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 Benny, the
News, I Gotta Mas Loving you. Welcome to the Doctor Wendy Wall Show
on KFI AM six forty. Were live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. If
you're new to my show, I have a PhD in clinical psychology, I'm
obsessed with the science of love, written three books on relationships, did a
dissertation on attachment theory, and I'm a psychology professor at cal State Channel Islands.
This week we are going to be talking about how social media is changing
things up a bit to help improve the mental health of our youth. Yay.
Also, you are not going to believe which platform that you likely use
every single is now the most used platform to find love and it's not Facebook.
Wait until you hear this. Also why every company needs a love contract.
If you work in HR, I want you to think about this.
Plus, I'll be taking your social media questions. You can send in a
question on your relationship life, anything you want. I won't give your name
out on air. The handle everywhere is at Dr Wendy Walsh. That's at
Doctor Wendy Walsh and producer Kayla will go in and you'll find your questions and
a little later in the show we'll talk about it. Also, if you're
married, I'll help you answer the question can your marriage survive an affair?
There is some new research on this, plus some news you can use ten
conversation starters to make your marriage stronger. But first, producer Kayla, you
with me allis did you see hi? Did you see the eclipse at all
this week? Was there anything that I did? Me and my Ss their
walk to Labret's tarpits and we had some strangers giving out glasses so we were
able to share glasses with strangers and enjoy the eclipse together. That is so
nice. Well, I was teaching and during the eclipse. Now, if
you're in southern California, you know it wasn't much was it was very underwhelming
and we had maybe a few minutes of feeling of like a cloud cover or
something. It wasn't that much. Well, it was a different like the
shadows looked a little different, I don't know, felt a bit wird.
So I was teaching. I teach at cal State Channel Islands. And as
I'm lecturing, I'm hearing myself having to get louder and louder because there's this
commotion going on outside in the plaza, and I look out the window and
see that a very large group of students and professors. And I'm teaching a
psychology one oh one class, you know, like an intro to psychology class
freshmen. And I stopped the lecture and say, hey, would you like
to go out? And as far be it from me for having you miss
the eclipse, would you like to go out and join everybody? And they
literally like no, just keep lecturing, because maybe because it was so underwhelming.
Now, let me tell you the story of my brother in Ottawa,
Canada direct path. Okay. First of all, I call him and he
goes, oh, we're having a quick bowl of soup and then we got
our glasses and we're heading out. Okay, okay. And so he's he
had a tracker that tells you exactly the time the eclipse was going to go
past, and in his time zone it was three twenty three PM. That's
in the afternoon, three twenty three. So he said, it was the
weirdest thing. We're standing out there. It's three twenty one, and we're
all like, sun is shining bright, nothing happening here. I guess it's
not passing here. And then he said, at exactly three twenty three,
it was like somebody, over a ten second period, just turned off a
light switch. It went to pitch black dark, and all the street lights
came on and people were cheer I've heard that other people just went silent.
They hugged each other. It was so bizarre. And he said it lasted
three minutes and then someone just raised the shade again over ten seconds. He
said, it was startling, it was phenomenal. It was totally cool,
and it's not gonna happen in North America for another twenty years. As I
say to my fiancee, Julio, we'll have to eat really well and exercise
so we can be around for the next time. That's what it's about,
I thought to myself, Imagine what our ancient people must have experienced. Now,
if you've been listening to my show for a long time, hold on
to your seats, because you know I have some very dark humor. We're
driving to the car, and I said, they probably huddled together, and
then some tribes went, oh, no, the gods are punishing us.
We must go sacrifice our first born. Think of how many babies we're murdered.
I'm any clips. I'm sorry, but that's how my brain works.
Kayla, I'm sorry, this is how my brain works. I'm not surprised,
doctor, I can go to dead baby jokes. Okay. Anyway,
the next on the globe, the next total eclipse is taking place. When,
Kayla, we were looking it up earlier. It's soon on the globe,
is I think twenty twenty six. August twelfth, twenty twenty six in
Europe, Get this Spain, which is a great place to party in August,
folks. Spain and Ireland is right in the direct path. So you
might want to book your tickets now because I don't know if you heard,
but in these tiny towns, you know, the kind of towns that have
one little tiny motel six with you know, eighteen rooms and that's it.
If they were in the path of the eclipse in North America, they were
charging more than one thousand dollars a night for their rooms. So I'd get
on this. I would book things. August twelfth, twenty twenty six.
Let's go to Spain, Kla, they could be fun. That could be
really fun, all right. Other news in California, I think good news.
You think not, Kayla. Let's debate this. California has officially raised
the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hour for fast food workers only. Why
does this make you mad, Kayla? Because it raises the price for fast
food for everyone. And I don't think that a fast food job was meant
to be a forever job, so I don't think that it needs to be
rewarded with a twenty dollars an hour pay when people who you know, not
to compare, but people who have gone to school, study to trade,
they have to typically pay their dues in order to start making the big bucks,
like in radio, for example. So why a job where you're not
really supposed to grow at are you getting twenty dollars an hour? Spoken like
a true urban night You know, there are places in America where fast food
is a career and they get promoted to assistant manager and manager is the manager.
Sure? Okay, oh right, yeah, that's fine, that's salary.
You deserve that. Okay, there's an economist I follow on. I'll
never call it anything else. Twitter and he says that the way to raise
the economy is to pay all workers more because most workers spend their money,
a big chunk of it in the place they work, so it actually raises
profits. He used the model of Walmart, and he said, if you
just raised the rate, the hourly rate of everybody who works at Walmart to
twenty five dollars an hour, Apparently people who work at Walmart spend almost a
third of their salary in Walmart, so you increase your sales as well.
So putting money in the hands of workers is the best way to raise the
economy. Now, I hear what you're saying about prices might be going up
because right now we're hitting the consumer inflation. I saw chart today is off
the charts. And here's how I notice it. You guys probably know.
I try to be as key to as I can. I try to be
low carb, high fat, whatever. And the only thing you can order
at Starbucks to drink that's going to be low carb is a regular drip coffee.
It's also the cheapest thing. Regular drip coffee with a splash of heavy
cream. That's my drink at Starbucks now. Prior to the pandemic it was
two dollars and ten cents for a tall You know that's double speak, right,
tall it's the smallest one, but it's called tall ough double speak anyway,
So two dollars and ten cents. Recently I went into one in the
valley and it was two dollars and sixty five cents, and I went,
oh, my gosh, went up fifty five cents. Well, as of
April first, it went up to three dollars and twenty five cents for a
simple cup of drip coffee. So I start interviewing the Starbucks person who's now
probably making twenty dollars an hour and can afford four of those cups of coffee.
I said why, and they told me that there are different prices in
different markets and it's all by zip code. I did not know this,
so they particularly rip us off in the big cities. Okay, when we
come back, you have heard a lot about how there's so much research out
there showing how social media is hurting all of our mental health, but particularly
our children and teenagers. Well, apparently some of these social media companies are
enacting a whole bunch of changes to change people's mental health. Let's see if
it's going to work. We'll talk about this when we come back. You're
listening to doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI AM six forty. So if
you follow me on social media, specifically TikTok, you know that I've got
a million followers. You know probably if you've been following me for a while,
that my brand is slowly in transition. So here's the thing. When
you get stuck in one space on social media, it becomes everything. And
the truth is, I'm so much more than relationship advice, although I love
to give relationship advice. Here's my theory, by the way, about my
little identity transformation. Here during all the years that I was single and had
attachment injuries and was in therapy and was in graduate school trying to put an
intellectual eye on love to ultimately heal myself right, And so I wrote three
books on relationship ships. I did a dissertation on attachment theory. I became
obsessed with our romantic attachment style and how we could heal early life trauma that
could lead to us finding constantly being attracted to partners who hurt us. So
I really walked my walk. I don't know if you've ever heard that saying,
I think it's from the book Jonathan Livingston segel We teach best what we
most need to learn. And so I would every time I would learn something
new, And my career as a journalist really taught me how to take scientific
information and put it into language everybody could understand. So I blogged, and
I do podcasts, and I go on radio, and I write books and
I talk about wow, this aha moment, Oh my gosh, just look
what I learned. People with an avoidant attachment style are mostly attracted to people
with an anxious attachment style, and there's this constant running all the time in
their relationship, and nobody's really happy. But those relationships tend to last a
really long time, by the way, because the running becomes the glue instead
of emotional intimacy. Anyway, that would be one example of what I might
have put in a TikTok video. So when I met my fiance during the
pandemic, and we you know, I continued to do all the things I've
been teaching you guys for the last ten years on KFI, I did them.
I did them because I've been teaching them. We teach best what we
most need to learn. And I was able to build a secure attachment for
the first time in my life. I literally this morning, we were in
bed and I said I was going somewhere for the day and he was going
somewhere for the day. And I said, oh, I'm not going to
see you all day and he's and I said, I don't think I've ever
had this kind of feeling where I didn't even want to take a day off
from somebody. And he said me either, never had this feeling. So
now that I have what's called a secure attachment, I find myself up just
a little, just a little less interested in, you know, hardcore relationship
advice, although you'll notice come up later in the show. I have a
lot of stuff for happily together couples to keep it happily together. Right,
So we're going to talk about whether a relationship can survive cheating. Ten topics
you should be talking about to make your relationship stronger, et cetera. I'm
still learning that, Okay, still keeping it with you. But anyway,
so on TikTok, lately, you know i'd circle around. I say this
to my students too. I get off on side railroad trains of stories and
then I circle it back. We're talking about social media and kids. So
on my TikTok, I've been doing lots of videos talking about how I'm changing,
and one of the videos is describing a road trip I took during COVID
with two teenagers to eight different states and I at one. I've attended many
Black Lives Matter protests because it was during those days, and one of them
was up in a tiny town in Montana, and I showed video of this
and I was really quite astounded at how many people came out fully armed.
Well, I just showed the video right very few seconds of it, TikTok
banned me, warned me, shut me down. It was the craziest and
I couldn't figure out why I got this warning. I was just talking about
a road trip and teenagers and what we ate and where we stayed. But
then one of my I posted another video saying does anybody know why my last
video was taken down? And then they said they don't allow pew pews.
That's the code, that's the code that the robots can't understand. Pew pew.
Apparently that means again anywhere on TikTok, so I was both happy about
this news and upset that my wonderful video that I spent a long time editing
got taken down. By the way, it did get put back up because
I edited out that particular scene, So if you want to go look at
it, it's up there on TikTok. So you know, as our government
is trying harder and harder to protect kids, and there's all these rumors that
TikTok is going to be banned because the Chinese are spying on us and our
kids, and they're dominating and manipulating and controlling the brains of our youth.
All very true. By the way, I think the social media companies are
starting to get nervous and take some personal responsibility. The data is undeniable,
this infinite scroll that young brains enacting. They're scrolling and scrolling and scrolling where
they stay engaged in those videos as long as possible. The research is clear
that this is not okay for kids. You see, because of children's brain
development, they don't have a fully developed prefrontal cortex that's impulse control. They
don't have the ability to stop themselves or regulate their behaviors. Right, we
get mad at them that they're on their phones too long. And that's like
saying, why do you keep eating all that sugar when we're the ones feeding
it to you. Right, So they're addicted. They're addicted, mom and
dad. So technology, now, there have been some of the tech companies
have enacted forty four changes across different platforms to improve youth safe and well being.
So this includes things like listen up. Instagram has announced that it will
filter comments considered to be bullying. So now because of good AI and the
robots, it'll scroll through the comments. If it looks like it's nasty,
then they're just going to get rid of it. It's also using machine learning
to identify bullying photos. I wonder what's a bullying photo. Maybe when they
take someone's face and do weird things with it or whatever and making fun of
them. I don't know. Also, YouTube is now going to alert users
when their comments are deemed defensive, so you'll get a little note saying we
don't like this on this platform, and YouTube promises to remove hate speech.
Now. Privacy is another issue right. Instagram says it will notify miners when
they are interacting with an adult who has been flagged for suspicious behaviors. I
wonder of miners would be alerted about me because I got flagged for the gun
thing. You never know, I might be in a system now as a
bad person. Not that I send dms to minors anyway. And it also
does not allow adults to this one to message miners who are more than two
years younger than they are. You know, the two year gap. You
know why because that conforms to the statutory rape thing. So statutory rape is
like, obviously you can't have sex with somebody under the age of eighteen,
but if you are nineteen, you could have sex with a seventeen year old.
That's to keep the nineteen year olds and their girlfriends from going to jail
for that, right, So it's two year gap. The other thing you're
trying to do is improve time management. So many of the platforms YouTube Kids
has in fact turned off auto play, you know how when you get on
YouTube and it goes from one video to another video to another video. Won't
do that for kids. They have to search and select the new one,
which takes time. They're also going to have more notifications telling people like,
you've been on too long, but I'm telling you that doesn't work. There's
this guy on TikTok who jumps and he goes, hold up, now,
you've been scrolling for too long, and as soon as I see him,
I just swipe past him. So I don't really think that works. Hey,
speaking of social media, when we come back, there's an unlikely social
media platform you probably use every single day that's now the number one platform being
used to find love. Let's talk about how you could use it if you're
single. When we come back, you're listening to doctor Wendy Walsh on demand
from KFI AM six forty. Well, the way that people meet and mate
in the mating marketplace seems to have changed. I think people are getting sick
of traditional dating apps. I don't know why, by the way, because
I use Bumble and I found my love on Bumble. But I do want
to say this, it's not about the dating apps that are bad. People
always say I hate the dating apps. They're bad. It's not about the
apps. It's about the skill. And I've done lots of segments in the
past where I talked about how to use dating apps. Well, I'm going
to continue to continue to teach that, so stay with me. Also,
you know. I do this Patreon Zoom group every Wednesday night at six thirty.
So if you ever want to come on, you can ask me any
questions about dating apps, et cetera. I'll be happy to even weigh in
on your profile and tell you what you can do. But new research this
week from datingnews dot com, also published on datingadvice dot com, says that
the number one platform that people are looking for mates on is Kayla. You're
not going to believe this LinkedIn really LinkedIn the business more than Instagram. Uh
huh wow, more than Instagram. Okay, so let's talk about dating and
mating in the workplace. According to research from getnaxt dot org, twenty two
percent of married couples in America met through work and fifty two percent of employees
have been involved at one point or another in a workplace romance. Uh huh.
A survey from the Society for Human Resource Management, they found that a
quarter there's about twenty five percent folks. One in four of US workers reported
that they are open to having a workplace romance. And just last year,
Forbes Advisor commissioned a survey of two thousand employed Americans and they found that sixty
percent of adults have had a workplace romance, and of those, forty three
percent married someone they worked with. Now this is a problem because we are
post me too now hashtag me too. Human resources departments know that romances at
the workplace can be a legal nightmare. So it kind of makes sense to
me that LinkedIn has exploded as an online mating marketplace. Let's think about it.
Since the pandemic, everyone had to pivot right and go online for everything
their work, et cetera. So people moved from water cooler conversations at the
office to emails, DM zooms, even online networking events. I'm going to
go out on a limb here and tell you that I would say that evolutionary
psychologists would argue that the whole darn reason why people have occupations, professions,
and work is less about basic survival and much more about increasing their mate status
in the eyes of others. Let me tell you. When I was on
the dating apps, there was no such thing as an employee, no such
thing as a coworker. There were founders, vps, managers, consultants.
I mean, I had a handyman once and I said, what do you
put on your app profile that you do and he goes, oh that I'm
in construction management. Okay, why not? That's what people do. Now.
If you compare a LinkedIn profile with a dating app profile, you get
so much more. In LinkedIn, you can do a deep dive into somebody's
background. You could estimate their income, you can look at their whole network
of people. They even might mention their hobbies. Any volunteer work they do.
Schooling is a good one. What if they went to your alma mata
and you can call them up and go, hey, I'm an alumni,
or what if they're from your hometown. All that is in most LinkedIn profiles.
So here are the best benefits from meeting on LinkedIn. In my opinion,
I'm going to tell you the best way to do it after this Number
one, you can find someone with real world common interest. They could be
from a specific industry that you might be in. They might be doing charity
work your college. Also, it allows you, when you scroll through LinkedIn
profiles, to find really targeted commonality rather than what I would like to call
the pithy self promotion that people write on dating app profiles. I mean,
who doesn't love sunset walks on the beach. Gag me, I'm done with
it. Right hiking. Let's go hiking right now. Another benefit of LinkedIn
is that you can really vet people. I know that the dating apps in
recent years allow people to connect their profiles with their Instagram profiles, so you
can kind of see who their friends are. See if you know someone in
common but on LinkedIn, their professional network is right there before your eyes.
You can investigate them through real world contexts. You can look at their comments,
you can see who they're reviewing. And here's the best part about LinkedIn.
Just want to say it, get it out there. There's no HR
policy to worry about. Since the advent, as I mentioned of the me
too movement, workplace romances have become a nightmare for human resource departments. Many
companies have even enacted love contracts or complete romance prohibitions in their employment contracts.
So so far, I mean until next month, I guess I don't know.
LinkedIn doesn't have any HR hall monitor to get nosy about your noodling,
So how do you do it? First of all, I do want to
say this, do not send a private DM to a stranger on LinkedIn with
anything flirty. You wouldn't do it if you met somebody in a restaurant or
a grocery store, why would you do it online. So the first thing
you do if you identify somebody who's attractive to you is you follow them,
and then you become a watcher. You follow them and you ask yourself what
posts are they commenting on? How active are they on the site? What
can you learn about them by what they're posting? Just watch them for a
while and it sounds creepy, but this is what people do. Okay a
second. Now you're going to enlist your mutual connections. They have a thing
on LinkedIn mutual connection. You click on them and you see who you know
in common. So are you intimate enough with any of those people to get
some information? Could you send them a simple message saying like, hey,
is so and so single? Do you know? Or could you introduce me?
Or whatever? You can? You see the network right there. Now,
when you get brave, you can finally send a private message. Now,
please make it short and sweet and keep the topic on business at first,
include a mention of whatever your common interest is. You know, maybe
you have the same you work for the same charity, went to the same
university, whatever, same hometown, whatever. But don't be flirty. It's
creepy when a complete stranger sends a flirty kind of DM and then all you
do is you watch for their response. Do they reciprocate? When they reciprocate,
do they extend the conversation by asking you a question? If they're kurt,
short, perfunctory, or worse completely silent, you got your answer,
don't pursue further. Okay, silence is an answer. And then my suggestion
would be getting the real world fast, find a professional pretense to get on
the phone or zoom and then you know. Then you got the advantage of
visuals right and voice, and your brain will be able to pull in more
information about whether this person is right for you. So then it gets back
to real world dating. That's how you do it. Don't be creepy,
keep it light, keep it on business. You want to keep them as
a business contact if it doesn't work out, right, But I totally understand
why people are doing it. Alrighty, when we come back, let us
talk on the same note about why your company needs a love contract, because
there's some shenanigans going on when it comes to love in real world workplaces.
You're listening to doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI AM six forty. You
know, in life and in our culture, rules are changing all the time,
and it's really important that we keep up with the changes in our culture.
Remember, the very existence of a human being is every day and sometimes
in every moment, making a decision between your personal survival you might call it
selfishness and the survival of the tribe. Because we are not meant to be
alone. We are wired to bond, we are wired to have social support.
In fact, the worst thing for humans is isolation. We learned that
during quarantine, and so we also have to keep our ear to the ground
of what the tribe says is acceptable. You know, before the break,
I was talking about how LinkedIn is now one of the most powerful platforms where
people are finding love, and I think that's sort of a digital way of
people moving away from being direct in workplaces. In workplaces, it is very
important that we understand that people need to feel safe in a work environment.
Now, that doesn't mean that you cannot meet somebody at work, but it
does mean that if you do make an overture to somebody, who better be
on your level, meaning not somebody under you and you're the manager. Okay,
can't do that. That's sexual harassment for sure. If you hold any
kind of power over a person, influence even for a promotion, their paycheck,
whatever, you can't ask them out, just don't, okay. But
if they're in another department and on around the same level, of course you
might meet somebody. However, you don't want them to feel uncomfortable. So
if you make a little overture and it's not responded to, then move away.
That's actually I think employment lawyers would agree with me that that's not considered
sexual harassment. Sexual harassment is continual or it is quid pro crow. If
you don't do this, then you're not going to get this promotion, or
it's like this toxic environment where you're constantly people are making comments about your body
all the time. Right. I have a coworker not here, not here,
at another place who always mentions if I've lost weight or gained weight every
time I see them. And I don't know if you're aware that women lose
and gain four or five pounds on a regular basis. That's just our life.
That's what women do, and it irritates me every time, so I
finally just tend to gently say, hey, you know, nowadays we don't
talk about women's bodies at all in the workplace. It just like I said,
it real sweet and cute and ke you stopped. So there you go.
So many companies to protect themselves from all the sexual harassment lawsuits that have
flown around is they write a love contract for their employees. Now, these
things have been used for decades, but since the Me Too movement in twenty
seventeen, their use is pretty widespread in a lot of industries. It's essentially
a legal document. It's signed by two employees who are having a romantic relationship,
and your original employment contract might say something like if you enter into a
romantic relationship in the workplace, you must report it to HR and then you
will be asked to sign a love contract. The whole reason it's designed to
protect the company from claims right and also from other coworkers witnessing. Would you
guys get going on and calling that a hostile work environment? There is nothing
more uncomfortable when you're trying to get your job done to see two colleagues canoodling
over by the water. So the love contract might have rules about that too.
So the love contract should prohibit all kinds of sexual harassment as I mentioned,
including quid pro quo and toxic environment. They also make you both admit
that the relationship is consensual and that it won't have a negative impact on your
work at all. It also may include the possibility of department transfer. So
if you do fall in love with the office and you do report it to
HR as you were told you're supposed to do, one of you might have
to be transferred. That might just be a rule at our company. Their
HR department says, I mean, I'm not talking about our company, iHeart,
I mean they're whatever high hypothetical company I'm talking about. Their HR department
might say, here, at our company, as soon as you admit that
you're in a romantic relationship, one of you've got to go, not leave
the company, but will facilitate a transfer it. Also, this is thetant
important part. So relationships at the office usually aren't so bad until it ends
right, and then people don't want to work with the person and it's a
toxic environment there. So the love contract might include things about what happens if
it ends that protects employees from inappropriate conduct retaliation. Also, of course,
love contracts are going to include limitations on public displays of affection at the office.
This is gross. Don't be kissing in the hallway, that's just weird.
So according to research, there are plenty of reasons why HR departments need
to have love contracts. One study showed that one in four employees are open
to having an office romance, and one in five married couples in America actually
met at work. So even if you do lay down the law and attempt
to say enforce a no workplace dating at all rule, that rule is going
to be broken. There are exceptions in love contracts, like you can date
subordinates. That's a lose lose for the subordinate. You got to know that.
And also remember love gets messy. There's gossip around the office. It's
going to happen when it starts. There could be envy, jealousy, resentment,
ugly breakups. This can be a big problem for companies and for HR
departments. So it's really important that to avoid all this drama that companies set
up some specific guidelines. I personally think it's a great idea. I think
in everybody's employment of contract it should be. Look, if you date anybody
at the office, you got to disclose it to us, and if you
don't, then that could lead to termination of your contract. And then if
you do, you'll be asked to sign a love contract in some way.
Let's face it, workplace romances are land mines, okay, but we're doing
it like one in four people, right, it's so crazy. All right.
When we come back, I'm going to go to my social media and
I'm going to be answering some of your relationship questions. The handle everywhere is
at doctor Wendy Walsh, at Dr Wendy Walsh, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok
wherever to send me a message. I'm not going to say your name on
air, will keep it private, okay, but send me a question.
I'll be happy to answer it. You've been listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh.
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.