This is Doctor Wendy Walsh and you're listening to KFI AM six forty the Doctor
Wendy Walsh Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app. Welcome did the Doctor Wendy
Walsh Show on KFI AM six forty. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app
if you're new to my show. I have a PhD in clinical psychology.
I'm a psychology professor at California State University, Channel Islands. I teach psychology
of health counseling. I teach developmental psychology, which is psychology across the life
span and for all those new students just entering college life. I also teach
introduction to psychology. But I have been obsessed with the science of love for
oh gosh, decades and decades. I wrote my first book before I'd even
gone to graduate school. It was called The Boyfriend Test, How do we
evaluate his potential before you lose your heart? Later on, when I had
a master's in psychology, I wrote The Girlfriend Test, How datable are you
really? I interviewed a hundred men for that book, one hundred recently married
man, and I basically asked them, why did you marry her? And
why didn't you call the rest of us back? And it was very enlightening.
Later, after I had a PhD, I wrote the Thirty Day Love
DTOX, how to cleanse yourself of bad boys and commitment fobes and find a
real relationship. Obviously, I was also spending all those years healing myself and
my own attachment injuries. I would like to think that I had a kind
of anxious, ambivalent attachment style. We're actually going to be talking about attachment
style later in the show, and I have one of the world renowned researchers
on attachment style joining us later in the show. I also want to talk
about why good friends are important to your love life. I'm going to go
to social media also and to help you answer some of your questions, because
I know when we do calls, you get nervous. It's intimate, and
you're what if you're asking me about your relationship and that other person is listening.
I get it. So it's fun to go into the DM every while
once in a while and get those kinds of things. Also, if you're
single, I want you to stay to the end. This is a very
special three hour show. But in the third hour I want to focus on
how to find a mate if you're single, so getting on those dating apps,
what to put in your profile or not, steps to finding love on
a dating app, going from hey, we're a match to oh we're dating?
What are we now? And later in the show, I also want
to talk about slow love and my prescription for growing love the slow way.
Now, my week has been very interesting because a piece of me is coming
together. It's a long story, but during the pandemic, like many of
you, I was uprooted, buying a place somewhere else and putting tenants in
my place, and then renting to get a kid in one school and moving
a moving storage facilities, moving boxes, moving whatever. But this week I
did the great purge where you realize I'm not going to have a storage facility
anymore. I'm not going to have that other place. I'm gonna put everything
in one place. So there's some feelings of like just coming together, and
also the purge saying goodbye to lots of stuff. You know, our stuff
holds memories, every chair we ever sat in for every dinner, every piece
of clothing we wore. Clothing in particular, it's a reflection of our identity.
And when you get rid of clothes, you're getting rid of a piece
of your identity. I've heard this theory mostly by wardrobe stylists, who say
that if you haven't worn thing, something, an article in one calendar year,
that you should just get rid of it right one calendar year. Producer,
Kayla, you did not like that idea, did you? I did
not. I like to have my options, but I think you're ever going
to dig in, like like you know exactly so when. So here's the
thing with me. I've gotten rid of a lot of stuff that I don't
wear anymore because I'm not like on TV every night like when I was a
news anchor. But there's still these really sexy high heels that I can't get
rid of because I'm like, there's still like maybe maybe I'll get invited.
There's I could you will get invited? And you eat those hills really yeah?
Yeah, I don't even know if I could walk in them anymore.
I got to practice around your kitchen just from the you know what, it
was COVID. We all got into sneakers with COVID and flats and now I'm
you know what Julio gave me for my birthday? Oh my god, I've
never had anything like this. Gucci loafers is not a waste of money or
what? Are they? Like? Extremely extremely extremely comfortable? Yes, yes,
yes, yes, I'm extremely expensive. Like we could have had like
a trip around the world for that. I don't know, maybe not,
but anyway, there, I'm into the flats. But you see, that's
my point. Am I letting go of my glamorous self? Am I ready
to let go of you know, something sexy even if it's uncomfortable? Am
I letting? And these are the real questions that happen when you purge and
you get rid of things. The the thing I did, of course,
is dug through all the baby pictures I'm also holding because my parents died when
I was thirty, and I'm holding their boxes of stuff too, So I've
got like my mom's wedding album and her single girls. I got a lot
of stuff. And so going through those pictures brought this overwhelming feeling of melancholy
to me. And I'm telling you this because I know I'm not alone and
it may be other things that bring it up for you, But I want
you to know that all feelings are welcome and usually bad things happen to us
when we try to suppress feelings because they find a way to come out in
all kinds of weird behavior. So sometimes, like I did, if you
need to take a night off and just sit and cry, because I'm just
saying I've all the baby pictures over Mother's Day and my girls are grown,
so I was like having delayed empty nest syndrome as well at the same time.
Anyway, my point is that all feelings are welcome, and we should
respect our feelings as important messagers in our our lives. Something else that's important
in our lives good friends. Did you know that good friends can actually make
your love life better, not because they're fixing you up with somebody. But
let me explain why you are listening to the Doctor Wendy Walls Show on KFI
AM six forty. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You're listening to
Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI AM six forty. Welcome back to the
Doctor Wendy Walls Show on KFI AM six forty. We're live everywhere on the
iHeartRadio app. You know, friends are very very important to our mental health,
and we all need social support. I think a couple of weeks ago,
I was talking about the new Surgeon General's report saying that loneliness has become
an epidemic in America and many of us need to work harder to make sure
we keep up those social connections because we evolved to be social creatures. We
are a many one brained species, and we cooperate together, we share together,
and loneliness is bad for our mental health and it's bad for our physical
health. I have a number of friends who I've had since pretty much the
beginning of time. I have a friend from seventh grade, a friend from
eighth grade, a friend here in LA that I've had for thirty three years.
In fact, I was digging through, as I mentioned, pictures in
boxes, and one of them I found of us all standing at like the
Beverly Hilton at some charity event that I was the chair of and we were
all dressed up and there was a bunch of couples and whatever, and I
took a picture of it and I sent it to her and I was like,
do you remember who the guy is you're with? And She's like,
oh God, I wonder if he's still alive. Listen, she said.
I'm like, I think you went out with him for a few years.
She goes, I know what was I thinking. But it is fun to
have historical friends, friends who have those memories with you, remember those times
together. Now, not every friend has to be a long term friend.
We can have friends that are common interest friends, like maybe we go to
yoga lotties with a group that we see regularly, or maybe we're lucky enough
to have a couple deeply intimate friends. They're all kinds of friends out there.
Research has shown that the wider your social circle, the happier you are.
And I used to think those friends of mine, I call them the
connectors that have a referral for everything. I used to think, oh,
they're not really close to anybody, They're just like they have a few But
turns out the research shows they're happy as anything because they have connections to all
kinds of people. They have referrals to people. They have doctors they can
call. Okay, they have lawyers they could call. They have connections,
they have plumbers, they got it all. So the more people we have
in our life, the better. But when it comes to our romantic life,
I know, when you first meet somebody. Your cocoon a little bit,
right, everybody does, you leave your friends behind, your friends get
mad, you go into your little romantic compartment just thinking and dreaming and breathing
in that person, and then you come out of it like who am I?
What was this? Well, let me explain why you need to reach
out after cocooning and reconnect with some of those friends, and that they will
actually help you with your relationship. First of all, they fulfill needs that
your partner cannot. The famous relationship analyst or therapist Esther Perell says that one
of the biggest problems in our relationships today is that we have replaced the village
with one person. We expect our partner to be everything. We expect our
partner to be our emotional support, our intellectual stimulation, our jungle gym for
our sexual pleasure, our financial partner. It is too much. It's too
much to put on one person, and so having a social network of people
that you can call and rely on actually help support your relationship. The research
shows that people with lots of social relationship ships outside of their primary romantic relationship
actually have higher life satisfaction. You know this morning, I was up early
for some reason. Julio slept in longer than me, and I was out
in the living room and I got on the phone with my best friend Maria
and we were just chatted about everything. I didn't even notice that he got
up started making breakfast whatever. I was just in another And you know you
need it all, You really do need it all now. I mentioned in
one of my books. I can't remember if it was the boyfriend test of
the girlfriend test, but one of the questions was do your friends support your
relationship or support your single life. I remember rack when I was a young
woman dating that I had these certain friends that they would always find things wrong
with the people I was dating. And then I realized, oh, they're
not wanting me to be happy. They need me out in the single world
because they're my wing girls and they're out there getting my seconds. So they
don't want me hooked up and out there with a guy because then they've lost
me. So if you have good friends that support your relationship, they can
actually help salvage your relationship when times get tough, when there is conflict and
you go talk to your girlfriend about it. And that's the kind of girlfriend
that says, you know what you need to give him break? Seriously,
you're bring a little bit hard on him. Think about the times that he
did this, or vice versa. Dude, you call up your guy friend
and you go, ah, I think I just need a divorce, and
he's gonna say, no, Man, look what she does for you.
You want to stay with her. She's good. You don't want to be
out of here with us single guys. So have friendships that support your relationship.
And the other one is they help you not lose yourself completely in the
relationship. Now, relationships become part of our identity. Right. It's often
when people are dealing with long term grieving after the loss of a loved one,
whether it's divorce or death, they've actually lost a piece of themselves because
when you get in a relationship where you're so in sync, you only have
to use half a brain because the other person is doing the other half of
everything. Even feeling, the feeling work and the thinking work, and having
friends helps you remember who you are, remember who you were, so that
you don't get sucked into that vortex of love wound around somebody in a relationship.
So I'm telling you keep your friendships up. Yes, that means go
out for your girlfriend knights, not the girlfriends that are not supportive of your
relationship, not the girlfriends that want to drag you out to singles clubs or
whatever. I understand what your partner doesn't want you hanging with them, but
think about other people in secure relationships and then just go hang out with the
same sex. Part of that. Go out and you know, guys,
go golfing, go to card night, go watch boxing, whatever you do,
Yankee games, oh no, Dodger games sorry, run city. And
then ladies go to book club, hang go to yoga together. It's so
important for your love relationship. Okay, speaking of love relationships. When we
come back, I'm going to take a dive into my social media and check
out my dms. If you'd like to send me a message, it is
at doctor Wendy wall at Dr Wendy Walter, start Instagram, TikTok. Maybe
let's look into the dms and see if you have some relationship questions, because
I've got some drive by makeshift relationship advice coming next you listening to the Doctor
Wendy Walsh Show and k if 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. Welcome back to the Doctor Wendy Walls Show on kf I AM
six forty. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. All right, I
would like to take some time to answer some of your relationship questions. I
want to remind you this isn't therapy. I'm not a therapist. I happen
to have a PhD in clinical psychology. I'm a psychology professor. But I've
been reading about and writing about the science of love for quite a few decades.
I also have a lot of life experience. Think of me as your
old auntie who has had some bad things happen to her in relationships, oh
and some good things too. So I'm happy to share my wisdom. So
let us go to the DM Instagram or TikTok. If you'd like to send
a message, you just send a DM on there. The handle is at
doctor Wendy Walsh at Dr Wendy Walsh. Dear doctor Wendy, I don't know
if it's politically correct to say this. See when you start out like that
and what is this is a dude? Yeah, dude, When you start
out like that, probably it's not politically correct, he said, But I
have to say it. My wife is letting herself go. She used to
be always so well dressed and put together, but for the past year she
hasn't been putting effort into herself. How can I say something without hurting her
feelings? Well, I want to remind you that everybody's behavior is a what's
the word? The behaviors are motivated by feelings. I'm worried about a couple
of things. Maybe she's like, I'm going to ask you to ask yourself.
What else has she been going through in the past year? Is she
suffering from depression? Have there been stuff that happens? What's going on in
the relationship with you? You know, try to get her talking about what
she's experiencing, because I promise you her not you know, spend it.
Look, I know what it's like. There are days, many days where
I do not want to put on hair and makeup. I do not want
to get dressed up, and I don't on those days. And luckily I
work in radio now, so I don't always have to. But if you
see this as consistent. It's a reflection of what's going on inside her somewhere.
Nagging her and telling her to look nicer is only going to backfire.
It's the worst thing you can do. I might give you permission to say
something like, hey, baby, I haven't taken you out dancing in a
long time. Why don't you get a new dress and let's go out dancing
together. Let's make a nice night of it. That makes sense, right,
Kayla? Does that make sense? But that sound hurtful? That sounds
lovely? Yeah, I think that would be okay. Yeah, And then
ask her how she's feeling not aren't you dressing nice? Right? Okay?
Dear doctor Wendy. Oh, so my husband and my best friend had a
platonic relationship outside of me. I'm gonna pause there to say, are you
sure? Okay? They were really good friends. They had a disagreement and
no longer talk to each other. I find myself in the middle of it.
This is becoming stressful. How can I get out of the middle.
I don't think they will ever be friends again. Well, I would like
to know what the fight was about. I think there's way more material in
there that you don't know. About there, because you would have told me
if you knew more, you would have told me. You know, you
got to choose your husband over your best friend. Sorry, that's the union,
right, You've made this commitment. Maybe you have kids together. I
don't know. Maybe the level of their platonic relationship was a little deeper than
you thought, and maybe this disagreement was long overdue, and maybe they do
need to take some space. And maybe you need to take some space from
this best friend if she's a threat to your relationship. That's all I'm going
to say. But there's some more material in there. I know there is.
There's something you don't know. It's making me think. It's just making
me think. Dear doctor went, oh, I get this stuff all the
time. This is from a gentleman. And he said, dear doctor,
Wendy, I'm having really bad luck on the dating apps and I can't get
a girlfriend. I'm wondering if it's because I'm short and I don't make a
lot of money. I work in the fast food industry. How can I
get ladies to see what a lover I am. Well, I just want
to tell you that the ways that men showcase their mating strategy isn't always by
height and a full head of hair and a big thick wallet. It's by
intelligence and humor and how you make a woman feel. I promise you there
are other women working at that fast food place who would think you're hysterical and
fun if you gave them the time of day in the right way. I
was listening to Steve Harvey the other day. He was telling a story from
college how his brother gave him advice about how to pick up a woman.
And it was the cutest story because he said, the first day you walk
by her in the cafeterier, you just say hello and you keep moving.
This next time you see or you walk by and you just say hello.
Would you mind telling me your name? She'll say the name, and then
you say hello, and you walk by. Then you wait a couple of
days, then you walk by again, and this time you say hi,
whatever name is, Felicia. I just want to think the name actually,
was that Caleb? I just want you, And now that I know your
name, you should know mine. Who was saying hello to my name is
Steve And she said hi, Steve, and then the brothers said keep walking,
just keep walking anyway, It took like two weeks for him to say,
you know, I'd like to take you out for pizza one night and
I'll come pick you. He goes. By the time I got to her
dorm to walk her to pizza, there were thirty women standing outside. Gone
r look at you because he played hard to get in a cool way right
to say Hi, Just be simple and move away. And for sure,
I know it's hard. You don't want to look desperate, right, You
don't want to be a victim. You just got to get your mojo back.
Got to get yourself confidence because these are inner voices inside you. Other
people might not think the negative things about you that you'll think about you,
right, You got to change those into positive voices. Okay, when we
come back, I'm going to continue to answer your questions from social media.
If you'd like to send me a question, just DM it at at doctor
Wendy Walsh Instagram and TikTok is where I'm checking. Right now, you're listening
to the Doctor Endy 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. Welcome back to the Doctor Dy Walsh Show on
KFI AM six forty. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. All right,
more of my drive by makeshift relationship advice. If you'd like to send
a private message a DM, you can on my Instagram or on my TikTok.
I don't know if producer Kalis checking the comments on YouTube, but you
can follow me anywhere. Everything is at Dr Wendy Walsh. You know,
we we switch it up a lot. Sometimes we do something that's all phone
calls, and sometimes we just check the dms. You know, these are
very tender, intimate questions, and I really am honored that you send them
to me. So it's okay to change your name. I will never say
your name out on air. If you call in on other weeks, I
won't say. You know you can change your name. I don't care.
Okay. Like here, here's an interesting one, Dear Doctor Wendy. My
girlfriend broke up with me because I got her earrings and a coat that she
said is not her style. I'm so hurt. I tried buying her more
gifts, but she won't accept them. I love her so much. Where
did I go wrong? Okay, sir, this is not about the gifts.
It has nothing to do with the gifts. It has to do with
what your relationship was based on. First of all, I'm wondering if your
relationship was only material like Okay, we do know that relationships are an exchange
of care, and that care can take many forms. It can be instrumental
care. It give be emotional support care. It can be caring for someone
if they're sick. It could be intellectual stimulation care. It can be sexual
care. And yeah, it can be financial care. It can be childcare.
It can be domestic responsibility care. They're all kinds of ways that we
care for each other. But if your relationship is just based on the material
on her end, well I don't really like him that much, but it
gives me these gifts so I'll hang around. Then it's a false relationship,
right, It's not gonna last. On the other hand, I'm wondering if
she wanted more more of you emotionally. You know. I remember years ago
I was dating this guy and I was really really into him. I thought
he was great, and he gave me this designer belt, like so I
can't remember which line this belt, and he made me open up it up
in front of this other couple friends, and the woman made a point of
going, oh, wow, you must be really special. Look at that
wonderful gift, And I said and again, I process externally, So sometimes
I hear thoughts for the first time out of my lips. And I found
myself saying I don't want stuff. I want love. That's what I said
right at the dinner table with that other couple. And he felt so hurt
that he bought me this nice gift, and I really insulted him. I
feel bad about saying that, but basically he was trying to give me stuff
as a surrogate for giving me what I really wanted, which was an emotional
connection, which was him. So I'm wondering, if your girlfriend wants you
not the coat, not the earrings, or if she just wants your money
and you didn't spend enough, do you really want her anyway? I'm just
going to say that. Okay, back to the dms on Instagram. Oh
here's a good one. Let me see, ah, Dear doctor Wendy,
I feel like I keep attracting unavailable players. It's the only thing I'm attracted
to nice guys, just don't do it for me. Why am I addicted
to being hurt? Well, the answer to this, the exact answer to
this, will come up between you and your therapist, especially if you go
to a psychoanalytic therapist like I did, because I went with the same question,
you are exactly me When I was thirty thirty two years old, right,
bad boys, bad boys, bad boys, nice guys turn me off.
I would say, oh, they're too nice, right, And so,
you know, my therapist helped me understand that I had a faulty attachment
system, that I actually was more in love with longing than I was with
feelings of security. So if a guy would bring up feelings of longing,
I got all activated. And here's the crazy thing how attachment style works.
We usually get really sexually aroused by those that will hurt us the most if
we have an anxious attachment style, right. And so when I would say,
ah, just you know, those nice guys don't do it for me,
I'm not even aroused. I'm not attracted to them, right. It
was because I was in love with longing. I wasn't in love with feelings
of safety and security. Eventually, through years of therapy and lots of reading
and writing and lots of changing my behaviors, I was able to change.
I was able to understand that I deserve care. I deserve somebody who can
take care of me. I deserve that I can have a great, wonder
full, exciting sex life with somebody like that because I've made the choice.
I've made the choice to have a rational love. And I hope you can
understand that a lot of this often has to do with early childhood trauma that
only you and your therapist can tease apart. You can get to the bottom
of the why, and then you can change your patterns by making different choices,
by learning how to tolerate kindness, learning how to be around niceness and
find that very attractive. This is a choice for you to make. All
right, When we come back, I have a very special guest of the
show, doctor Olmri Gilath, from the Department of Psychology at the University of
Kansas. He has been studying close relationships and attachment theory for two decades and
he's done the most interesting study. Did you know you can prime somebody,
give them certain kinds of cues, and then when they get asked out on
a date, they're going to choose a short term or a long term relationship
based on how they were primed. It's going to be a really interesting conversation.
You are listening to the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show on KFI AM six forty.
We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You've been listening to Doctor Wendy
Walsh. You can always hear us live on k f I am six forty
from seven to nine pm on Sunday and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.