This is doctor Wendy Walsh and you're listening to kf I Am six forty,
the Doctor Wendy Waalsh Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app kf I Am six
forty. You have doctor Wendy Walsh with you. This is the Doctor Wendy
Walsh Show. You know, if you want to send me a relationship question,
you certainly can. Uh, Kayla, where do you check? You
check face? My Facebook, Instagram, Instagram, take YouTube, even YouTube.
So at d R Wendy Walsh's the handle at doctor Wendy Walsh. You
can send them any time during the week. I will never say your name.
I will always keep it anonymous. A reminder, I'm not a therapist.
I have a PhD in clinical psychology. I'm a professor. But I've
written three books on relationships, did a dissertation on attachment theory, and well,
I've had a lot of personal experience in dating. So I'm a woman
of certain age who's happy to weigh in on your love life. So let
me go to social media right now and answer some of your relationship questions.
Oh, this is an interesting one, Dear doctor Wendy. This guy I'm
dating says that I'm too masculine. I don't like those words masculine and feminine,
but let's get there. I'm too masculine because I like to control everything.
How do I turn that off? My ex husband was kind of nonchalant
and he was a boy. Oh then he made me plan everything. He
made you really or you took it over. I want to be feminine and
submissive. Okay, First of all, let us take masculine and feminine off
the table. The two things you're talking about are control and submission, right,
So let's talk about why people control things in a relationship. In general,
control has to do with anxiety. If you are trying to control somebody
else, either where they're going, what they're wearing, or where the two
of you are going together, it's because you don't trust that they will keep
you safe, that they will make the right choices if they have some power
in the relationship. Generally, the people who control the most no matter what
your gender are. It's not about masculine and femininity. They're the people who
are less secure in the relationship. Now, when this listener says to me,
I want to be more feminine and submissive, what I'm hearing is I
want to be able to trust. I want to be able to trust that
my needs will be taken care of in a relationship and that, my dear,
is what you work through in therapy, so that you can learn how
to trust love, how you can learn how to choose partners who you can
depend on that will do the right thing. So it's not about being feminine
and submissive. It's about trusting somebody else to make the plans and knowing that
you will be cared for in whatever those plans are. And that's an internal
job, learning to trust. And it's also about picking right right. So
let's take masculine feminine out of this whole thing. Don't like that language,
all right, Dear doctor Wendy, I've been hooking up with someone for the
last two years. Well, fun, have fun. Communication is okay.
We had sex two weeks ago and I haven't heard a peep from him.
Also, he didn't take me text me back, so okay. So let
me get this clear. It's a hookup that you just said that I've been
hooking up with someone for two years. That's a long time to be having
sex with the same person. Then you say communication is okay. So if
it's just a hookup. Why are you worried so much about communication? Then
you're worried that you had sex. You texted him and he didn't text back,
So I'm starting to feel some abandonment anxiety there. Right then you say,
today he texts he sex me, Oh, did he send you a
sexy picture or say something sexy? Whatever? And then your question to me
is does this guy just want to have sex with me? Yes? But
what happens is when women continue to have no they imagine it no strings attach
sex regularly with the same person. It often means that their bodies start to
get attached. You see when women have sex. Now, men also manufacture
a little bit of oxytocin as the bonding hormone and dopamine and europinephron et cetera.
But women get a huge surge of oxytocin when they have sex. It's
very common for women to say to me, I don't know why that guy
hasn't called me back. And I'll say, well, I thought it was
just sports sex, and and they're like, yeah, but he should at
least call me back. It's like their body is attaching. Here. You
are worried about communication worried he's not texting you back, and now you're wondering
if he just wants sex alone with you. Yeah, that's all he wants.
Okay, it's not going to be more. You haven't expressly laid out
those rules for it to be more. I mean, you could do one
last attempt and say, by the way, I'm starting to feel for you,
I have some level of attachment. How do you feel about me?
If you want to do that, you can, But I'm telling you right
now it's probably not gonna be good news that you're gonna hear. Sorry to
say, but you entered into one contract and then your body physiologically changed the
contract, and now your head's getting into games. All right? Oh another
friends with benefits. Listen to this, dear doctor, Wendy, I am
missing my friends with benefits of two and a half years. So I don't
know if you haven't seen each other two and a half years or you were
friends with benefits for two and a half years, that's not clear. I
found out he's seeing someone else while we were still messing with each other.
Okay, so basically you were friends with benefits. You found out that he
had another friend with other benefits and so you decided enough already this is round
two, you say, of no contact. It's been a little over a
month now. I guess I missed who I thought he was, not who
he turned out to be. Ooh, been working on myself lately. Does
it get better? Easier? And when, honey, bunny, you're growing
And you know what, sometimes when it hurts the most is when we're growing
the most. And yes, you were in love with Hope. You were
in love with your fantasy of him. Admit it. There was a little
piece of you who was hoping your friend with benefits was going to turn around
one day and say, hey, this is so much more because you're so
fabulous and I love you and let's be a couple. This is the quiet
fantasy that so many women hold in their heads. You know, the oldest
trade in human history is women attempt to trade sex for love, and they
lose one hundred percent of the time because men don't fall in love through sex.
They can have sex with the same woman over and over look two and
a half years. You said, same woman for two and a half years,
and not like her one bit more than they did that first time.
Because for men it's just sex. Now. It's not that men can't have
great sex when they are emotionally in love with somebody. And men will tell
me that they've had much better sex with someone they love, but they don't
fall in love because of the sex. And this is the thing that so
many women get wrong. Okay, so your answer, does it get better?
Yeah? It gets better? Does it get easier? Yeah? How
long is it going to take? It's different for everybody, you know.
In my case, I was in therapy on and off for years, trying
to work through my feelings of abandonment, trying to figure out where they belonged
in my childhood. It turns out had to do with my dad away in
the navy all the time and me in love with longing. I was in
love with longing. And when I did meet those nice guys who were there,
who showed up when they said they were going to show up, who
did what they said they were going to do, who expressed feelings to me,
I would go running because that didn't feel like love to me. Love
to me had to have a component of loss and longing. So when will
it get better? Soon? But you're going to have to do the work
and probably with a licensed therapist. This is hard. Remember when it hurts
the most, you're growing the most. I'm going to continue to answer your
social media questions when we come back. The handle if you want to send
me one is at doctor Wendy Walsh at Dr Wendy Walsh. You're listening to
the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show and KFI AM six forty were live everywhere on the
iHeartRadio app. You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI AM six
forty. KFI Am six forty you have Doctor Wendy Walsh with you. This
is the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show and I am digging into my social media.
Thank you for all of you who sent me these questions. Remember I will
never reveal your identity or embarrass you. These are very personal questions and I
know that. But if you want to send one in a DM, Instagram's
a great place to check at doctor Wendy Walsh at Dr Wendy Walsh. Hi,
doctor Wendy says this listener. I'm thirty two and I feel like I
don't know how to approach dating anymore. I try to be carefree and easy
going. Oop fir'st mistake. I think it gets me nowhere, but being
oh used and not taken seriously. I try to take things slower and express
my dating intentions. Yes, then I'm too strict and intense for men,
holding back sex and waiting for a few dates for a kiss. Do I
need to change? You know? What you need to be is more authentic
with who you are and what your needs are. It sounds like what you're
trying to do is be in a certain way to try to get men to
behave right to either just fall in love with you, et cetera. I
think you need to be clear about what you're looking for. Are you looking
for a long term, committed relationship, then it's okay to take things slower.
You're saying that These men say you're too strict, you know what.
That's the game they play when there they are trying to obtain just sex and
you're saying, you know, I'd rather take a little time to get to
know you and explore and see where this is going. And they get mad
at you and call you too strict, too intent, too hard, too
many rules of it. Guys say those things to me, then you know
they're not a good match for you. They're just trying to make you feel
bad about having your own boundaries. It's at you don't have to get mad,
but it's okay to say, you know, I don't feel comfortable,
you know, having sex with you yet I'd rather spend some time getting to
know you or just talking. And if they act like there's something wrong with
you, then there's something wrong with them as it being a match for you.
It means all they want is that sex and anything else is just like,
oh, am, I gonna have to put up with this till I
get the sex. Not oh, this is an interesting woman. I'd like
to maybe get to know her better too, So you're doing the right thing.
Just don't listen to them when they say that stuff. Okay, uh,
Dear doctor Wendy. Last Friday night, I broke things off with a
girl I was dating for three months and now I'm starting to feel regret.
Should I call her? I know it won't work out in the long run,
but I do miss her. Okay, we need to stop and unpack
this. So I why you to understand that even when you realize that somebody's
not right for you, and your brain is able to override all the feelings
of lust and attraction and say, you know what, this is not going
to work out for the long term and break up with them. It doesn't
mean you're not gonna have feelings of loss. Feelings of loss shouldn't be designed
to make you go, you know what, maybe it could work out.
You just told me, you said, I know we won't work in the
long run, but I miss her. You know. I had a video
that went viral on Instagram one time where I told a story that I was
hook it up with a guy and I thought it was maybe growing into something
a little closer, and then I felt him kind of withdraw and he had
a bunch of friends that came to visit from out of town and he didn't
even call me that week they were in So the next time he reached out
to me, I basically said, hey, you know, it feels like
I'm investing more in this relationship than you are, so we're just gonna have
to say goodbye. And he, you know, he said, oh yeah,
I don't know why, but accu he didn't really have an answer for
how he was behaving. So I said goodbye, darling, Thank you.
This was lovely It doesn't mean that in the few days afterwards, I didn't
shed a few tears in the shower. I didn't have those I had those
feelings of loss. Okay, feelings of a loss. You know. I
used to say, even if you've when you break up with somebody, even
if they were the worst person in the world, Sometimes it feels like you've
lost a leg. You got to remind yourself that leg had gangrene. You
didn't need it, all right, But there will be a time where you
feel loss. That doesn't mean you should get back together. It means you
should go through the grieving. Grieving is normal, and negative feelings don't last
forever. If you wait, they will pass. Oh okay, Hi,
doctor Wendy. How long should you expect should you wait to expect to have
the exclusivity talk with someone? I have a three month mark to see if
a guy asks me to be exclusive with him, otherwise I move on.
Is this healthy? Okay? Hard and fast rules that are crazy like that
with timeframes are always wrong because everybody's different, every situation is different, et
cetera. But you're sitting around having sex with a man and hoping he's going
to ask you to be exclusive with him. I need to tell you something,
darling. There are no such things as grooms magazines. Men don't spend
their whole life thinking about what tuxedo they're gonna wear down the aisle. They
do not think, oh, maybe she'll be my girlfriend if I ask her.
You know what. They think this is fun, she's a fun girl.
This is great. I don't need anything more. Mm hmm. It's
up to women to negotiate commitment, and bitches get commitment. Oh can I
say that word on TV? Yeah? Bitches get commitment, get commitment.
They do so being strong and having boundaries before you start having sex. You
know. All you say is, look, you and I have already discussed
in our early dates that you and I are both looking for a long term
relationship. We don't know if you and I are going to be the one,
but if we begin to move into a physical relationship, i'd like to
know that I'm the only person you're sleeping with. If you can't make that
commitment to me for at least my biological physiological safety, then we shouldn't go
forward. That's when you negotiated before, not after. Okay, well we'll
have sex for three months and see if he asked me if I want to
be his girlfriend. I don't know any guy who's ever done that, have
you, Kayla, No, I don't think so. No guys. You
guys don't do that. They don't they're no grooms magazines. Hi, doctor
Wendy. I met a guy on hinge and after dating for a month,
he asked me to be his girlfriend. Oh see, now we have the
opposite right. He's not the best texture and I'm lucky if I get a
text back after eight hours. Instead, he will call me for five to
ten minutes most evenings. I brought up how his communication skills are lacking twice
now this past week, he didn't call or text me for three days.
After that, of course he didn't, you criticized him. Is it normal
not to call text your girlfriend for that long? Am I being too sensitive?
Yes? You're being too sensitive. Yes, it's only been a month,
and my god, in one month he wants you to be his girlfriend.
Come on, take a breath, you slow down a little bit.
And why would you prefer texting over a lovely intimate telephone call. Wait,
I understand they rushed into the relationship. Yeah, but two or three days
without a text or call from your boyfriend. No, but that's because she
criticized him. That's when it happened, because she said, I don't like
your communication skills, so he went, okay, let me show you.
Then you're not going to get anything. He punished her because she criticized him.
I don't like him. She should pick up the phone and call him.
She needs to run away if he's punishing, I stated a guy who
a bunch of months into it, I suddenly realized that he never ever ever
called me. I was the one doing all the communication. I mean,
he was there. He did everything he said he was going to do when
we were seeing each other regularly, but it was me making the phone calls.
And then I said to him, how come you never called me?
And he goes, well, you know, I worry that you might be
busy and I don't want to interrupt you. And then I was like,
oh, you're insecure. You're afraid it'll feel like a rejection if I don't
pick up. Did you dump them eventually? But I was trying to train
them first, and you know, you can call me, yeah, and
I will pick up right. But by the time he would call, so
I'd wait and not call, not call, knockhos and then by the time
he would call, he'd be angry because I hadn't called. Oh, yeah
he didn't learn it. Yeah he had to go. He was too sensitive
and yeah, you're being too sensitive. Do you have time for one more?
Is it? No? Roll saying no? Oh my goodness? Alrighty
send me your questions wherever you want on social media. Hey, when we
come back. My favorite researchers, Gotman's from the Gotman Institute, have come
up with the secret to healthy relationships. Three things all long term happy couples.
Do I help you do these things in your relationship? 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 KFI AM
six forty. Welcome back to the Doctor Wendy Wall Show on KFI AM six
forty. Would live every where on the iHeartRadio app. You know, I
have always been a fan of the Gotmans. John Gottman and his lovely wife
Julie up at the University of Washington. They have been studying couples putting them
in labs for nearly four decades. They're the people who can put a couple
in a room, have them have one four minute conversation, some problem solving
conversation, and they're able to tell with something like ninety two percent accuracy.
I don't know the exact number, we're gonna go with ninety two percent accuracy
whether this couple's going to divorce soon or not. You see, there are
certain ways that couples deal with conflict. Now, the other thing I love
about them is they also can tell what works in couples. Here's what we
know. You know, I'm a professor of health psychology, and you'd think
i'd be teaching diet and exercise, but I'm not. I'm teaching about our
interpersonal relationships, our thought patterns, our social world You know, health habits
are highly contagious in social worlds. And one of the things we know is
that good, healthy relationships are good for your health. All kinds of studies
show that having positive interpersonal relationships reduce the production of that stress hormone cortisol.
Right. It can help you feel better about yourself, have a better sense
of well being, and that can add years to your life. Did you
know people in committed romantic relationships have a much lower risk of cardiovascular disease.
Now, when I say committed, I mean a healthy relationship, not a
toxic one, because we also know the toxic relationships are very bad for your
health, both your mental health and your physical health. So what is toxic?
You ask? Funny? You should ask that, all right? So
think about your marriage. Think about your life with your boyfriend your girlfriend.
Is there constant criticism? Does somebody belittle the other one? What about manipulation
and control or worse intimidation? How about explosive angry outbursts or the kind of
control where they isolate you from your family or friends, like, don't hang
out with that person. I don't like that person? Right? Gaslighting?
You know, gaslighting is where they tell you what actually happened and that didn't
actually happen. So they're trying to make you mistrust your own memories and your
own feelings. Is there a lot of blaming? Is there a lot of
shaming? Or maybe it's just that passive aggressive behavior right withholding affection or attention,
jealousy and possessiveness. None of this have any place in a healthy relationship.
You know, there's some people out there who think that if somebody's jealous,
they must love them that much more. No, no, no,
it just means the person who jealous is really insecure and they're trying to guard
you. May guard you in some way, it doesn't mean they love you
more. This shouldn't be a positive thing, especially if it gets into controlling
who you're hanging out with. Right However, what clinical psychologists and researchers John
and Julie Gotman have figured out. They have studied more than three thousand couples,
some of them they followed for as long as twenty years. They also
studied, over the course of a number of decades, forty thousand couples about
to begin therapy. They're able to do a little tests with them. And
they've come up with three things that make love last, Three things that all
healthy couples do. You ready, we can all learn how to do them.
Remember, relationships are far about more about skill than luck. Number One,
healthy couples make good repair after conflict. So that doesn't mean they have
to rehash and oh hash and whatever. But they don't ignore, they don't
wipe it under the rug. They're able to. It might be just affection.
They might just reach out and be able to touch their partner after conflict.
It might be a comment. It might be a silly little thing like,
Okay, now that we've totally trashed each other, can we have a
piece of pie? And then you both giggle about it. Right, there's
a way to reconnect after an argument that happy couples, healthy couples are able
to do. They're able to not do the silent treatment, not pretend it
didn't happen, not I need a break, I'll come back to you later,
but just you know, a few minutes after the outburst, some kind
of Okay, that was crazy. Still love you, Let's do something fun,
right, all right. The next thing that healthy couples do is they
express lots of positivity compliments all the time. And let me explain why why
it's healthy and why it's good for you. It's not just that it gives
a reward to somebody for the good behavior. If you're catching your partner being
good all the time and you comment on it, then they'll do that more
because they like that. We're pleasure seeking animals, right, But it also
reminds your own brain of why you're there, so catch them being good,
make positive comments all the time. It reminds you why you're there. And
finally, and this is probably the most important, the hardest thing to learn,
if you weren't raised in a family that was able to openly express your
feelings. Happy long term content couples are direct. They don't drop hints.
They don't expect their partner to be a mind reader. They don't communicate with
little breadcrumbs. They never say things like well you should know, right.
They're very direct, not angry, but they're able to say, no,
that doesn't work for me, how about we do this instead, or you
know what I'd really like you to do? Boom boom boom. Right.
They are able to communicate directly. There's no passive, aggressive game playing.
They're just able to be real and authentic, because that's how you have a
happy relationship by getting to be yourself in that relationship. Now, you might
think that being in a healthy, happy relationship means lots of public displays of
affections. Right, The happiest people the ones you see on the street holding
hands. Not necessarily let's talk about PDAs when we come back. You're listening
to the Doctor Wendy Wall Show on KFI AM six forty Live everywhere on the
iHeartRadio App. You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI AM six
forty. Well, that's the Doctor Wendy Walls Show. I'm KFI AM six
forty Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio App. This is the home stretch of the
Doctor Wendy Walls Show. But I want to remind you that I'm not only
here every Sunday from seven to nine pm Pacific. You can listen to me
anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app. Also follow me on my social media
at doctor Wendy Walsh, where I talk about everything, yeah, relationships,
but also sometimes I don't know my home remodels, my daily life, I
don't know I'm out there. And also every Wednesday I have wonderful Patreon group
and we talk about all things human behavior, science of relationships, et cetera.
That is patreon dot com slash doctor Wendy Walsh. Okay, let's talk
about public displays of affection. I'm gonna start with a story. One time
I had a d eight years ago and as it was like, I want
to say second date. So it wasn't like a total stranger. It was
like the second time. And after dinner, we were walking across the street
to this bar to have a nightcap, and there were cars coming, so
I reached out, as girls are wont to do when cars are coming and
you're jaywalking together, and I grabbed his hand and we held hands and we
crossed the street. As soon as we got to the other side of the
street, he just dropped my hand like a bag of weed, like a
cop was coming. Just drop my hand. And I was very confused because
I was sure he didn't like me. So we get to the bar,
we're chatting, and you know, I'm direct, so I said to him
at one point, you know, this doesn't really feel like a date.
It feels like a meeting, like a business meeting. I couldn't figure it
out. He had trouble being direct, so it took a long time of
me gently probing to learn that his family of origin nobody did public displays of
affection, nobody used language for emotions. He was just like I was like
an animal in the zoo. He couldn't. He was like amazed at how
I was talking, because it was also shocking for him his culture, his
family of origin, the way he was raised. Anyway, we were not
a good match. Now here's another story. My sweet Julio and I hold
hands one hundred percent of the time. Not that we're trying to like impress
anybody or each other or sending message. I personally think it's it's just the
dopamine that we both crave the touch, so we're always holding hands. What
is a PDA, you ask, A public display of affection. That's any
act of physical intimacy between a couple where it can be seen by other people.
Recently, I was in Paris visiting my daughter, and on the metro,
all the young couples are kissing like mad, like way more than you
were ever seen in America. It was beautiful to see. PDAs might include
holding hands, kissing anywhere, lips, cheek, forehead, not anywhere,
because then it gets into porn, I don't know. But anyway, with
clothes on, hugging, cuddling, touching, stroking, playing with someone's hair,
massaging their shoulders, maybe putting your arm around their waist. Sometimes feeding
them a bite of food is a nice display of affection. Whispering in their
ear, maybe winking at them. Blowing a kiss, whatever it may be.
These are all displays of affection. And you would think that if you
see this in a couple that well, they must be really in love.
Well, they've done research on this. Of course, they see people doing
PDAs, they have psychology students run up ask them questions about their relationship.
And here's what the research says. A lot of the time they're in the
early stage of their relationship, so they're so excited to be together. It's
about the early cocktail of neural hormones, and so the PDAs are all about
the excitement. Sometimes they're in a very that's Julio and I. They're a
very in a secure relationship, so it's just sort of it's something thoughtless and
natural, just a way they would be. But see, I knew,
you knew there's about coming up. For many people, they're actually in an
insecure relationship. It's complete opposite. So they're overcompensating for their feelings of insecurity
because they're trying to let everybody else is looking know that they're being on their
fire hydrogen. They're marking their territory this person is there because they're not sure
that that person is theirs. They're really not sure. And then there are
people who have these really intense I might even call it ennameshed relationships, the
kind where nobody can remember whose problem is who's They're in a bubble, they're
in a cocoon. The rest of the world don't matter. They have tunnel
vision and they have this intense pull towards each other. This sometimes happens at
the beginning of relationships, but it should settle down. If you stay in
that place too long, that could be a problem because nobody can remember whose
problem is who's right. Then there are people like the guy who drop my
hand and the sidewalk after we cross the street who have feelings of shame.
Right, So, just because there's no PDAs doesn't mean everything's all bad.
Some people are introverted, some people are shy. Some people just prefer to
keep their private life per You know what I thought, But that date,
right, I was just like, he's got to have a wife somewhere.
That's what this is about. He's not actually single, right, but you
know, when we got into it, it was about his culture and his
family of origin. Sometimes people don't have PDAs because they feel it's just too
early, right, they've just they don't know the person well enough it feels
weird right, Or sometimes they've been together a really long time and they're just
so secure that they don't need to be lovey dovey all the time. So
don't assume anything when you see a public display of affection. But it is
nice. It's very nice to get that dopamine. And you know what,
I'm gonna go get my dopamine very soon because I'm sure Julio's down warming up
the car. It's so wonderful to be with you every Sunday night from seven
to nine pm. You can always follow me on my social media. If
you miss any part of the show because you were busy with the oscars or
whatever, just download it. It's all there on the iHeartRadio app. You
can always listen to Doctor Wendy on demand. It's always my pleasure to be
with you. You've been listening to the Doctor Wendy Walls Show on KFI AM
six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. 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.