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 back to the Doctor
Wendy Walls Show on KFI AM six forty. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio
App. I have a special guest who's one of my favorite friends of the
show because he's a researcher in attachment theory and everything else and neuroscience, and
he doesn't talk like a bumbling scientist. He talks like a regular media person,
which is the best of the best. He is professor at the Department
of Psychology the University of Kansas, and he's spent more than two decades doing
research on close relationships. He teaches psychology, he mentors students. He's been
published in over a hundred publications. Welcome Doctor Omri Gillett. How are you.
I'm great. Good thing it's on a radio because you can't see how
I blush here. Yeah, it's great to be back. It's wonderful.
And I continue to read your work and I'm just jealous and envious because I
have like a secret desire to be in a research lab, but I think
it's important that I also do the work of translating a lot of this research
to the general public, so it's news you can use. As I like
to say, absolutely, I think it's super important what you do, and
it's something that we academics should do more get it out there. So I
want to talk about attachment theory. When I was in graduate school and I
first started learning about John Bulby, well, I learned about many many theorists,
but it was the one theory that spoke to me because it was so
easy for me to understand. It was so practical. There was so much
data and research compared to jungi In and Freudian and all this other kind of
clinian and here was this guy who put data to it. Can we talk
a little bit about the early days of attachment theory and how we got to
this place where we're today where people ask on a first date, hey,
what's your attachment style? Yeah, it's it's it's quite amazing. You know,
if if you if I know that you are on social media, it's
you can get so much information today about attachment and and you know, on
the one and it's great. You know, you can get a talk of
thirty seconds about attachment and attachment style. And at the same time, I
think that sometimes people missed the main points. But the beginning of attachment was
was the early work of Bobby, who was who was trying to become a
surgeon at first, like his dad and his granddad before him and so forth.
And then he got bored of being a surgeon and actually, you know,
change it into studying and psychology and psychiatry. And he was looking at
some of his interactions with kids and what is sort of kids have these styles
and they seemed to be behaving in different ways that are associated with their early
relationships. Um, so a lot of what he was looking at was about
separation and losing someone special, you know, like a p aaron over sibling,
and this laws is what got him thinking about these processes of attachment and
laws, and so that was his kind of early beginnings. He was talking
about specific two kids, one of them that was flowing him around like a
shadow, almost like trying to merge with him, which later on he called
an attachment an anxious attachment style, and the other one, the other kid,
was more like, you know, hiding and not wanting to come into
contact too much, and it was more avoiding, and that was the avoiding
attachment. So Bobby started talking about that, started talking about, you know,
experiences of for example, parents going to the hospital and leaving their kids
there for for a long while because they had to go through a procedure.
And he actually at the same time that germ theory was happening, and so
parents and families were told, don't visit your sick kid in the hospital.
We'll give them terms, and as any they abandoned these poor little kids.
Yeah, it was I mean, you can see the movie. It's it's
online, you can just YouTube it, and you see the little girl loris
there, you know, and it's crying. How you know, she's being
basically torn from her parents. So Bobby looked at that and and his first
kind of thing to do, well, they actually say, you know what,
we got to stop. This is not the right way to go about
that. And that was one of the big changes that it made, was
that basically parents should be around their kids even when they're staying at the hospital.
And you know, obviously today you know, parents can stay with their
kids in the same rule and so on. So so that was the early
beginnings. Then he started kind of like thinking where it's all coming from.
And he was, you know, highly educated, very kindnowledgeable, and all
kinds of different disciplines, and he started putting things together. So he looked
at things like control theory, so you know, how are we controlling things?
Think about early AI can work all the way back then, you know,
understanding publitive processes and evolutionary psychology. You know, again the early beginnings
of that. And he talks about the existing of an attachment system, so
we all like, we have this model inside our head, this blueprint for
love that starts early in life. Was Bobby aware early on that this could
be a predeterminant of our adult romantic relationships. He didn't mention in so many
words, but he definitely talked about a touchment being an important part of our
lives throughout of our lifespans. He said, it's it's from the cradle to
the grave, and it's it's going to be there always, and so theoretically,
yes, practically he wasn't quite there. He focused more on kids,
and then he worked with Mary Ann's Verse who was one of his collaborators,
and they developed what we call the Strange situation. So it's a procedure in
the lab that allows you to classify and infants into into specific attachment styles.
But they both focused mainly on the kids and tolders and so on, and
it took a while until people like Robert Wise and Hasan and Chaver suggested,
well, you know what, you can actually take the same seeing and same
ideas and conceptualizations and classification and apply them to adults and to specifically romantic clouds.
So I want to say something about attachment style. You mentioned it's a
system from the cradle to the grave. So I want people who are listening
to understand that Bobby did believe that whatever attachment style you had you developed early
in life, it stayed that way for the rest of your life. But
now I think, doctor Gilat, you know that attachment style can change across
the lifespan, that it can be different in terms of how you relate to
different people, That attachment injuries can be healed or worse, in my opinions,
and now I'm showing my biases. That people can learn to be less
intimate and not catch feelings. You know, it's something that can change,
right right, So, and even Boby, you know left an opening for
that. He was talking about, you know this dynamical system, and and
today more than ever before, we're showing that that you know, so things
like therapy, experimental work, and you know, new partners, you can
definitely adopt new attachment attachments. So it can be, you know, a
momentary, it can be something that you feel right here right now more or
less secure, Or it can be with a specific relationship. So for example,
your relationship with mom is going to be different than yourship who's your dad.
But it also can be the case that you know, maybe you got
into a romantic relationship and your partner cheat on you, and and and we
trade you and you you feel like, you know, you can't trust anyone
anymore, and then brought you from a secure person to be an insecure person.
And yeah, because of those experiences right right, I was reading lately,
how now there's so much emphasis on teenage relationships that they can be so
predetermining of what happens later in adult rooms. So those early first love relationships,
yeah, they may be an echo of what happened with parents or caregivers
early in life, but they really can dictate what's going to happen in your
twenties, right. And also also you know the transition from having you know
only mom or mom and dad as your attachment figures as we call these clothes
others two peers, you know, having friends, and whether or not you
develop specific social skill is so important to think about. What's happening to us
right now. Was COVID in everything right where all this generation basically was staying
at home wearing a mask, not having these interactions. In fact, we
have to go to a break, but I definitely want to focus on that
when we come back. Like you, I also teach undergraduate students and I've
noticed a big change in the last couple of years since we've been back in
the classroom. Let's talk about it when we come back. You are listening
to the Doctor Wendy Walls Show at KFI AM six forty guest doctor Omri Gillatt,
Department of Psychology at the University of Kansas. 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,
my guest doctor Omri Gillatt from the Department of Psychology at the University of
Kansas, who has been studying attachment and close personal relationships for decades. Before
the break, we were talking about what was lost during the pandemic with teenagers
and young adults and doctor Gillett, I teach undergraduates, and I cannot believe
the amount of social anxiety that I see out of these students that I did
not see before the pandemic. Am I imagining things or did something go wrong
unfortunately or not? And the numbers are there to support it. And we
see high levels of mental health issues, so anxiety, depression and all that.
And at the same time we see low numbers of relationships. So it's
true for romantic relationships, for friendships, for sex and you know, so
it's not that the people becoming asexual. You see, for example, there
is an increasing in consumption of porn, but people are not interacting as they
used to, face to face and creating relationships. And in fact, you
can see some of these numbers are scaring. Are you're talking about especially young
males between the ages of twenties and thirties, who you know about sixty percent
or more of them are not in a relationship, which is a bigger problem
than what we used. Yeah. Yeah, we need to keep guys like
quiet and happy and relaxed. They need they be having a girlfriend and cuddling
somewhere, not out buying guns. And you know, there is a very
strong connection between between being secure and safe and and happiness and well being and
so so you know, there are many studies, including men analysis, which
is the combination of a bunch of different studies to one the big kind of
analysis that show that if you don't have these social interactions, if you don't
have these close relationships, your chances are being sick mentally and physically and of
dying younger are much higher. So can you explain why I just want to
interrupt and go back a little bit. Can you explain why teenagers and young
adults more than any other group need that social interaction at particularly that vulnerable stage
of life, because this is when they learn how to do this thing,
This is when they establish these these styles, these relationships when they're supposed to
do the transition from you know, growing up and having only their parents or
maybe parents and sibling as their main a touchment figures to actually developing the social
skills and the interactions and the relationships that would serve at to guidance throughout your
lives. And if you miss that, if you if you think about it,
just just the mesk for it for an example, Right, if you
miss the critical period of learning how to read others, how to interact with
others, how to understand others, that's going to infect you. Right,
If you don't develop the social skills that allow you to, for example,
compromise or or to get along, or to again have emotional intelligence, all
of that is going to work against you, and you would be, as
you suggest, anxious of any kind of social interaction and to you just avoid
it. You know. I one thing since we got back into the classrooms
are doing face to face teaching is I allow twenty to thirty minutes of every
class where I force them into group discussions and I move around from group to
group helping and talking and listening. And I'm shocked at how many are just
staring at their phones in their group. They're not even talking. And I'm
like, you guys have to talk to each other, okay, right,
And it is there. And then if I ask them to speak up in
the middle of class. I see the shaking. One student told me later
that her heart rate monitor on her Apple Watch just exploded just because I called
upon her. And you know, it's interesting what you're saying about the phones,
because the phone's becoming this super important and almost partner. Right. So,
so phones today, especially with AI, which is some of the research
that we're doing in the lab, are are replacing and real human beings.
So you can today download and artificial intelligent girlfriend or boyfriend and design them to
be, you know, however you want them to be, to look however
you want them to be, and then you just skip the whole messiness of
real relationship. And what do you say to students, Because students do bring
this up, they go, what's wrong with that? Well, the issue
is that we were not evolved to have a computer chip or a cell phone
as a partner. We need we need the face to face to touch,
the closeness, the embrace, the authenticity of the of the relationship. So
if you just build something that is almost too good to be true, it
doesn't provide you with the same fulfillment of needs. An attachment, at the
end of the day, is a need. We have an attachment need.
We need to be long, we need to be with someone and the good
and bad, and we're kind of building this by going through these hard experiences.
And if we just going to play a computer game, that's not going
to give us what we need. So what advice which I know you're not
an advice giving world. You're in the research world and pulling data, but
you're a parent. If their parents out there listening, who have a teenager
young adult who's still in their room on their phone and not out with other
teenagers or young adults, what advice could you give these families? So I
think last week or I think this would maybe earlier this week. APA the
American Psychological Association came up with some guidelines, so you know, you can
find that online, but they specifically say limit the interactions who have their phone,
limit time on computer, just just you know, say even if it's
you can drop it for one hour a day, if you can, say
one day out of the weekend, if you can get them to get off
the computer and the screen and the phone and as you say, sit next
to each other and be a role model. You know, during dinner,
don't have your phone open. Just sit there and have a conversation, you
know, bring friends home, have have events where you know, we have
people around the table or in a picnique or what have you, and and
create the right modeling for them that they would learn, because you know,
we think that this is something either you have it or not. It's not
true. You need to grow into it, need to see muzzles and sieguard
away. To do it in an environment that he's noticed a stressful as you
said, you know in class he can be very stressful. You have already
the academic stress and a bunch of other things. Maybe at home you can
do it in a less stressful way. And you know, doctor Gillett,
as you said, put down the phone. I watched young person producer Kayla
put down her phone. I get and we got one right now. You
know, before we go, I want to say, there's a I don't
want to call a game. A behavior that my nephew told me about that
his college practiced in their cafeteria and they had round tables. So when you
would sit down with your tray, you often had to sit with strangers and
everybody was on their phone, usually because they didn't know the people and so
they had a rule called respect the phone stack. So in the center of
the round table, whoever would sit first would put their phone face down in
the center of the table. The next person would sit put their phone and
create a stack, and then they would have to talk to each other because
there were no phones, and in order to go into the phone stack,
you had to get the consent of everybody at the table. So let's say
you were trying to think of the name of a movie you wanted to refer
people to, or an actor, or maybe that's just me quoting myself,
but anyway, trying to but you know you're trying to think of a fact,
then you have to get the whole table to say, yes, we
need to go to the internet for that. Nobody in this brain trust has
it, We don't have it. Is that a great idea? It's a
great idea. And and and the more you I mean, I don't want
it to sound like, you know, this is something you know against scary
or or or you know, stressful, because I can see how how young
adults might say, Okay, I'm not going to go to the to the
you know, to this place to get my food. I'm going to stay
you know, in my apartment or buy a sandwich somewhere because so stssful.
But no, I mean, if you can get into be a fun event
where people actually get a chance to talk to each other, that's that's awesome.
And you know, there's nothing wrong about going hiking in a group or
or you know, biking or what have you. Right, it's just do
things together with out relying on your streams all the time. We all need
to do that, all right. When we come back, there's a new
study I just read that you were one of the authors of called I'm going
to give you some psychobabble to the world now, attachment security priming, affecting
mating strategies, endorsement among college students. Okay, I'm going to translate that
when we come back, because this is very interesting news. You're 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 kf I
AM six forty. Welcome back to the Doctor Wendy Walls Show on kf I
AM six forty. My guest doctor Almrie Gillett at the Department of Psychology the
University of Canvas. Canvas it's like Kansas. You know why, because we
use the program Canvas at my university. So whenever I think about a school,
I'm thinking of Canvas, but Kansas it's ka n sas all right,
So I want to go through this step by step and some things that came
to mind in the abstract that I read of your study that was published in
Evolutionary Psychology, one of my favorite publications, and basically the title Attachment Security
Priming Affecting Mating Strategies endorsement among college students. If I'm going to translate that
into language everybody can understand it is, let's make the brain trick the brain
before they meet somebody new, and they're going to make a different choice of
whether to have a short term or long term relationship based on what the brain
saw ahead of time. Does that make sense? I did get that kind
of right, Yeah, And that's that's exactly right. And I mean tricks
has you know, has a negative coquotation. It's actually it can be a
very palative thing. Right. Well, you know, when I teach priming
to my uh you know, psych one or one student my one hundred in
the five or six slides before the slides get slowly and slowly and slowly more
yellow. It's just a creeping thing, and they don't realize it. And
then I try to teach them priming, and I say, well, here's
an example of priming, name of fruit. And then the next slide is
was it a lemon or a banana? And then I go back and show
them all the slides and how their brain was primed by this colorization of the
slides. So it is a trick. So yeah, and absolutely, and
what we're doing in the lab is obviously, you know, artificially trying to
put them in a specific mode. Right, It's something that in real life
would be you know, maybe because of a relationship or something that reminds them
something that happened to them. You know. It's it's very different than you
know, showing them pictures or word that we do a lesionally in the lab.
So before we get going on your study and your data, let's talk
a little bit about the background. So it's already been proven that if you
expose people to cues that make them feel unsafe like their future survivability is at
stake, they're more likely to choose a short term mating partner than a long
term mating partner. Why is this right? So think about that, right,
if you're going to die soon, what what you know from evolutionary perspective?
Right if if you if you are you know I do in a way
that seeing you know, the skier's fing or something like that, and at
least for half of us, it makes sense to try and have sex and
pass forward your genes. Right, So for guy and they can just run
around find you know, a willing mate, have sex and if she is
you know, pregnant, then then they basically passing on your genetics. So
again it's it's think about it from a revolutionary perspective. If our purpose here
is to just pass our genetic material to the future, and when you know
that, your opportunities are closing and you're going to do whatever you can to
to try and increase your chances of doing it. So I wonder if there's
data from the pandemic showing that like Tinder did better than match dot com or
something. Yeah, that's that's interesting. I mean there is there are data,
you know, when looking at different countries where countries that are more dangerous
or neighborhoods that are more dangerous, and you see people starting to have sex
when they're younger, having more sexual partners, are actually getting their period at
an earlier age, right, So all these things are happening and our body
is acting even if we're not aware of it, which kind of it's nicely
with the idea of priming that that our body is getting ready to pass on
the genetic materials. So again the idea is coming from life history theory,
where you know, a safe and secure environment is basically getting people to think
about the long term you have. You know, you have a certain amount
of resources that you can use, you can invest them in and small amount
of offspring and make it all much kind of like higher quality. On the
other hand, it's growing up in a dangerous, unsafe environment where you know
you're gonna you know, they are high chances of dying young and you're going
to start early. You're going to try to get as many opportunities to you
know, have sects and get pregnant and so on. So it's so fascinating
because I actually I teach developmental psychology too, and precocious puberty and girls is
highly correlated with family conflict, right, so you're in a dangerous homely exactly
fascinating. Okay, now your study did the opposite. It said, what
if we made people feel very secure and safe before they set out to date,
mate, and relate, and would they choose better partners that would be
fit for long term relationships? So the first thing I need to know is
how did you make them feel safe? Well? How did you prime them?
Right? So, so there are different ways to do it, and
you know, specifically in these studies, what we're trying to do is to
prime them in such a way that they wouldn't expose our goals or we didn't
want them to kind of figure out or guess what we're trying to do here
and and then just go along with that. So we wanted to make sure
that this is notving. So we basically expose them to either images for example,
of the mother holding a baby. That can be you know, one
example, or you know, a couple hugging and or anything that would make
them feel loved and and and and embraced and expect and accepted and so on.
It could be also that the word just as I said, you know,
the word love, the word hug, the word kiss, all of
these things can basically make people, based on our previous research and feel more
a safe and secure. Um, So that's that's the way to do it.
And then what would you do? What would you do to see what
about their mate selection? So now you got them feel insecure thinking about love
and hug and safety and mother and baby and closeness and nurturing, and now
what did you do with them? Right? So so then we kind of
depend on the study. There were some studies that we basically asked them to
choose between different scenarios or different options. You know, do you prefer to
have sex without meaning, or do you is it okay to have sex without
love and things like that which represent short term surgeries, or you know,
sex gott to be was you know the right partner or you know, you
gotta have some feelings for a partner before you're having sex with them, right,
So that's one example. We use a self report measure, but we
also use a different study where we can look at the behavior. So we
had them in an interview with supposedly another participant, and at the end of
the interview, the other participants said Hey, you know, I you know,
I don't usually do it, and I know that's sounding awkward, but
you know, I really like you. I think that we have senilar interests,
and how about we go out and have, you know, a coffee
or a drink or something. So basically offering them to go on a date.
And what we wanted to know is whether or not you're going to go
with this other attractive mate after our prime um. So basically we can what
if they that other attractive mate they were thinking that that was going to be
a long term partner, but I mean it could be and we don't know.
But you know, there are two things. A if you are already
in a relationship and this other person is offering you a date, that that's
more like short Yeah there is that. Now if if you're not in a
relationship, you know, we're assuming that if you say yes, that still
suggests a short term even if later on, right, if we follow up
and see if you're actually Obviously that was an imaginary person, so we couldn't
test it, but you could potentially going to follow up and see if in
the long term they change it from a short term to a long term.
But for us It was more about, you know, okay, can they
actually change or preferences based on these subtle queues in the environment, which is,
so, do you have a control group of people that were not given
the priming right. So we had a control group of people that were primed
with other either neutral primes or insecure primes. So we tested these things as
well. Okay, when we come back, I want to hear the results
because I find this really fascinating and I'm going to talk to you about what
single people can do if they're looking for a long term relationship right before a
date, before they go out. You're 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 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. I don't often keep a guest this long. It's
just that I am thrilled and curious and amazed at this research. So thank
you so much, Doctor Omriguillatt from the University of Kansas for spending so much
time with us here on KFI. Okay, so your study where you took
two groups of college students. One group you did not prime them in any
way possible and you had somebody basically asked them out on a date. The
other group, you primed them with feelings of warmth, mommy love, hug,
kisses, baby, nurturing feelings that bring us attachment security. All right,
what happened with the two groups, right, So the one that saw
the things like hug and kiss and embrace, and again they didn't see it,
they were exposed because it was a subliminal priming and they were much more
likely to prefer long term mating strategies than short term. So sex without love
was not okay for them, and you know, not finding the right partner
was okay for them, And you learned this by the survey you gave them
afterwards, right right after we did the survey, and also from their behavior
when they said no to the other person who offered them to go on a
date. And the control group, whether it was neutral priming or as you
said, no prime or even insecure prime, usually led people to the opposite
to short term and especially you know, when insecure primes, you can do
it either avoidant or anxious, and avoiding people are the ones who are usually
looking into these kind of like short term mating sieges, playing hard to get,
which is another paper that we have, and they're kind of like more
into you know, playing games than actually having a committed relationship. And this
will be so with the priming. Yeah, I find that people with an
avoidant detachment style, not that I've dated many, oh thousands, they basically
love to find unique ways to obtain sex but not give up any emotional intimacy.
Yea, right, And all these things that you hear about ghosting and
submarining and all that, these are avoiding people who basically developed like new methods
or new names of it's going to do the same thing that they like.
You people have to understand in any given mating market place, they're always going
to be people. Everybody knows how to obtain sex in some way because we're
put on the planet to reproduce. But how they can extract sex without having
to make emotional commitment or reveal emotional to themselves is the purview of the avoidant
group. Now, the anxious people scare people away with their anxiety. I
think if I had to self diagnose back when I was single, I'm in
a very secure relationship. By the way, doctor Amri, you would be
very proud of me. Took eighteen years of therapy and to attachment parenting kids
to raise. So I go, oh, this is what a secure attachment
feels like. But I think I was more anxious ambivalent. So in other
words, I was the come closer, go away girl. Is I always
was attracted to avoidant man guaranteed, guaranteed, they ghosted, they dismissed,
they walked away. I mean I was like a detective trying to figure out
who they were with, where they were going all the time. Right.
But if I met a guy who had a secure attach and style, who
was very open and close and whatever, I would say, oh, he's
too nice, and so it really took them getting used to And I got
this amazing boyfriend who's such a caregiver, and people are like, but don't
you think you now deserve it to be cared for? And I'm like,
oh, this is so great, it's so really great. So let's talk
about people at what your research means to people who might be looking for a
long term relationship and getting ready to go out on a date or go to
an event where they might meet people. Is there anything we could do to
kind of self prime ourselves. Absolutely, And I mean the first thing to
do is to actually figure out what do you want and what's going to make
you feel better? Right, So, not in every situation and in every
relationship you know, meant to be a long term, but if you're ready
for commitment, if you're ready to you know, get into a relationship that
would be you know a bit of a long term rather than the short term,
and then you need to kind of lower your anxieties, be more vulnerable
a little bit, so you know, self priming with security is going to
be good, and also priming your partner with some sort of security. So
it kind of like, you know, a think about where you're finding your
partners, right, So, as you said, finding them on Tinder might
be to begin with a prime towards the short term, right, because this
is kind of the reputation that we get from Tinder. So maybe maybe find
them in different places, you know, Facebook or or or you know U
E enharment and stuff like that, or real life groups. What about going
out to meet ups and actually see hiking groups groups of people. Absolutely that
would be even better. And the other thing is is to kind of like
think about how you build it and what you're doing. So if you're into
if you're starting by by kind of playing them and and trying to have you
know, on over them and stuff like that, that's not going to be
a good way to build a trusting relationship. Um or if you if you're
putting it in in such a again an environment where it's you know, you
feel the threat and the danger and you know, that can end up again
not not bringing the right of the strategies that you would expect from a long
term relationship. So the people us want to fall in love with you just
take into a bull fight, right so that they would be all kind of
like flustered and excited, and they would misattribute this into you know, falling
in love. Oh, speaking of misattribution, I'm sure you've read this famous
study. I think it was done in Vancouver on that famous suspension bridge that's
so high and so terrifying. They had a young woman confederate of the of
the of the research study, walk across the bridge and to a strange man
she would just start a conversation and at the end the researcher would say to
the man, oh, by the way, that woman that walked across the
bridge with you, did you find you know, attractive with They all had
these feelings of love because it was co morbid with fear. They were all
mixed up with the fear in their stomach and said. And there's also been
stories of people like, oh, we were on this plane and there was
all this turbulence and I was walking down the island. I fell right into
his lap in the turbulence and we ended up getting married. Right, So
I mean, yeah, the stories are great, and the science is there.
The question is just where does it lead right and right? And if
if, if it started with this excitement, and would it survive when there's
no excitement exactly? How would you look? Yeah? My first book that
I wrote before I had any education in this area was called The Boyfriend Test.
How do we evaluate his potential before you lose your heart? And one
of the questions in the boyfriend Test was is he coming off a big win?
Has he just won like a Heisman or a Super Bowl ring or an
award at work? This is not the time to meet him. Okay,
he's not ready to settle down. So absolutely, there's something about this this
like made value worthy feel invincible and they would just go and conquer more and
more and more, as you said, and it would be the best.
I'm too settled down. No, you want to meet them on a low,
So who you want to be there? High? You want to be
there high? Exactly why they're there? So let's let's talk as we close.
In summary, I want to tell people that love is real, love
is out there, we are wired to connect, and that at any given
time of your life you can make love happen. And sometimes it's about doing
the internal work of learning to make different choices. And for me, that's
what happened is that I was choosing these quote unquote bad boys for so many
years because I like the high of it, I like the anxiety of it.
And once I got tired of that anxiety and wanted the feelings of safety
and security, everything changed for me. I met so many just kind,
giving people, and I think that's the big message about attachment overall, is
that we do have some control, but we have to become aware of our
patterns. Would you agree absolutely that is the way to do it well.
I It is always a pleasure to have you on the show. If people
can you have a website, don't you? Doctor Omri Gillett I do Omri
spelt O m r I and his last name like the beautiful resort town in
Israel Elat, It's Gillett g I L L A T. H At the
Department of Psychology, University of Kansas. Keep sending your research my way.
It's always a pleasure to read. Thanks for being with us, absolutely,
thank you very much, and we'll be back after this. You're listening to
the Doctor Wendy Walls Show on kf I AM six forty're live everywhere on the
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