come back, I've got some questions and
conversations that you you should be having with your partner on a regular basis to
keep it strong. You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI Am
six forty. We are in the home stretch of the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show.
I want to remind everybody you can keep the conversation going by following me
on social media during the week. The handle everywhere is at doctor Wendy Walsh
as well, I run a really fun Patreon zoom group every Wednesday at six
thirty pm, so you can come over to patreon dot com slash doctor Wendy
Walsh. All right, So I'm in now a long term, secure,
committed relationship of three and a half ish years, and we're getting married this
summer. It's all very exciting, but one of the things we talk about
a lot is how do we keep it alive? How do we not fall
into a rat? Right years ago, I hosted a show I can't even
remember which channel it was for, but it was for basically couples who were
in a rut. They'd been together seven to fourteen years, they had kids,
they maybe gained weight, and I think it was called back in wedding
shape or something, and they planned a whole wedding to redo their vows.
And part of my job was to help them get a little more reconnected and
to the old days. And it was really fun because their relationships had just
kind of fallen into a rut. What happens is when you get to that
place of good, consistent security in your relationship, and the conversations become about
your day and scheduling, not so much your desires or the things you're most
proud of. You know. It's funny. The other night we were going
to sleep and I had had a little glass of tequila. I drink very
moderately these days, so now when I have a little glass of tequila,
I'm like, whoa hoo. And if I have a glass wine, I
wish some doctor would help me weigh in on this and explain this. It's
a depressant and I go to sleep right, it calms me down. If
I am tequila, I want to dance. Why is it it's all alcohol?
Why has it behaved differently? But it does. So we get into
bed and I'm talking still as if I'm doing a radio show, and he's
falling asleep, and one of the questions I asked is what are you most
proud of in your life? Like? What have you done that you're most
proud of? Because you know what with me? And I start going through
like the triathlon I ran in my twenties, getting a PhD and my forties
breastfeeding my kids for six years three years each folks, so six years,
you know, against a culture that didn't really support it in my opinion.
I went through all my list of things, like being one of the many
faces in the Me Too movement and being named a Time magazine Person of the
Year, and I was just going through everything, and then I finally ask,
Okay, now, what are you most proud of? And he goes,
just dang happy when the adversity of life has come to me, And
I thought, wow, he goes, yeah, it's work sometimes to just
stay happy, and I'm like, I wish I had that trait, which
is one of the reasons why I'm attracted to him. But anyway, there
are many other conversations you should be having with your long term partner. Actually,
what I did by asking that question what are you most proud of?
Is the first one ask your partner open ended questions, not questions where there
can be a yes or no, but really open ended questions. Here's a
good one. Instead of thinking about the past, I might I might ask
him this tonight, what's something you always wanted to try but haven't tried yet.
I wonder what it's going to be. Actually, I'm curious Kayla,
is there something you've always wanted to try in your life but you haven't tried
yet. Oh, there's a bunch of things. I want to go skydiving?
Are you serious? I do? Yeah, I would have a heart
attack. I think that that's a view and that's an experience only once one
time. I have a friend, a young woman in her twenties who's done
three hundred jumps. I know she's training to be like an instructor, but
she must not have that adrenaline search because I can't even do rise roller coasters
anymore. Adrenaline search anyway, But we digress. Another thing you can do
with your partner is, as I mentioned, go beyond those surface level questions
like how is your day, and instead just say what was the most interesting
thing that happened to you today? Right? Usually when Julio comes in at
the end of the day, he'll say to me, get this, and
I know something really great. He's going to tell some great story. Get
this is how he starts. Right, Or if they've had a rough day,
just say what was the most frustrating thing today? Just isolated and get
more detail about it. Also tell a story, I will say, because
I teach for a living, do radio for a living, do podcasts for
a living, right for a living. I'm pretty good at telling stories,
and Julio loves when we go hiking and he's just silent because he's apparently busy
catching breath and I talk the whole time, and I tell stories. I
think he's in better shape than me, but for some reason, cardio wise,
I can get up the hills better, so I tell stories. He
goes. I just love that I get to the other end of this hill,
and I've been entertained the whole time. So tell stories and show some
genuine interest in your partner thoughts, feelings, experiences, put away distractions,
Yes, turn off the game, turn off the iPhone, put away things,
actively, listen, look them in the eye, talk to them.
And the other big one that we do less and less after we've been in
relationships a long time. Continue to be vulnerable. Talk about your fears,
your dreams, your vulnerabilities with each other on a regular basis. This will
help you continue to deepen your emotional connection. And yes, add novelty.
Try new things together, figure out where you can go that you haven't been
together. Sometimes your partner looks new and exciting to you if you just put
them in new schema, a new situation right, or also read a book
together not out loud separately and so you can talk about it or watch a
movie together that you can really talk about it. As I mentioned, it's
important to add novelty for the things that you do together. But it's also
important that you grow as an individual, do things individually so you can come
back to the relationship and tell them about it and be really excited about it.
So it's really important. I always think of relationships as a ven diagram,
two overlapping circles. One circle is you, one circle is them,
and there's this overlap in the middle called the relationship. But don't let the
circle that's you die, right, keep growing it, not to the point
that it's threatening the relationship, but to you to bring something exciting back into
the relationship. I think I mentioned last week when I went to visit Apricot
Lane Farms, which I've always wanted to do and learn more about composting and
soil. I brought back a whole farmer's basket of food and I made the
whole dinner from Apricot Lane Farms, and I was so excited to share that
with him. That's a simple example about you doing something as an individual and
bringing back into your relationship. I hope you continue to have healthy, happy
relationships, not only this week, but well into your future. You've been
listening to doctor Wendy Wallash. You can always hear us live on KFI AM
six forty from seven to nine pm on Sunday and anytime on demand on the
iHeartRadio app.