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. Doctor Wendy Walsh with
you. This is the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show. I sound so hyped up
to night Kala, don't. I'm eleven hours sleep. That'll little good.
Eleven hours sleep, no alcohol, woke up fresh, feeling great. I
love it, Doctor Wendy. We all need to try it. We all
need to try it. Hey, if you're new to the show, I'm
doctor Wendy Walsh. I got a PhD in clinical psychology. I'm a psychology
professor at cal State Channel Islands. I'm obsessed with the science of love.
I have been reading about relationship health for decades, decades and decades. Today
we're gonna talk about how father's unique kind of love is very good for kids,
and why we need dads and moms stop complaining about him. Really he's
doing a good job. Also, thinking about taking a romantic vacation with your
partner because you're going through a hard time and you think a vacation's going to
solve it all. Actually, the research says it might depending on what the
problem is. I know you want to listen to this one. Seven reasons
according to science why women cheat. Plus Later in the show, I'll be
taking your calls and answering your social media questions. I'll be going live on
TikTok and Instagram and youtubutub YouTube tub Who we got with us? We got
producer Kayla Hi, doctor you, producer Christina. I don't know if your
mic son is it? Okay? Look at me? All the girls here?
We got Mark Ronner. How you doing? Mark? Present and accounted
for? Ready to roll? You ever wonder why women cheat? Very different
reasons than men. You're trying to get me into trouble here, Well,
nobody listens to me at home. Anyway, I can answer whatever you want.
Just us shoot the work. It's gonna make every man think about their
own relationship differently, That's what I think. Roll on the board. You're
going to control me. He has to control the clock for me, asked
control the buttons for me. It's like, because I'm here with you,
okay, it's just you and I and I don't think about anybody else,
all right, So the reason why I slept eleven hours last night is because
the night before I had a bottle of wine with a girlfriend and we went
out to a restaurant who would go unnamed because one of my favorite restaurants,
and they had under the glass some food you could take home and heat up
in the oven, which we did. However, that food I think was
sitting there since seven am, and this was seven pm. Will you be
back well? Next day I was supposed to take producer Kayle out for her
birthday and I had to cancel on that girl, and I sent her an
emoji that was green and barfing. I didn't even know that emoji existed,
so I started writing the words and the emojen show out. There's the perfect
emoji for her. So here's the crazy thing. I had already made arrangements
for other friends to go on a Saturday afternoon to the San Antonio Winery.
Have you been there? You guys have been there? No, it's in
downtown LA. It's the oldest winery in LA. Winery is different from vineyard,
right. They get the grapes from all their various vineyards all over California,
and they make all kinds of private label wine from everything from some of
Trader Joe's brands to various nightclubs, fancy places in Vegas, etc. But
during COVID they're on third generation family running it. Now they expanded, made
this beautiful deck. They do afternoon jazz. In the afternoon, all of
La comes. It's not hoydy toidy, it is Angeline. I mean,
they look they're in their finest. But let me just say it is socially
diverse, it's economically diverse. It represents La. So anyway, I was
supposed to go with these friends, but I was feeling sick and terrible,
and so I said, well, listen, here's what we'll do. I
will be your designated driver. So I sat there for two hours. Well,
my girlfriends had these big flights of wine, and then one of the
owners came over and he was pouring wine for them and being so sweet.
It was really nice. And it's really nice, and you have a designated
driver because you can go as hard as you want. Just the smell of
wine was making me more nauseous. So I was sitting there chewing on Tom's
favorite restaurant. Made you sick? Are you gonna like? Are you going
to go back to it? Are you turned off? All right, I
just won't go get stuff out of the glass thing late at night. That's
that's not going to happen, you know. This week also I teach well,
I teach psychology of health counseling, and I teach developmental psychology, and
I teach intro to psychology at cal State Channel Islands. But I was really
excited because I had a guest in my health psychology class. He's the husband
of a dear friend of mine. His name happens to be Scott Seacrest Theory.
I just outed you on the radio, Scott, and he has been
in the fitness industry his entire life, like CEO of companies that manufacture fitness
equipment. He's like at the cutting edge of all the kind of tech and
the integration between our body and you know, like the Apple Watch and all
that. He calls it wearables, wearables, wearable tech that record He said,
there's actually a way that they can record your blood sugar now justin whatever
a watch. But he also is a former early in his life, former
competitive bodybuilder. He says he doesn not recommend that life as being a healthy
life because I mean, but on the breakekay Lo, I'm going to show
you the picture of him when he was nineteen in Mister Universe teen Universe.
Yeah, he had a little bit of a Billy Ray cyrus mullet. But
it was a year, it was a time. But but the body is
it is happening. Yeah. So anyway, the most interesting thing I found
about his talk was first of all, about how wearable tech is changing us.
Because as long as you psychologists know this, as long as you get
feedback on your health, whether you're counting calories, did you know any kind
of diet works to lose weight, even the ice cream diet, all ice
cream, because it makes you aware of what you're eating. Anything you stop
to do and just become aware. So as soon as you do a wearable
that tells you your heart rate, your blood pressure, maybe blood sugar or
whatever, you'll start to be aware of what you're doing to impact that.
Of course, I'm resistant to authority, and my Apple Watch tries to be
an authority with me, and it tries to control me. So I shut
it up. So when it says stand up some steps and you're like get
out of here, I go, screw you. Yeah, we're done.
Don't you order me around? I did not put up with that anyway.
I want to thank Scott publicly for come driving all the way up to Camaro
and giving such a great class. But also I noticed that many of the
students were inspired by his story, and particularly the dudes. Right. And
when you teach psychology, it's probably not news to you that we've seen in
the last twenty years quite a feminization of college campuses. For every one man
who gets a college degree in the last twenty years, there are three women
getting degrees. Like women are getting hyper educated super fast, and now there
are still more majority males in the hard sciences, right, engineering and math,
etc. And there's argument about why that is. Is there cultural exclusion
to women all the way along, or is it self at a certain point.
I'm digressing, but I do want to tell this little story. So
when I was young, like eighth grade, I was really, really,
really good at math, and I just loved p sets problem sets. I
would enter. My teachers had me entering all these math contests that even had
like eleventh graders in them, and I would sometimes win, and I had
trophies, and at the end of that year I got the highest achievement.
So then I enter ninth grade, which is high school, and I got
a choice. At this point, we had like three or four levels of
math. It was like Basic, that's two plus two General, Advanced or
Enriched. You know in Canada they just divide you right out. So of
course there was no question I was going in Enriched. And I remember this
woman math teacher. She had an English accent and a little white bob and
she seemed so excited about math, and so she would give us these big
problem sets the next year. Now I'm turning fifteen, it's tenth. Hormones
are starting to explode in my brain and in my body, and I'm like,
I really don't want to spend those hours doing those problem sets every night,
because I have Glamor magazine to read and there are some things I need
to learn about makeup and hair, because this is no I distinctly remember that.
So I dropped back from Enriched to Advanced. By the time I graduated,
like grade thirteen, I was down in general because I had parties to
go to, I had hair to do, I had makeup, there was
nails involved. There was a lot happening. So the question is did I
self select because of the hormonal changes to my brain that human mating became more
important to me because what was math leading me to making more money? Well,
you know, we know that when women make more money, they don't
actually it actually hurts there sometimes their ability to find mates and keep mates,
it intimidates men. Right, So who knows whether it just on some hormonal
level I self selected. Anyway, back to Scott and the speaking, So
in psychology in particular, there's an even greater dearth of men, very few.
I mean, if I get three guys in a class, I'm just
thrilled. I want to put them right in the front row. I'm so
excited to have them there in this health psychology class because involves some fitness and
stuff. We have a little bit more. And I noticed them being really
responsive to Scott, much more than when I'm in the classroom, asking engaged
questions, writing emails to me later saying that was an amazing guest speaker,
and thank you so much all guys. Right, okay, one girl,
sorry Madeline one. So anyway, so I say to myself, what is
it about what is it about male energy? What is it about male energy
that these guys are connecting with? And so I started reading more research about
fathers and sons in particular, but also fathers and daughters, and I strolled
upon something that was so fascinating. You know, there's a whole new area
of attachment theory, Kayla, that's new to me, and it's called the
activation relationship theory. And it's about men and how they love their kids.
Wow, we're gonna talk about this when we come back. If you're a
dad, listen up. If you're a mom, listen even closer. You
are listening to the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show on kf I AM six forty with
Live Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand
from kf I Am six forty k I Am six forty Doctor Wendy Walsh with
you. Okay, you want to talk about daddy love. If you've been
listening to me for the nine freaking years I've been sitting in this chair,
you know that I have had some attachment injuries, hardly due to the fact
that my dad was in the Navy, and he was gone in an inconsistent
way, in an inconsistent pattern, and when he would come back, he'd
try to make up for it, good good on him, and try to
be the best dad in the world. So my attachment organization, my model
for love was basically those guys that come in and treat you really well and
then to spear a lot. Yeah, the avoidant guys who'd come in give
you sex and gifts and dinner and then don't call for three weeks. That
was just like it was literally what my experience was as a child, except
didn't obviously have sex in my dad, but anyway, just had to throw
that into there. But you know what I mean, pleasure and then disappearance.
So I eventually became a mom. I practiced something called attachment parenting because
I'd read so much of an attachment and hallmarks include breastfeeding, feed as needed,
not on a schedule, sleeping with your babies, wearing your babies,
letting them know you know this whole secure, keeping them close. But also
the other piece of it that I knew that was important, that indeed has
played out for my kids is that my needs for closeness should not be put
on my kids. So as a result, yes, I practiced attachment parenting,
but I also encouraged them to get out from under my skirts. Now
put a pin in that. I also went to various mom groups. There's
was one mom bab group I went to and they had a very strict rule
because apparently, prior to me joining it digressed into some bad places. And
the strict rule was you were not allowed to bitch about your husband. Can
I say that word? Like, do you know? Okay? You couldn't
complain about that lovely man at home because apparently the mom groups just became a
session of complaining about men the whole time, and they didn't want to do
that. There's no doubt about it that most men do not invest in babies
as much as moms. First of all, their nipples do not give breast
milk, so there's that. Also, they're often with traditional gender roles,
being forced to spend more time away working. Secondly, they're just not like
they they don't know what to do with those babies. Now, I want
to say, there's some guys that are totally into it. They're diaper changing,
they're sleeping with their baby, they're holding their into I've seen them.
I saw them out a breakfast a restaurant yesterday and I was like, look
at all those dance we're in their babies. That's so cool. They're changing,
but in general they love in a different way. So I discovered this
thing today called the activation relationship theory. It's a compliment to my favorite psychological
theory, attachment theory. Now you know you've heard me talk about it,
I'll tell you again. According to the father of attachment theory, John Bulby,
there are two behavioral systems that are needed for attachment. One is called
the proximity behavior system. That means people stay close to their babies and toddlers.
And that's why those babies and toddlers were the only part of our population
who extremely benefited during COVID because they had a secure attachment figure more than one
around and when they go and explore this So the second part of the attachment
system is the exploration system where they gain knowledge they adapt to unfamiliar environments.
So concretely, this means you go to the park. In the playground,
the little toddler one year old two year olds toddles through the little sandpile to
get over to the little slide and they start to go up the two steps
and they check back because they're afraid it's a new environment, and they catch
mommy, your daddy's eye, and a good attachment parent will say I see
you, I'm watching you. You can do this. I'm here for you,
right, go ahead. Now there are those nervous nellie moms who are
just like, no, be careful, don't crimb up that ladder without me.
That's problematic, right. You want to be able to let your child
explore and give them the confidence to explore. The theory is when they get
older and evolve, they will leave your nest and fly away as both mind
have so the way they test attachment is something called the strange situation test.
I know I've talked about this before, developed by Mary Ainswork back in nineteen
seventy eight. They take babies that are twelve to eighteen months old and they
put them in a strange situation. It's a lab with toys and two way
mirrors and coders look and at a certain point they have attachment figure Mommy or
daddy leave and they watch to see what kid does. Like if the kid
doesn't even seem to care, that's a problem. Kids are supposed to cry
when their attachment for you. But more importantly, what happens when the primary
attachment figure walks back in the room. Does a baby look scared, Oh,
that's not good. Does a baby get preoccupied with toys and doesn't even
notice, or does the baby run with the hands up with glee and so
excited? Right, And so they're able to actually tell kids attachment style at
that age, follow them through their adolescence, and they can correlate these scores
with how happy your relationships will be, how much money you'll make, what
your education level will be. Like it. It's so studied this theory.
Okay, data, data, data. Here's a problem. Father child attachment
isn't as reliable with the state with the strange situation test. They're not able
to really pinpoint it when the dad does the leaving and coming back right.
So they came up with this thing called the activation relationshipship theory. It says
this fathers matter, but they matter in a different way. According to psychologists,
fathers are like catalysts for risk taking. They actually can ignite children to
like use their own initiative in unfamiliar situations, to tell kids to explore,
to take risk, to take chances, to overcome obstacles, to be brave.
When there are standards around two strangers are and to stand up for themselves.
You know, there's this meme that flies around the internet and it's very
cute. It's two pictures. One is a picture of a dad throwing a
baby in the air. You should know that every dad throws their baby in
the air and every mom has a heart attack when she sees this. And
what the meme says. It shows the dad throwing the baby in the air.
The baby is probably three feet above the dad's hands that are still up
in the air, and the baby's falling back down, and it says what
dads do. And the second picture says what moms see, and it shows
the dad with his hands up in the air and the baby is twenty feet
up in the air above the dad, right. So that's what the experience
is to mom's because their kind of love is more protective. But what we
know that specifically with boys, also girls, but specifically with boys, is
that fathers facilitate a kind of learning by teasing them, by destabilizing them,
and kids have to get creative. So I'm going to tell you I saw
this viral video once they asked me to comment on HLN. There was like
a community, small town community parade and the families were out watching, and
some dads thought it would be really funny to duct tape their kids to a
treat. So of course this video goes viral. Everyone is shocked and is
this child abuse? I'm like, no, the kids are laughing. This
is fun, and the dads are setting up a challenge. The dads are
there to cut off the duct tape if there's a problem. Nobody's abandoning them
and walking away, right, It was just a fun thing. Also,
I'll have to tell you my boyfriend Julio tells me a story over and over.
He feels such guilt and shame about it. One time he was rock
climbing with his five year old on his back and they had to call,
like you, who are the people the park rangers to get them down.
They got stuck and he got so yelled at by the park rangers. But
dads do that. He got stuck and he had a five year old on
his back and he couldn't go up any further and he couldn't get down.
And I feel bad enough, sir, don't braid that's what they did.
Okay. All I want to say is this new theory, the activation relationship
theory should tell all dads don't feel guilty about what you do. Should tell
moms give him a break if he's involved with his kid, that's what matters.
In fact, at that mom baby group, I remember one of the
moms said, if you're complaining that your spouse is not a good enough dad,
you need to learn to leave them alone and you can. Might come
back and the baby bottles in the wrong hole and the diapers on their head,
whatever, doesn't matter. They're working it out between themselves and that's how
they will grow to have a relationship and kids need both. Okay, when
we come back, have you ever thought of going on a romantic vacation just
to save your relationship, especially when you're in crisis. Well, there's some
science to say that sometimes that can actually work and other times when it's a
really bad idea. Let's talk about this when I come back. You're listening
to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from kf I Am six forty. This is
the Doctor Wendy Wells Show. If you're a YouTuber, come on over.
I'm live on YouTube right now. Come on in the studio with us.
Just go to doctor Wendy Walsh on YouTube see my channel. Hey, so
it's really common that taking a romantic vacation can actually boost your relationship. It
worked for me in January, my boyfriend Juli and I went to Dominican Republic
actually to see his ailing dad. However, we also took some time away
from our kids, our adult kids. Remember we'd just come off that Christmas
where every competing emotional interests of four young adult humans it was. It was
tragic. Anyway, so we go to the Dominican Republic. By the way,
apparently when you're from Dominican Republic, you don't go to the beach.
So my friends were pretty shocked that I went to Dominican Republic for a week
and I never saw the ocean or felt like New York City in Santa Domingo.
But it was fun and they had great, great restaurants. Anyway,
it worked for us, right, We had time to reconnect, time to
be alone. It was a good thing. So researchers from Texas A and
M University did a meta analysis. They looked at all the research out there
on whether it's worth it to do a romantic weekend away or romanic if your
relationships in the duldrums, and they found that for the most part it does
work. Quote, time allotted for family bonding is decreasing, so likely attributed
to increased career demands and changing family structures. So basically, they found that
having a vacation can actually strengthen a couple's bond. And here are some of
the reasons why. Again, not for all couples and not all the time,
I'll explain. Research has shown that shared leisure activities are highly correlated with
feelings of well being. Of course, if you've got a best friend and
you're doing something you like to do. Of course, right in our daily
routines, we are just too busy. And when you have that time alone,
you can dedicate it to your relationship. You know, you go to
resort somewhere, spend the day at the beach, work out at the gym,
get all dressed up for dinner, and you just focus on being together
and talking. Right, Travel in general is highly correlated with positive emotions,
right, So basically the thinking is that planning a trip, carrying out that
trip gives you feelings of hope and husiasm and well being, and that naturally
affects how you relate to others. Right, if you're in a good mood,
going on a trip is a time to improve your communication. You're not
being interrupted all day long. I hope you're not checking your phone. I
hope when you go on vacation it's to go on vacation, so you'll be
able to not be interrupted by everybody else. And also getting out of a
routine is very good for relationships. Now here's when going on a trip will
not help your relationship. If your relationship is in a deep crisis. You
might have like a relative reprieve for a few days, but when you get
home, the same problems are going to be there. Right, So I
have to tell you the story when my daughter, my oldest daughter, was
like I don't know, five six months old, we were on a trip
to Mexico. I was actually it's always a working trip for me. So
I was walking on the beach carrying my baby, and this couple came up
behind me and the woman did, oh my god, look at your baby.
She's so cute. Can I hold her? And it was weird because
it's a stranger woman, but she was nice. We're in a resort and
we're walking on the beach, so I hand my baby to this woman,
but I don't get more than arms like the way from her, and she
was, oh, let's walk on the beach. I just miss my kids.
They're at home, and it's just so nice to have a baby.
Whatever. So I'm walking just behind her with now her husband, and he
says to me, yeah, we came on this vacation because we're thinking of
getting a divorce because she's just focused on the kids all the time and she's
ignoring our relationship. And I looked at him and I'm like, and Nash
has another kid on her hip and he's like, yeah, she can't.
And I felt so bad for him. Do you know you were doctor Wendy
Welsh? Now I was sharing. I don't know what I was then.
I was as a mom, But yeah, he was telling me about how
they were there on this trip to rekindle because she was focusing too much on
the kids and not enough on him and the relationship. And now, well
what did she do pick up some stranger's baby and focus on that. So
it's not going to work if you're in crisis, and what are a deep
crisis, according to me, recent infidelity? Right, if you're trying to
get over an affair. Not the time to just go on a vacation.
That's not going to fix everything. If someone's suffering from addiction, a vacation
where there's the wine is flowing is not going to help. Okay, if
you have financial problems and you're fighting over money, going on a vacation is
going to make the financial problems worse. It costs money to travel, go
on a picnic. Just go to Trader Joe's, pack a picnic and that's
all you need to do. You know, if your partnership has serious problems,
being thrown together in a new destination without the possibility of distancing could be
a bad situation. Right. You might need your own space. So the
bottom line is a trip is not going to fix anything unless you also put
in the relationship work right and that means therapy, etc. However, if
the problem in your relationship has been that both of you are just too busy
and you haven't had time for each other, then that's a good time.
I also want to say this about romantic travel. Let's say you're in a
new relationship, and let's say you're thinking maybe not too new. I mean,
we're not talking about third date, stuff. We're talking about six months
to a year, and you're thinking of, you know, making this official,
or moving in together or something. Travel is the best litmus test for
your relationship. Go on a trip. See what it's like when one of
you eats bad food and you're sharing a hotel room together. Okay, See
what it's like when the airline loses your ticket and you're not in the right
seat, and who takes a tantrum because they're overtired because of the jet leg
I mean, really, you can really determine whether somebody can handle the stresses
of life by going on a travel, especially extreme travel. Go somewhere far
away where nobody speaks the language and you're out in the wilds. Let's see
how you survive. But if you're in regular, run of the mill relationship
and you need a little romantic boost, it could be good, but not
if you're in crisis. When we come back. Myths about love that everyone
needs to unlearn. I promise you most people in our culture believe the things
that I'm going to tell you, and I'm going to tell you that you're
all wrong. When we come back. You are listening to the doctor Wendy
Walls show. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio accum. You're listening to Doctor
Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI AM six forty. This is the Doctor Wendy
Walsh Show. I'd like to welcome my TikTok audience. Who are I'm going
to see if I can pin this phone number, you know, in a
couple of segments, I'm going to be taking your relationship questions and calls live,
So the phone number can be like around eight fifteen. But I'll just
tell the number now, so that TikTok in here. It's one eight hundred
five two zero one five three four. That's one eight hundred five to zero
one K five. But don't go, oh yeah, the phones are not
open yet. They will open at eight fifteen. I do want to talk
about the myths about love that way too many people believe. And I am
always shocked because you know, I've been reading the science of love for years.
I love it when people say love is a science, I'm like,
yes, it has biological consequences, the rush of neuro hormones on your brain,
it has psychological underpinnings, your attachment style. What you learned about love
growing up and has a social piece. You know, what you look for
in your deal breaker list, what you put in your profile. That's so
society's idea of what you should look for. So it's always a biopsychosocial event
when you find love. But our culture is full of myths and bad news
about love, and let's start to go through some of them. I want
you to unlearn this. The biggest not the biggest, but one of the
myths I think a lot of people believe is this idea that opposites attract,
that if you could find somebody that's different than you, it'll be exciting and
you will stay together. Well, the truth is, the research shows that
it is not that people who are like each other. Now that doesn't necessarily
mean racially or whatever, but socioeconomic status perhaps values very important. People who
are compatible get along, have a stronger emotional bond, they communicate better,
they cooperate more. Oh and research shows they also invest more in their kids.
So you actually want somebody to be like you. Now, here's the
thing. When you do find somebody who's different from you, it's exciting,
right, It's always exciting. So you think this must be love. But
in the long run, it doesn't bring peace, it doesn't bring that important
exchange of care, it doesn't bring those feelings of security. All those are
the most important ingredients for love. Kayla. Have you ever dated somebody who
is completely different from you? Yes? It way, different political beliefs,
different experiences in life. You see. That's a rough one. Yeah,
because it's it's a value thing, right, yeah. See, politics have
become almost of social values of what you value in life. And it was
around like the Donald Trump and the kneeling error back then, back in those
days, and I just felt him and I argued way too much about those
things, just like I don't think, I like, he's not going to
work exactly. So find somebody who's like you and you'll have a longer,
happier relationship. Okay. The second myth I want to talk about this I
hear all the time. I've been on other people's podcasts as a guest and
they've argued with me about this. But I'm right this myth that you shouldn't
settle unless you meet your soulmate. All right, we need to stop.
There's no such thing as a soulmate. What people do when they're falling in
love with somebody they're attracted to and their brain gets hit with a cocktail of
neuro hormones. Is they have imaginary thinking that it's a soulmate, that it's
meant to be. No, soulmates don't exist. In fact, I'll tell
you this, people with good relationship skills have happy relationships. They find more
partners. Happy people have happy relationships. It's an inside job, right,
But more than anything, if you learn good relationship skills that include conflict resolution
skills, or good communication skills, or being able to be authentic and share
your feelings with somebody, you're actually going to find more soulmates. They're not
really soulmates, they're just compatible people because you know how to be a compatible
person yourself. Oh Kayley, you are not agreeing with me. No,
I am agreeing, you know, because I've learned throughout my years everybody I
like at that time is my soul mate. So maybe maybe there's something the
something to this note. There's not some mystical thing like Cupid shot an arrow.
The universe is coming together. It's a magnetic pull. No, you
find the person's hot, your brain's getting a high of dopamine, and so
you're calling it a soulmate. That's all that is, all right. I
will say, though, my boyfriend right now, he's my soulmate. No,
it means I have the imaginary thinking. It means I have the imaginary
thinking. I know logically what he is. We're very compatible. That's what
that is. All right. Here's another myth about love. That's time for
you to unlearn. Happy couples shouldn't ever fight. Literally, there are people
out there that believe that if conflict happens in a relationship, the relationship must
be over. There are people who believe that, I get like, what
is fight though? Isn't that it's because well, yeah, let's talk about
the style of conflict first of all, So there is research to show that
actually the happiest couples have the most frequent arguments, but they don't have big,
drag down, knock them out battles. I'm not talking about domestic violence.
I'm talking about yelling and screaming and whatever. What they have are literal,
little border skirmishes all the time, while they're constantly executing their boundaries or
choosing to make compromise so that the relationship will win. Right, So it's
really important when you fight that you ask yourself all the time, do I
need to win? How can I have the relationship win? That's the important
thing about conflict. I remember that guy who called in I think I talked
to I wish you call it back, But he said, him and his
wife they've been together, I believe nine years, and they do once a
month like, Hey, is there anything that you that I did this month?
There's anything that bother you? And then they have like healthy conversations.
And he said they've never fought since the time they've been together, because I
guess these conversations they have monthly check in. Yeah, And somebody on the
outside might look at those conversations and be like, that's kind of a little
conflict because they're disagreeing on this, but then they're coming together on it.
I mean, Julio and I do not fight, but we disagree. That's
what I'll say. We disagree about things, and we make decisions about who
gets to sort of be the winner, or we make a decision to just
disagree and have the relationship come first. I mean, I think the important
thing that people understand is that don't avoid conflict, because conflict is the thing
that makes you keep your feelings inside and be inauthentic. And the more you
avoid conflict, one of two things is going to happen. Either it's going
to bubble out at some point and you're gonna have a huge volcano of an
explosion because the pressure has just built too high inside yourself, or worse,
it's going to impact your physical health. Right, so, keeping everything bottled
up is not good. In fact, research from the Gottman's up at the
Marriage Lab at the University of Washington says that being dismissive or stonewalling or avoiding
conflict is the greatest predictor of divorce. Right, So, this idea that
happy couples should never fight is a complete myth about love. But yet,
people, especially people who you know who don't have a good model for love,
so early on in a dating relationship they get into a little tiff with
somebody there, it's more quick for them to go next next. It's easier
to find somebody else than it is to just well, what was that about
and what happened? Now, let's be clear, they're really unhealthy ways to
fight. And if somebody expresses toxicity abuse anger like like anger that seemed to
come out of nowhere in the really early stages of dating. Well yeah,
that's a red flag. That's like, okay, you can go next,
but if you've just had a fight. I remember the first time Hulu and
I had a fight. It wasn't a fight but a conflict. I had
just come out of getting my first vaccine, where I lined up at Dodger
Stadium for four hours. I was exhausted. My daughter was driving. I
was on the phone with him saying, we're gonna go have dinner, and
she drove like freaking eighty five miles an hour on the one tent and so
much traffic, and I screamed at her, slow down, right, and
he was We only been dating a little while and he heard my voice.
And he's terrified of female anger. I learned that about him. Now,
i'd just be gentle with him. But when I finally got to see him,
he was very cold and standoffish with me, and I'm like, what's
going on? And then he was a little snappy, you know, that's
how he gets little snappy. And I ordered a Margarite and he's like,
marguerite is twenty dollars. I'm like, really, hey, from my margarite,
what does that snappiness about? And so then he said, I just
I heard you yell, and I just didn't like the yelling, and I
said, and then I got really sad because this is a guy I was
attracted to. And then he saw a bad side of me, and then
I felt shame about that, and my stomach all churned, and all I
said to him is, um, I have a running feeling right now.
I just want to get up and I want to run. And I'll tell
you what he did when we come back. I have also three more miss
about love. You are listening to the Doctor Wendy Walls Show on KFI AM
six forty. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio back rapp app. What is
happening with Me too Much? When we come back, I'm going to Instagram.
You've been listening to Doctor Wendy Walls. You can always hear us live
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