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. This is the Doctor
Wendy Walsh Show. Okay, I'm talking to you if you're in a relationship.
I sat down and I said, oh gosh, we're talking so much
about sex on this show, and we're talking about single people and finding mates
and whatever. What about those people who are in relationships, long term good
enough relationships. I love that term good enough relationships. You know, doesn't
have to be perfect all the time. It doesn't have to feel perfect.
And in fact, long terminogamy has many stages and phases. There will be
times into your long terminogamy. And I know if you've been married for decades
you're listening to me nodding right now, where you will look at that person
and hate them and you will get through it, and you will look at
that person maybe after having kids and you're breastfeeding and you're tired and exhausted,
and you're like, I never want to touch another human. There are humans
that make me touch them all day long, little ones and scream for touch.
And now I'm gonna go to sleep right. So, also the early
stages of a relationship. From an evolutionary perspective, we're designed to give us
a host of drug like neural hormones that get us attached the ones we're attached,
our brain gets used to those neural hormones, and then it can feel
a little boring. However, the research that I am most in love with
is the research on long term committed people who say they're happy, who actually
have great well being and still love and respect their partner. And we learn
so much from those people. We learn the relationship techniques of what I call
the super attachers. Okay, so I put together my handy dandy, little
doctor wendy list of how you can transform your relationship today by doing some of
these things. So, if you're in the doldrums, if you're looking at
your partner with evil eye, you want to fall back in love, here's
some things you can do. First of all, pay attention to them and
catch them being good at least once a day. That's a parenting tip too.
By the way, what ends up with parenting is you end up ignoring
the good behavior and giving all the attention to the bad behavior. Literally you're
sitting there criticizing the kid when they act up and when they behave well,
everything's going great, you get stuff done, you ignore them, and then
all of a sudden, they'd start doing negative behavior to get your attention.
In our love relationship, we forget. And it's not just about telling your
partner you love them, it's about literally noticing something good about them. You
know what I said to Julio the other day, It was just a tiny
little thing. He has a great smile, super great smile. And I
remember on one of our early dates seeing a certain wrinkle on his cheek.
Literally when he smiles really big, there's a certain ring on his cheek that
looks very masculine to me and very sexy. And I said, I haven't
told you in a while how much I love that little wrinkle on your cheek.
For no reason, I said that right. I also always thank him
because he's doing nice things. I don't. I don't think as many people
do well. They should do that. They're in a relationship with me,
that's their job. If you're in that mindset, you will never be happy.
You should be grateful and feel wonderful when your partner does something good.
For you. Okay, So catch them being good and compliment them. That's
my first bit of advice. The second and there's lots of resources support this.
Retrieve a positive memory together. That positive memory is about when you fell
in love. Talk about the first day you met. Talk about the first
time somebody said the words I love you. Talk about your very first date,
talk about your first weekend away. Talk about the memory memories you shared
that are full of happiness. This is a technique that happens automatically with long
term, happily married people because what it does is prime your brain. So
the thing is life is very much a self fulfilling prophecy. If we believe
it, it is and it will come true. You can make positive things
happen. But in order to do that, you have to get into a
positive mindset. If all you've been doing is thinking about your partner, what
have they done for me lately, then you're not going to be happy.
You're not going to feel happy. So you have to with them, go
back and do little reminder things. We also do something where we imagine things
like yesterday we were eating outside and the dinner or the lunch was served,
and then you wanted to go, and I said, why do we just
sit for a while. The view is beautiful. Why do we order a
little capcino? Is like, really, you want a coffee? I'm like,
no, I want to sit with you. And then I said,
let's imagine that we're sitting at a cafe rome. It's the middle of a
Saturday afternoon. We don't have anywhere to be. Would we sit there all
day and sip cappuccino? He goes we would? I said, well,
here we are. It happened to be a Malibu even better, the weather
was better. It was so okay. Number one, catch them being good.
Number two. Retrieve a positive memory together of falling in love. Number
three. I wrote these down this morning mid notes for myself. Make a
communication sandwich. This is the best advice I have. I give it out
all the time. I'm going to say it again if you've ever missed it.
That means if you need to criticize your partner, we all need a
little shaping. It'll kick. Sometimes you have to bury it in a positive
communication sandwich. So it starts out with a layer of love followed by a
layer of something that's a little harder to chew on and then it's backed up
with another layer of love. This reduces the potential that they will get defensive,
because what happens when you hear criticism first, your brain is busy thinking
of a comeback. Your brain is not taking it in and going, oh,
maybe they're right, maybe I should change. But if they say something
like, you know, one of the things I love about you is that
you know, let's find out something great. That you're a great provider.
And I think you're a really great mom, and you help provide in this
household in so many ways, the love of the kids and the income,
and it's really wonderful. But I really don't like the way you park in
the garage because I need to have my motorcycle in this area and you're always
over in my area when you do the thing. Never say always, because
nobody always does something bad. Sorry, correct myself. So and then you
follow up with I'm wondering if we can find a way to help you park
better. Maybe I could even come down to the garage when it's time for
you to pull in, because I love you and I want us to keep
a harmonious relationship here. That communication sandwich layer love something a little harder at
you on act up by something wonderful. You start it at the beginning as
like literally you have to learn it right, and then after that it just
becomes natural. You do it all the time. Okay. Number four,
Touch touch, touch, touch touch. I talked about this earlier. Oxytocin,
dopamine, serotonin, skin to skin. If you're netflitching, flicking Netflix,
I can't say it netflixing, flixing, netflixing, and chilling. You
better be chilling, meaning touch toes together, hold hands, do something.
Don't be in recliners across the room from each other. Please no touch all
right. Number five, show gratitude and thank them. And when you thank
them, there's research from the John Gottman Lab, the Marriage Lab up at
the University of Washington on this tell them why whatever they did major life better.
Right. So, for instance, one of the things Julio does is
he takes care of my car, and I will always thank him. He'll
be downloading some new operating system, he'll be checking air and tires. I
say, thank you. That made my life so much easier because I hate
having to go to the shop. Thank you so much, you save me
from that. That's the way you do it. And finally add novelty.
Do something different together. I don't mean just sex and swinging from chandeliers and
wearing a French maid's outfit. I mean just go into a different museum that
you've never been to, going to see music you've never seen before, Go
see some Shakespeare I don't know, Go for a hike in a place you
haven't skydive I don't know. Do anything together that's different, because research shows
when you see your partner in a new environment and the two of you are
a team together in this new, strange place, you actually fall back in
love. Okay, there's my advice six love hacks do with your partner today
when we come back. Some of you stay in bad relationships, and you
might be even using my love hacks to stay in bad relationships. But there
are bad relationships, toxic relationships that are bad for your health. I'm going
to explain some psychological brain tricks that your brain is doing that's making you stay
in a bad relationship, and I'm going to help you get out of it.
I will when we come back. You're listening to doctor Wendy Walsh on
demand from kf I Am sixty. I was thinking about the kind of brain
tricks that we have sometimes psychological tricks that happen naturally that keep us in relationships
that aren't good for us. Before I get into it, let me talk
about what relationship is not good for you. I'm a big believer in working
things out, going to couple's therapy, finding ways, especially if there are
children in the nest. But some relationships literally are toxic. A bad relationship
can make you physically sick, it can make you mentally sick. It includes
a relationship where there is domestic violence, where there is child abuse, where
there is excessive drug and alcohol use, where there is severe emotional abuse.
There's no reason to stay in this relationship and try to fix it from within.
And in fact, for the children in the nest, it's better to
have separate, be separate, and have one stable, healthy parent than two
parents who are hurting each other in front of the kids, because what does
it teach them? Now? What are the brain tricks that keep you there
in the relationship that you shouldn't be in. Well, Kenny Rogers talked about
it, the sunk cost fallacy. The sunk cost fallacy means this, It
is a human tendency to continue with whatever it is. When we've invested money,
effort, or time, even if the benefits of stopping would be greater,
we feel like, oh, you know, we've been together so long,
or you know, we both put so much money into this house,
or we both put this into the kids, we might as well just stick
it out until what you think it's just going to change all on its own.
You think it's just going to transform, right, So what happens is
our brain says, but I've already invested so much. If I leave,
I'll lose what I invested. This happens when people start a small business,
right, And you know you're supposed to test the market with small amounts of
advertising and money to see if there's a market there for it, Right,
And you go out there and you start saying, yeah, but I already
spend all this money on the store and the merchandise, and I did that.
But you're losing money every month, right in the same way you're losing
in the relationship. Now, how do you overcome the sunk cost fallacy?
You have to try to be as objective as you possibly can to really look
at the costs and benefits of leaving. And I think it's really important to
rely on the opinion of others. Is you often can't see because of the
sunk cost fallacy. Is your family saying this person is not good for you.
Are your friends saying this person is not good for you, listen to
them. So there's another bias of the brain that keeps us in bad relationships,
and that is called the status quo bias. That's the preference for maintaining
the current situation and opposing actions that might change things. I like to call
it the devil you know is better than the devil you don't. Plenty of
people stay in bad relationships because it's a devil they know. They figure they
can work that situation. Sometimes people stay also part of the status quo because
they just don't want to hurt their partners feelings. Others are afraid of the
uncertainty or confusion of being single again. So anyway, that is one of
the reasons we stay because we think we can handle the devil we know,
and we don't trust a relationship we might pick in the future. And in
order to overcome that, you really have to challenge your comfort zone. You
really have to take that leap. You have to remind yourself that you deserve
better. You need to nurture yourself. And one of the ways you can
do that that can help you out of the relationship is to surround yourself with
people who love you. Just make sure that you create stepping stones out of
the relationship. I don't mean an affair. I just mean, you know,
hanging out with your same sex friends more often, hanging out with your
family more, making sure you get social support in other ways. The positivity
bias is another brain trick that keeps you in and that's the tendency. This
is true people, all humans do. This has been studied. We tend
to remember more pleasant than unpleasant events. In other words, if bad stuff
has happened in your relationship, you tend to look back with rose colored glasses
and you don't actually think about that bad stuff, which is very similar to
the other bias, the expectancy bias, which is we look forward with more
negativity. Right because, okay, so, as human beings, we have
this survival instinct, and our survival instinct is that we have from the day
we're born. We have to constantly worry about well dying. Okay, we
could die, riots, fires, floods, pestilence, murder, car accidents,
plane crashes. Whatever else are we afraid of. We're afraid of everything
you could ever imagine, food, poisoning, COVID, I don't know.
We worry and worry and worry. Right, this keeps us alive. If
we didn't do this, we wouldn't be alive. If our ancestors didn't do
this, they would have been eaten by a lion. So this is a
healthy thing. However, people who are particularly anxious, fearful, or have
phobias tend to have a very exagger rated sense of the dangers in the future.
And if the danger you're thinking of is being single, then you're going
to stay in your relationship. And I'm going to tell you a story.
So I was in a very bad relationship for nine years and I stayed.
I stayed. I rationalized why I stayed. I stayed. I said for
my daughters, because I wanted my daughters to have a father. And what
I was projecting onto them was my childhood experience where I had a dad who
was in the Navy, and he was gone from most of my childhood for
work, and he was gone in an inconsistent pattern Actually, kids can adapt
really well to patterns. So if they know they see one parent during the
week and other parents on weekends or every other week or whatever, they like,
consistency, whatever the pattern is, inconsistency can be very destabilizing for kids.
And so my dad would go away on the ships for three weeks,
he'd come back for a few days, he'd go away for a week,
he'd come back for four weeks, and then be gone for three months,
and it just there was no rhyme or reason. So my model of love
was always mixed up with longing. I knew this because when I would when
the kids were little, and I would go to preschool events or meetings and
he would show up late or not show up, I would have a huge
sense of anger and sadness about that. And I know it was related to
my childhood. So I had this bias that I was not going to do
this to my children. The other bias I had I was raised Catholic and
we didn't divorce, right, people, you just don't. You don't break
up. You just stay together for the kids. That's what you're supposed to
do. So in my case, if you've been reading my books and listening
to my podcasts and listening to my radio show. You know that I'm a
survivor of domestic violence, and it actually took that wake up call for me
to go, Wow, this is toxic. This is bad. And so
if you're in a relationship where you're hurting, where you're not thriving, where
you're getting sick physically, sick, mentally sick, I promise you that your
expectancy bias that says things are going to be worse out there is wrong.
It is wrong. I think A couple of weeks ago, I talked about
this study I read that I loved, and it said all they did is
ask people who are on the verge of making a big life change. They
told half of them go make the change, and the other half not to
make the changes with a coin flip. And all the people who made the
change were happier six months later because they were told to make the change.
So I'm telling you, you know, you know what's right, make the
change. When we come back. Maybe your relationship ship is toxic because there's
chronic cheating. Let's talk about the most common reasons that people cheat. And
then if you are a cheater, I've got some advice for you best ways
to stop cheating if you want to do that. You're listening to doctor Wendy
Walsh on demand from kf I Am sixty. We want to talk about a
sensitive topic, cheating, infidelity. We've had the sex therapist doctor Tammy Nelson
on here a few times, and she says, cheating is a messenger.
It's a messenger that something's not going right in the relationship. It's a messenger
that you're not fulfilled in some way. It's a messenger about something. Evolutionary
psychologists would say that extra pair bonds were very important insurance for reproductive fitness.
In other words, what if you were in a relationship that didn't reproduce,
you could be still getting eggs fertilized somewhere or fertilizing eggs elsewhere. Right,
It's something that's kind of natural in our species. However, having said that,
lots of natural things that aren't culturally condoned. Right, So cultures have
said, okay, we want you to get together, we want you to
be monogamist. Now we know that human beings have the widest range of sexual
behavior of any primate producer. Kayla, do you remember how anthropologists tell how
much monogamy or extra pair bonds or promiscuity, whatever you want to call it,
are in a primate species. How do they tell? Is it the
size of the testicles. Yeah, it's very good. Oh my god,
I learned a lot at the size of the scrutum exactly, so in in
relative to body size. So chimpanzees huge, big gonds, relatively small bodies,
very randy, very very promiscuous. Very chimpanzees are so aggressive that they
will come to a breastfeeding female and kill the baby, practice infanticide to make
her have a period, and come on and get pregnant. Yeah. Mmm.
Now the other end, you've got those orangutans, tiny little chestnuts,
big hulking bodies, very monogamous, very paternalistic. Right, what do you
think? Humans are? A wide range of promiscuous air. We have it
all, we have it. We're somewhere in the middle, but we're not
one thing. We literally, I mean, evolutionary psychologist and anthropopologists have said
we need players, and we need good dads, and we need it all
right, And then there's those that are good dads that step out once in
a while, you know, and women step out too, right, it's
not just one. Although more cheating happens with men, there's research for that.
Look, we talked earlier in the show about this that men want more
sex and more often. That's just the way it is. Okay, So
cheating happens. It hurts the person who's been betrayed, hurts a lot emotionally,
especially if they have these preconceived notions of what the deal is supposed to
be. So let's talk about the most common reasons from a cultural standpoint and
a psychological standpoint of why people cheat. Not just well, there actually is
a cheating gene. You know, they found that. Remember I think on
my podcast Mating Matters, we had our seven long allele of this gene.
We had that geneticis on. But you know, just because you have a
gene for something doesn't mean that it will become enlivened in the environment. Right.
I like to say that genes are the loaded gun and the environment pulls
the trigger. So you can be born with a gene for heart disease and
never have a heart attack because of how you eat and how you exercise.
You can be born for a gene for cheating and go to church get on
your knees and pray and not cheat. Actually, there is research to show
that religiosity and high education are two things that present that prevent players and play
girls from doing their fun. All right, So psychological reason might be lack
of emotional connection in their primary relationship, Believe it or not. Research on
men who cheat often say they cheat because their mistress listens to them, not
because she gives them better sex. She listens to them, the wife stops
listening, a gentleman, that's the number one reason why women cheat, right,
because you are not listening and you are not helping her feel emotionally connected.
And then she finds some yoga instructor who's happy to listen to her problems
to say less often people cheat because they don't have a sexual connection with their
primary partner. I'm going to stop and say this right away. Of arranged
marriages, people who never see each other until they get to the altar,
the divorce rate is four percent. Romantic marriages it's fifty percent. So okay,
you can actually create sexual chemistry out of anything relationship, but you gotta
work at it. You gotta work at it. Another thing that causes people
to cheat is unfair fighting, resentment. People retaliate sexually when they're mad at
their spouse. You need to have good conflict resolution skills. Can't walk around
mad, can't be given them the silent treatment. I always say, if
you dismiss somebody, they will find someone who will listen, and that will
either be a lover or a lawyer. Okay. Another reason for cheating is
an insecure attachment style, unresolved childhood issues, and you need to go to
therapy for that. You need to work that out. Sometimes people will do
it as a stepping stone out of the relationship. They know that they want
to leave, but they're afraid to just go and be single, so they
create a bridge relationship. Women are famous for doing that. Men are more
likely to cheat for the sex. Women are more likely to cheat because their
boyfriend's shopping. Yeah, a backup met a backup mate. Exactly. We
all need backupmates. Well, we shouldn't be having sex with them, but
in the back of our minds we should have it. What if we're gone
to next kind of relationship? Exactly. People also cheat because they have low
self esteem and they want to feel better about who they are. People also
cheat because they're lonely. You can be lonely in a marriage. So I
want you to think about those things now. If you are the person who
has cheated or who is currently cheating, and you would like to stop cheating,
I've got some advice for you. When we come back. You're listening
to doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KF I am sixty. Most people do
cheat at some point in their life. When I say most, it's like,
you know, sixty percent of women, seventy percent of guys. It
might be in high school you step out on somebody and then you feel real
bad about it because the person gets hurt. I like the research on people
who have never cheated and they asked them why. Specifically, I like to
read the research on why on men who have never cheated and they asked them
why, and the most common answer they give is, oh, I just
don't want to hurt my partner guilt because they're so emotionally connected. Right.
It happens. People cheat for all kinds of reasons at different times in their
lifespan. I've cheated before when I was young, and um, I just
you know, I hurt people. I got hurt. I learned doesn't work
doesn't work. So I often think that cheaters aren't actually looking for somebody else,
they're looking to become somebody else. Right, So that's what the first
thing I want you to do is ask yourself why you're cheating. Are you
trying to find a different person in yourself? Are you trying to find another
relationship? Are you stepping out or using it as a bridge? Figure out
really what you want right. Also, if you cheat regularly, think hard
about whether monogamy really makes sense for you. There may be a partner out
there who may be okay with an open relationship. It's more common with two
people who have an avoidant attachment style you can live with it, or some
people who have lower sexual jealousy. But you know, ask yourself, can
you live with monogamy? If you can't, why are you lying to your
partner? Why are you pretending to be somebody you're not? All? Right?
Let's say you've absolutely decided that's it, You're going to break this habit.
You're never going to cheat again. You love your partner, you don't
want to mess this up. Shut down your tech, Stop demming with people,
block people who flirt with you. This is like playing with fire.
You cannot do this. I mean, I'm not going to say you should
do it, but you could go so far as to put a picture of
you and your wife or husband on social media. So you're very much a
couple out there just to create some boundaries around yourself. If you're currently cheating
and seeing somebody, you got to end it. You got to end it.
You can't do the whole like. It's not fair to everybody. Okay,
it's not fair to the person you're having an affair with. And by
the way, I was, for a very short time when I was young
a mistress to a married man. It was the most painful relationship I was
in now. I was in it because I had an insecure attachment style and
my model of love was filled with longing. So if there's somebody I couldn't
have and I was hoping for their ship to come in my daddy issues,
then that would be perfect for me. My fingers are making quotation marks when
I say perfect. Right, So it hurts everybody. It hurts the person
you're having an affair with, it hurts your primary relationship. You've got a
hard end it, no contact, end it. You've got to say it.
Don't just ghost them. Please don't hurt more people. If you're cheating
is linked to your use of alcohol or drugs, you've got to deal with
that problem. If you've got an addiction issue, that's the first thing you
need to deal with. Also, if you really decided that you want to
make a go at it, stop cheating, focus on your primary relationship,
then you've got to do that. You've got to put that relationship over everything
else. There's this new series. Oh gosh, now I can't remember the
name of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, let me think of it.
I watch it last night. It's a Maya. What's the name of
that comedian from SNL Maya and Maya Rudolf Maya Rudolph Is plays a very rich
woman who like literally divorces a billionaire. I think it's kind of based it's
called Loot, you're right, thank you. It's based on I think the
Jeff Bezos divorce. So she suddenly has eighty seven billion dollars, right,
and it's about her change and becoming conscious or whatever, because she's completely unconscious.
But at the beginning, before the divorce, you see that the husband
is not prioritizing her. He gives her this giant yacht for her birthday,
like, you know, a mega super yacht. And then she says,
maybe we could just spend some time, you know, having tacos and eating
a loan in our cabin. He's like, oh, I'm sorry. My
secretary Hayley called they gotta jump on the chopper. Turns out, of course,
Haley's the affairy, of course. But anyway, you have to say,
I'm going to put my relationship over work, over pleasure, over everything
else. You have to put your if you have to go on a business
trip, take your spouse, take your spouse. Make it a priority.
Make focusing on the relationship a priority. That means don't go out at night
without your partner. If you're in the habit of hanging out with your same
sex friends, going out for girls' nights, going out for boys' nights,
stop it. That's not how you cure a cheating problem. Only go out
with your partner at night. Hey, it's not allowed to ask if you
want to save your relationship. Here's the hard part. Come clean with your
partner. You're going to build intimacy through discussing the pain. The only way
out is through the pain. You can't hold this secret forever. You've got
to tell them, tell them that you're committed now. And you know,
because I say it every segment, I'm going to say it again. Go
to therapy together because and allow time for This is not going to flip overnight,
Especially if you've just told your partner that you've cheated on them. It's
going to take a very long time for them to learn to forgive, for
them to learn how to trust you again. Building trust takes time. But
the thing that keeps long term relationships together is always emotional intimacy. That is
the glue. So you've got to build that with your primary partner. Got
to make it happen. You know, sometimes people criticize me or make light
about my obsession with love, but I want to remind you that our intimate
relationships are the most important thing for our mental health, our physical health.
It's why we're on the planet to reproduce right, it is the whole reason
why we work. We work so we can attain and maintain relationships, to
have good mates, to have healthy families. Learning this is the most important
thing we can do. And relationships are not about luck, they are about
skill, and anybody can learn relationship skills so that you can have the benefit
of love. I mean, I found a secure attachment late in life,
and I know what it feels like. It feels great, it feels calm,
there's no anxiety, it feels secure. It's good and that brings the
Doctor Wendy Walsh Show to a close. I am always here normally from seven
to nine pm every Sunday night on kf I Am six forty. Also,
you can follow me on my social media. I'm changing up my content a
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Wendy Walsh and I'm always here for you on KFI. You've been listening to
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