This is doctor Wendy Walsh and you're listening to KF I am six forty the
Doctor Wendy Walsh Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app. Heyfi a F six
forty. You have Doctor Wendy Walsh with you. This is the Doctor Wendy
Walls Show. Just a reminder. I'm here every Sunday from seven to nine
and around this time I like to either take your calls or go to social
media. A reminder. I am not a therapist. I'm a psychology professor,
but I have been obsessed with the science of love for three decades.
I've written three books on relationships, did a dissertation on attachment theory, and
I am happy to weigh in on your love life. Okay, so let's
go to social this week. Dear doctor Wendy writes this listener. I sent
a breakup text to my long distance boyfriend and he didn't reply. Does this
mean he doesn't care? Okay? This could mean a million things, but
what he feels is not so important right now, because you've made the decision
that this long distance relationship is not right for you. So my suspicion is
that he might have had the same kind of feelings, and he either feels
relieved that you did it and somebody said it right, or he feels embarrassed
and ashamed and hurt. He doesn't want to talk about it. It may
not mean that he doesn't care. We don't know. We can't imagine what
somebody's feeling unless they tell us. I know it's weird to be left hanging
because you've shared this information, but sometimes you just gotta let it go because
you let him know, and there he is gone, just what you asked
for. He's doing what you asked for. He's not there anymore. All
right? Moving on, Hey, doctor Wendy. I dated this guy for
five months, but we recently ended things and his ex wife just showed up
on my quote people you may know on Facebook? Does this mean she's been
looking me up? Look? I am not a Facebook I don't work for
meta, but I will say this. This kind of stuff happens to me
all the time. And it is probably because they see friends in common.
You were friends with him and then he was friends with her, et cetera,
so they're just the algorithm. Does that? It doesn't mean that she's
cyber stalking you and looking you up. It usually means that they just see
the connections. Facebook is usually pretty good. They can tell when people have
broken up, and they try to keep people separate after the breakup, and
you don't see their posts as much, but you know the ex wife probably
just because your friend's in common, that's all they did. Doesn't mean anything
unless you want to be friends with her and you want to like friend request
her. But yeah, okay, moving along, Dear doctor Wendy, I
love my fine neighbor, A fine neighbor that's nice. He's tall, he's
handsome, he drives a Lexus, and so far up heres to be single,
but I'll make sure he is first. We only see each other in
passing, and I'm ready to make a move. What can I do?
Okay, before you get to romantic involved with a stranger that you know from
across the hall, or across the street or across the fence, I want
you to think. Everyone loves the beginning of relationships, but they don't know
about the end. So here's some questions for you. Do you own your
real estate? Does he own his? What's going to happen after you embarrass
yourself? What's going to happen after you break up. I'm not saying that
will happen, but it could. So you need to think about the consequences,
because you know what they say, good fences make good neighbors, boundaries.
Having good boundaries makes for good neighbors, because it can feel really awkward
if you know, you get together and it's not all that, and then
somebody wants to see somebody and the other one doesn't. And so that's the
first thing I would say that before you even think about anything romantic with his
neighbor, why don't you start out with friendship. Just talk about commonality things
in the neighborhood. Say hello. See if he responds. If you're not
getting anything back, then don't go further. Don't think of it as making
a move. Think of it as saying hello to a neighbor and just making
an acquaintance. Start with acquaintance. Start there, and then maybe in a
friend and then from there you'll get information about whether he's interested romantically. Okay,
I scrowling along here. Oh here's a good one, Dear doctor,
Wendy. I broke off a relationship of four years yesterday. Oh I'm sorry.
This is a guy writing to me. Her brother disrespected me. Very
badly in front of her and through text message, and she didn't say a
word. She did not defend me, nor did anything to give me my
peace. What are your thoughts? Well, My suspicion is if you broke
up with her, that this has been brewing for a long time, because
you're probably not going to do this. I'm sure you've known the brother maybe
some of the four years. You are probably not going to totally throw in
the towel and throw in four years of devotion to somebody because of one comment
or one thing the idiot brother made right and her not defending you. I
think this was brewing for a long time and you took this as the final
straw. Now, if I am wrong and you flew off the handle because
she did not protect you, rather than breaking up with her, I would
start with, Hey, it really hurt me when your brother said those things
to me and you weren't able to defend me. Can we talk about this
not a unified front? Or you might say something like it must have been
really hard for you because I know you love your brother and you also love
me. You were stuck in the middle there, but I felt really unprotected
by you. What can we do in the future if this ever happens,
or let's go forward to what the two of us should say to your brother.
Right, that's called sorting through conflict. But if you flew off the
handle and just threw away four years of a relationship because of this, I
think it was brewing. I think it was the final straw. And there's
a lot more going on here that I do not know about. Okay,
right, well, do we have time for one more? I think we
do. Okay, Dear doctor Wendy. If a man doesn't reply, is
it okay to remove him off social media? I want to block him to
prove a point, prove a point, Okay. I don't like people that
say it's the point of it to prove a point. If you don't like
to be reminded that he did not reply to you, then you should remove
him off social media. But not if your goal is to prove a point,
to hurt him in some way. Okay, I'll show you. If
you're not replying to me, I'm going to despair and you'll never see me
again. No, what's really happening is every time you see a post of
his, you're having a little tiny piece of loss, a little bit of
abandonment. You're being reminded of that hurt that you reached out for connection with
somebody and you were rejected with silence. So every time social media shows you
his post, you're reminded of that feeling of loss that's maybe mixed with a
little feeling of embarrassment or shame. And those are the reasons why I highly
suggest you should remove him from social media. You do not need to be
reminded of that. You know, I want to share with you. At
the very beginning of social media, I'm a big believer freedom of speech.
I do not like people being silenced. But it wasn't too many years into
it that I learned that there are a lot of people who have mental health
problems, who are completely unfiltered, who are just bullies and imploye. And
I thought to myself, you know, it's my Facebook page. I can
get rid of them. I can block them anytime I want, and I
now do that quite regularly. Learn to use that block button, right,
and then they're just gone and you can be in your own wonderful little world
and reach out to somebody else. This guy doesn't deserve you anyway, all
right, I have time for one morrowle I know the clock is going Uh
oh, okay, how about I'll read it and then I'll answer it when
we come back. Uh. Dear Doctor Wendy, my ex owes me eight
thousand dollars. WHOA, that's a lot. I don't know what you did
to get the eight thousand dollars. Give him eight thousand dollars, but wow,
that's a lot. And I see him on vacation with a woman who
I have mutual friends with. Where do you see him? You mean on
social media? Maybe social media? He's a horrible person and I want to
warn her. What's the best way to go about it? Oooh? I
love this one when the girlfriend a girlfriend Gorilla Network reaches out to the new
girlfriend to say, hey, you know what the X says about him?
Wow? All right, I do have some very strong thoughts on this question.
And I want to tell you about a phone call that I made,
Uh huh, I made to a dude's wife when I found out that he
was married. When we come back, you're listening to the Doctor Wendy Walls
Show on KFI AM six forty, but live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI AM six forty. I
am six forty. You have Doctor Wendy Walsh with you. This is the
Doctor Wendy Walsh Show. I am going to the social media I'm answering your
DMS, your relationship questions. If you'd like to send me one, just
go. The handle is at doctor Wendy Walsh and you can send us Instagram,
YouTube, TikTok, everywhere we're looking. Facebook, and just a reminder,
I'm not a therapist. I'm a psychology professor, but I'm obsessed with
the science of love and I've written three books on relationships. Okay, so
this person, this listener, said that their ex owes them eight thousand dollars.
She sees them on vacation with a woman I assume on social media who
I have mutual friends with. He's a horrible person. I want to warn
her. What's the best way to go about it? Now, this is
a different situation than a situation that happened to me when I was a young,
naive, dumb girl in my twenties, well before the Internet, before
we could do that research that we needed to do. I was seeing a
guy for a number of months who lived out of town, but we had
great times when he was in town. And then I found out that in
the other town he had a wife. It incensed me, so I called
the wife. Now this is different, and I just told her, Hey,
by the way, I've been dating your husband. I'm breaking up with
him now. But I want you to know that this is going on and
you should know about this about him. I feel that that's my story and
I was able to share it because I was in it. Now, if
you care about this other woman and really want to warn her to protect her,
or do you want to warn her to hurt him? Ha ha,
See there's a difference here. What at your motivation? Do you want to
protect this woman or do you want to hurt him? When I called the
wife, it was to hurt him. Just saying not the right idea,
Probably not the right thing to do. However, if you do want to
warn her, if you go about it directly, contacting her, text,
email, phone, whatever, it's not going to work because the two of
them will collude against you because he's going to tell her, oh, I
have this crazy X right, and you're going to be perceived as the crazy
X. But you said something in your DM that I found really interesting.
You said, I see him on vacation with a woman who I have mutual
friends with. Da da da da. So this woman has friends, and
her friends are your friends. So the person who needs to deliver the information
are your friends. Because she'll trust her own friend, she's not going to
trust you. This, in fact, happened with a friend of mine.
She told me the story that this woman came who was a friend of hers
and told her about this great guy she was seeing. And she knew that
this guy had practiced financial abuse and stolen money from another woman. But because
she was close enough, she could just say like, hey, be careful.
You know I heard it wasn't didn't go great with the other person,
whatever, whatever. So use those mutuals if your desire is to protect her,
if it's to hurt him, and it's probably not a good place to
put your energy, all right, Dear doctor Wendy says this listener. Do
you think a man could commit shortly after divorce? A big answer depends you.
See, there are some guys who are couple guys. They have to
be in a couple. They don't know who they are if they're single,
they never take time to even learn who they are. Single, they go
from one to another to another. If it's that guy, Yeah, they
can commit shortly after divorce, but they're probably going to divorce again, only
this time it'll be with you. Because here's the thing. Divorce doesn't teach
you how to be a better mate. Divorce doesn't teach you how to choose
a better mate. You know what. Divorce teaches you that you can survive
divorce. So they move quickly into another one. Right, So do I
think a man can commit shortly after divorce? A man, a woman,
anybody can commit shortly after divorce. Is it the right thing to do?
Probably not. It's better to take some time growing your own independent person,
your own identity, figuring out who you are, you want, and then
making a better choice. Okay, moving on, moving on, us scrolling
along. Let's see. Let's see. Oh, okay, So when I'm
on the phone with my girlfriend, says this listener, I can hear sound.
That means she's got a message coming in and she's typing. I find
it rude. How do I ask her not to text when she's on the
phone with me? It was a very simple answer. You just say,
don't text when you're on the phone with me. It bothers me. I
don't like it when you text when you're on the phone with me. It
feels like you're not paying attention to me when you're texting and I'm on the
phone with you. That's all you say. You set up a rule.
When we come back, I want to turn to a very serious subject that
is the subject of intimate partner violence. And in light of the video that
we saw released this week with Piditti, it is a topical topic. You
probably know that I am a survivor of domestic violence. But the expert who
we're going to talk to after this works for an organization that is in the
business of prevention. We know there are lots of great organizations out there,
like the National Domestic Violence Hotline working in treatment and connecting women who have been
abused and men with resources. But how about making sure it never happens.
Let's talk when we come back. You're listening to the Doctor Wendy wall 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 live everywhere on the iHeartRadio
app. Well, if you've been listening to me for enough years, or
reading my books or following my videos on social media, it will not be
a surprise for you to hear that Besides having a PhD in clinical psychology and
writing books about relationships, I am also a survivor of domestic violence, and
at the time this goes back a long time, I had so much shame
about reaching out for help. I also didn't know where to ago, and
it was a difficult, difficult time for me. I experienced emotional abuse,
financial abuse, and yes, physical abuse, and so I have worked hard
to overcome my shame, and in fact, one of the reasons why I
wrote so many books on relationships is to try to put an intellectual eye on
love so that nobody would make the same mistakes that I did, and also
to not blame myself because it can happen to anybody. You know. There
are great organizations that help women, but there are also organizations that are working
very hard to prevent domestic violence. And one of those organizations is called About
Futures, and I actually have the director of Health for About Futures with me,
Virginia Duplessis. Did I say your name right, Virginia Duplessis? That
sounds very Francis. You have a master's in social work and you have spent
more than twenty years working to prevent violence, domestic violence, sexual assault in
all the public health fields. Can you bring my listeners up to speed on
where we've come and the prevalence of domestic violence in our culture. So first,
I just want to say thank you so much for having me today.
This is a passion of mine really thinking about how these kinds of experiences of
violence don't have to be part of the human condition. So I work for
an organization called Futures Without Violence, and it really was born out of seeing
how common this type of abuse is. You know, we know that about
one in four women have this experience in their life, and for all genders
it's been sick. So we're thinking about men, women, gender non conforming
people and it's daunting, right, And we also know that this is an
experience that crosses all cultural lines. It doesn't matter if you're rich or you're
poor, where you come from where you're going, the race are alarmingly highly.
I remember one time interviewing an attorney who worked in this area of domestic
violence, and she said to me that although the reports tend to be higher
of people in a lower income status, lower socioeconomic status, the truth is
it crosses all lines equally. It's just that in the upper classes, the
middle classes and the upper classes, the walls are thicker, the houses are
further away, less police reports happen. And also there's so much shame,
and people want to hold on to their financial assets and keep their kids in
good schools, and so they often suffered greatly in silence. Yes, and
I do think, you know, we consider domestic violence a very adult problem,
and think about you know, couples who are married and have kids,
and the people most at risk of experiencing this type of abuse are actually younger.
The ages of eighteen to twenty four is when we see the highest prevalence
of violence. At that point, it's often dating violence, not a married
relationship. Yet, so we have this incredible opportunity to make sure that our
younger adults are equipped with the skills to really identify a healthy relationship versus an
unhealthy relationship and are encouraged to seek help because you know, as you shared
in your story, so many people really suffer in silence because of that shame,
embarrassment, worry that people aren't going to believe them. And so,
you know, at futures about violence, a couple of really important things that
we talk about is you know, not blaming the victim, knowing that you're
not alone, it's not your fault, and there's help available. But it's
hard, Virginia. It's so hard because you do think like it was somehow
my bad choice, It was somehow why didn't I see this coming? Like
we like to think as women that were smart, and we shouldn't lose sight
of the fact that there are very complicated feelings around domestic violence because often the
perpetrator is someone we deeply love, someone we deeply care about, and that
gets confusing. So when I talk with you know, I got into the
community and do trainings, and I remind people that usually when we think about
those very dramatic, you know, physical altercations, it doesn't usually start with
that, right, And so there's so many other forms of abuse that precede
that, you know, and you mentioned some of them. In terms of
financial abuse, you know, maybe a partner is isolating someone so they don't
have friends and family that they can talk to about what's going on. Sexual
abuse is an area that, unfortunately, you know, for a very high
percentage of sexual assault victims, it actually happened within a dating or married relationship.
You know. I think that we have this narrative about you know,
rapes and sexual assaults happening by strangers or by acquaintances, but about forty percent
actually happen with someone that you're in a relationship with, and that really messes
with your head. You know, the person that supposed still love and protect
you, who's hurting you in that way. You know, you mentioned isolation.
I remember my partner always my friends, and he just treated them badly,
and he didn't actually isolate me. They eventually left. They were like,
why hang out? It's not fun to hang out with you guys.
And so that's sort of part of the slow control that takes place. You
know. An example would be I used to find my peace and freedom by
running out to a local Starbucks and I would sit there and make my phone
calls and do my stuff. And so what did he buy? Me a
very expensive cappuccino machine. Right, That's how the control works. To keep
her in the house, keep her nearby. Look, when we come back,
we have to go to break when we come back. I mentioned that
there are many organizations out there doing interventions and treatment, but Futures Without Violence
specifically works on prevention. Let's talk about prevention, especially with our teenage daughters.
When we come back. You are listening to the Doctor Wendy Wall Show
on KFI AM six forty. We live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You're
listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from CHAO six forty. Welcome back to
the Doctor Wendywell Show on k I AM six forty. My guest is the
Associate director of Health, Virginia Duplessis, from an organization called Futures Without Violence.
I use the wrong name before Futures Without Violence, Virginia. You guys
focus on prevention of domestic violence. One of the things you said to me
a few minutes ago that was so disturbing is that the most common age that
you're seeing domestic violence begin is between the ages of eighteen and twenty four.
We're talking about people without a fully developed prefrontal cortex, hormonally charged dating relationships.
How do you talk to young men and women about healthy dating when they're
teenagers? So I am so glad that you said men and women, because
so much of prevention is okay, what are the warning signs when I'm in
a relationship? Is someone hurting me? Of course we need to talk about
prevention from that five so you don't become a victim, But we need to
talk about preventing people becoming abusers. Right, So, really talking with young
people, there's a couple of core things that I always mentioned, So healthy
rejection. So many problems stem from not not to get to in the weeds,
but being able to emotionally regulate when someone is telling you something that you
that's not your preference, that you don't like, right, And so how
can you still save faith, feel confident and secure when someone is telling you
no? That is a major thing. And then really taking a look at
how can we give young people examples of healthy and safe relationships, concrete tips
on behavior communication? Right. So it's one thing to tell a young person
you have to treat your partner with respect, but what does that mean?
It means letting them wear what they want to wear, not monitoring their social
media, demanding passwords, you know, being able to have relations conversations about
these kinds of decisions that are being made. And again, as you mentioned,
you know that that brain is not fully developed, that adolescent time is
one of so much growth and learning. We have a really specific and important
opportunity to have an impact on people's behavior, belief and values. What do
you think parents should be saying to their teenage sons specifically, Yeah, so
I think you know, as a society, in the past probably ten years,
there's been a lot more versation about consent, specifically sexual consent. Absolutely,
we need to have those conversations about yes means yes, you know,
the ability to revoke consent, all of those great things, and we need
to apply that in other areas of relationships as well, because again, usually
the first time that there are unhealthy dynamics is not when it comes to sex,
right, it's actually about, Hey, I want to go spend time
with my friends instead of being with you tonight. Hey, you know,
I have this other commitment that I need to make and not necessarily spend all
my time with you. So really, those kind of concrete situations. You
know, we have examples of different role plays, conversation starters so that parents
can feel confident in having these conversations and also knowing with that one in four
women experiencing violence, there's a ton of mom this is part of their story
too, So how do we know support those victims and survivors and their own
healing as they are also raising kids, right, Because it's kind of hard
to talk about this if you have your own stuff going on, so we
need to make sure that that's also it's kind of attended to. And I'm
sure that you are well aware that so much of it is related to attachment
insecurity like this, fear of rejection or fear of abandonment begins very early in
life. And I'm a big proponent of if you want your kids not to
grow up to be either domestic violence offenders or victims, hold them close,
especially in the first five years of life, and have a close, respectful
bond with your children. I think that is paramount to it. And allowing
them to have a voice and not overly controlling your kids. I mean giving
them logical consequences, of course, but that's where they learn. Intimidation is
often through their own parents. Mm hmmm. So at Futures, we have
this great program specifically thinking about childhood called Promising Futures. And although it really
was developed specifically for, you know, people who are healing from abusive relationships,
I think it applies broadly and generally because it gives very specific tips on
how what kinds of games and interactions we can have we can have with our
kids in order to help them be healthy and thrive. And I think it's
it's simple, and not going to say it's easy, but there are those
simple steps that we can take in those interactions with our kids. And as
you mentioned, you know you want to be there for your kids, spend
quality time together. Think about the kinds of choice and voice that even our
littles can have so that they have those building blocks of communication, boundaries and
safety. You know, kids need to know that they have a home base.
If that's a parent, if that's a preschool teacher. The number one
real predictor of a safe and thriving child is a connection to an adult,
right, so finding a way to stay connected. Now, we don't have
much time left, but you mentioned that there are resources that people can find.
Where can people go. You know, I want to encourage folks to
visit our website Futures Without Violence dot org. And I work specifically very closely
with healthcare providers, and I think it's a good time to mention that there
are evidence based interventions, you know, for doctors and nurses and home visitors
other folks in the healthcare system that they can implement in order to talk with
patients and clients about relationships, safety, production, and where to get help.
Part of your job is meeting with physicians and groups of physicians, teaching
them to look for the early signs so they can intervene before violence happens.
Is that correct. Some of it is looking for signs, but a lot
of it is just it's called universal education, right talking to all of your
patients about this, whether or not you see a sign, because experiencing domestic
violence can have such an impact on your health, very profound. We see
higher levels of cancers and cardiovascular and all of these things as a result of
experiencing trauma, and so doctors and nurses need to talk to patients about that
in order to help keep them as healthy as they can be. Exactly,
you guys are doing wonderful work, and thank you so much for joining us
to share it. So the website if people want to find it is Futures
Without Violence dot org. My guest, Virginia Duplessis, is a social worker
and the director of health there. Thank you so much, Virginia for joining
me today. Thank you, Doctor Wendy, and that brings the Doctor Wendy
Wall Show to a close. It's always my pleasure to be with you every
Sunday from seven to nine pm. You can also follow me on my social
media anywhere. The handle is at doctor Wendy Walsh. You've been listening to
the Doctor Wendywall 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.