This is doctor Wendy Walsh and you're listening to kf I AM six forty,
the Doctor Wendy Walls Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app. Welcome to the
Doctor Wendy Walls Show on KFI AM six forty. We're live everywhere on the
iHeartRadio app. If you're new to my show, you should know I have
a PhD in clinical psychology. I'm a psychology professor. I've written three books
on relationships because I'm very excited about the science of love. And I want
to open the show with a special gush of love for all my friends and
family and colleagues in the LGBTQ plus community because it is now officially Pride Month,
and so I hope you know how beautiful you are and how perfect you
are. And I will tell you a story about how my privilege, my
cis gender heteronormative privilege, reared its ugly head. One day, I was
at an event at USC and I think it was a Latino Alumni Association event,
and there was a woman there sitting at my table and we were chatting,
and I don't know how the conversation came up that she had gone to
Harvard. My daughter was at Harvard at the time, and she said,
oh yeah, I was just there, in fact, for a big pride
event. And I looked at her and said, doesn't that school have enough
to be proud of? Like why is Harvard having pride parties to be proud
of being Harvard? And literally she looked at me like I had three heads,
and she goes, always an LGBTQ pride event, Oh so embarrassed because
we were talking about Harvard. Then shecause, I was just there for a
pride event for my school. Oh doctor, Okay. So I know that
some of you out there might be having this sneaky little thought, why do
we need Pride month? I mean, those people have equal rights, shoving
it in my face. I know there are people out there that think that,
But I want to ask you this. Have you walked the walk every
day in the body of somebody who may be lesbian, gay, bisexual,
trans, or queer or other. Have you lived that life? There is
research to show that, yes, we have come a long way, but
according to a recent Gallup poll, sixty four percent of lgbt Q plus people
have experienced anti gay violence and abuse. Sixty four percent violence and abuse.
On this particular survey, nine and ten of the people who responded said they
had been personally negatively impacted by their experiences of this from this abuse. A
report from Stonewall. Kayla, do you know what is when I say Stonewall,
I do not, Okay, was a famous bar in I think it
was New Jersey or New York, somewhere where the very first, the first
shot across the bow was thrown when a shot glass from a drag queen through
at police who were invading. Can you get the year of Stonewall, I
mean, we should look that up. And it was the Stonewall Uprising,
and it was really the first time that when a gay bar was being shut
down by police that it turned into a giant fight and war. And that
was really the beginning of building alliances, joining arms. You know, the
needs of lesbians may be different from the needs of gay men, or bisexual
people or trans people. However, the more allies, the more you can
link arms, the more you can create a rainbow flag, the more likely
it is that you will have a larger, more progressive political voice so that
all these sexual and gender minorities can benefit. Stonewall happened in nineteen sixteen sixty
nine. That was the beginning. So it continues to do reports on the
well being of the gay community. So a recent report from Stonewall shows that
thirteen percent of LGBT plus q plus I'll get it out. You know,
we're learning. We're all learning new words. We had to learn omicron,
we had to learn delta, now we're learning LGBTQ plus thirteen percent experienced some
form of unequal treatment from healthcare staff because of their sexual orientation, and a
very disturbing and worrying seventy percent of trans people reported being impact by transphobia when
assessing general health services at school. We don't even have to get into it
middle school. Yahoo's middle school knuckleheads are bad enough when it comes to bullying,
but when it comes to LGBTQ plus people, they that seems to be
their victim of choice forty two perc and to have reported being bullied in the
past year. And at universities even people have hidden their sexual orientation because they
fear discrimination. So it has not stopped, and in fact, it's become
very political. You know, it's so crazy that there are a group of
Americans who say, please, government, stay out of our bodies. Our
bodies, our bodies, and then that same group votes anti abortion, and
then that same group is trying to take away trans rights. So it's just
like, can we all just have body autonomy? Can we say that the
state's rights and anybody's rights stops at our skin? Can we say that?
I mean, America's supposed to be the land of the free. We all
come here, we're all immigrants from somewhere, and we all came here for
freedom. And if we can't have freedom to be who we are, then
how free are we? I want to us all just stop and open our
minds, to open our hearts and think about how there are people who are
born a certain way, just like there are many flowers in the garden.
Mother nature is perfect in its variance. In fact, the more genetic variants
we have in our species, the more we have survival benefits. Right,
So there may be something that's not needed for in one particular generation, but
oh that gene is really needed for in the next generation because the environment put
a different kind of pressure on people, right, And so to think that
we need only heterosexual people is so backward thinking. If you look from the
beginning of evolution, from the beginning of time, when we were roving and
encampments of about thirty five people. We needed gay brothers and sisters to help
us out. We needed cooperative parents. We needed alloparents. We needed to
raise the tribe together. We needed our gay brothers and sisters, needed them
as helpful parents, and we are a system of cooperative breeders. It took
a village, and not everybody should be burdened with the job of raising kids.
We needed hunters, we needed protectors, we needed gatherers, we needed
house cleaners, we needed people who had time. And so it's very important
that you understand that the gay gene, I'm making that up. They haven't
found an actual gay gene lives in us because of the nurturing that gay aunts
and uncles gave to their nieces and nephews who also carried their genes. By
the way, when we come back, I want to talk a little bit
about gender. I know I've done this mini lecture before, but if you're
new to opening your mind to what it is to be a transperson, then
let me talk about the diversity in just our sex chromosomes alone, and how
that ends up, how that explores, how that comes out, how that
blooms as a perfect human. When we come back, you were listening to
the Doctor Wendy Walls Show and kf I 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 Walsh Show on KFI AM
six forty. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. For the last eight
years, I have been teaching at California State University, Channel Islands. I
teach health psychology, I teach developmental psychology, I teach intro to psychology,
and in every one of my courses, I include a lecture on gender and
sexual orientation because I think there's so much confusion, and I think to celebrate
Pride Month, the best way that we can all celebrate the diversity of peoples
that exists among us and in our families is to have a greater understanding of
the science of it. So bear with me for a few minutes. I'm
going to enlighten you with Professor Walsh's Well, this will be a mini lecture.
This is normally a three hour lecture, but let's see what I could
do in six or seven minutes. First of all, let me just say
this that gender identity, gender role, and sexual orientation are three distinct concepts
and one does not predict another. So let's break it down. Gender identity,
how you identify male, female, other, both, none, how
you feel. That's a lot of psychology, right, Gender role, what
you do? You know, this was a big issue back in the nineteen
seventies. There were boy jobs and girl jobs. You know. Men were
engineers, they flew airplanes. I was on a flight the other day,
pilot, copilot, flight attendants, all female. I felt very safe just
saying, let's testosterone up there for jumpy quickie decisions in my mind, So,
gender role is about what you do and what society's rules may be.
Are are women supposed to be the caretakers of the chewin or are men?
Right? These are gender roles and then their sexual orientation, and that has
to do with who we're attracted to. And so I want to remind you
there may be very masculine men who have a very masculine gender role and a
very masculine gender identity who might be one hundred percent gay. There also might
be a very feminine woman who loves to cook and clean and nurture and decorate
and make flower arrangements, and she may be one hundred percent gay. There's
no way to predict right now. Yes, there also is some science to
show that many gay people tend to be, you know, a little bit
diverse in their gender role and their gender identity. Right, So, yeah,
it's it's not wrong to say that a majority of gay females may appear
more masculine, and that's partly biological, but that's not all, So don't
make assumptions, right, So, mostly we learn our gender roles in our
childhood. And you know, back in the nineteen fifties, it was very
clear what a female gender role was, what a male gender role was,
and that has changed so much today. Nothing warms my heart better than seeing
a man wearing a baby. Literally. I went a few years ago to
Stockholm to visit my daughter on her semester abroad, and there they have figured
out how to get more men to parent and be involved in their kids.
They basically pay them. Here's what they say. Every parent gets, every
family gets eighteen months parental leave paid parental leave to take care of their nurture
their little kid. However, it can't all be taken by one parent,
so they force men who may not be acculturated to be one on one dad's
to take care of babies and toddlers. So in Stockholm you see these roving
bands of muscled, tattooed, bearded dudes wearing babies, carrying babies. They
meet at coffee shops and hang out having their coffee. They had the babies
landing right out on the big farm table changing diapers. I was like,
oh, that's interesting. But anyway that it was so great to see that
they would find the social support of other males who were in the same boat,
and they were all hanging out dealing with babies together. I mean,
if the government is going to get involved in our personal lives, that would
be a great way, right, pay people to parent. So anyway,
gender roles mostly learned, but let's talk about how we assign a gender to
babies. You know, first of all, our sex is made up of
our chromosomeo sex. You can be x X in your sex hormone sex chromosomes
xx is female. I always say, help my students, remember my first
year students, X X is female. Just think about kiss kiss and then
xy is male. But we are known to have discovered so far up to
seventy different variations in those sex chromosomes. So you can have an XX half
of a Y, you can X have a missing why, you can have
y Y and have a crumpled X and whatever. There are million ways and
that informs the development of the fetus for their gonadle sex, their interior or
their internal and external organs. Right now, when a baby comes out,
the doctor looks down and looks at only one thing. They don't give them
chromosome test, they don't look at their internal sex organs, they don't give
them an X ray. They look at external genital sex, and they give
what's called a sex assignment. Now, from there the parents take off and
start nurturing that baby in the way that they believe that that sex that is
assigned should be raised. Thus comes often pain for those people who have been
misassigned. Did you know it is possible to be born with a vagina and
evolva and some undescended testes and at puberty testosterone kicks in. It's a wild
ride. It is possible to be born with a small penis and ovaries tucked
inside, and then at puberty, oh my gosh, breast grow. Stuff
happens. Seventy different variations have been identified so far. So when you hear
about trans people deciding to change genders, please understand that one in one hundred
people are called intersects, that biologically they have pieces of both. So I
want us to open up our hearts and have a greater understanding. And if
somebody chooses to be sort of non gender specific and live a life of what
we call non binary where they don't identify with one or another gender, you
know what, who cares? Love them? They're a human. You know.
I always tell my students if I went away on a weekend and I
got married, and I came back into the classroom and said, from now
on, I'd like you to call me missus, you would do that out
of respect. On a college campus, it is expected that you address your
professors as doctor. You do that out of respect. If somebody says call
me they, you would do that out of respect. And that's why we
need Pride Month so that we can have a greater understand You know, you
don't even have to understand doesn't matter. Just respect it, trust it,
and love each other. That's all that matters. Happy Pride Month to all
the LGBTQ plus community. I love you. When we come back. There's
a new trend in relationships. It's called being undivorced. Maybe that's you.
Let's talk about it when we come back. You are listening to the Doctor
Wendy Walls Show and kf I Am six forty. We're live everywhere on the
iHeartRadio app. You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from kf I Am
six forty. Welcome back to the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show on kf I Am
six forty. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You know, you
can always follow me on my social media. The handle everywhere is at Dr
Wendy Walsh at doctor Wendy Walsh, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, whatever.
I'm there. So this week I was invited yet again to be on Australia's
version of The Today Show. They have the same kind of thing and I'm
kind of their relationship expert and I do segments every once in a while,
and they wanted to talk about this growing trend that they're starting to see in
celebrity relationships called being undivorced. And it's funny because this topic was actually a
topic of mind because I met this guy recently and he and he was going
through a kind of emotional breakup. But when I really sorted it out with
him and tried to understand what he was talking about, I realized that this
breakup was actually this emotional breakup was actually happening thirteen years after his divorce,
So stay with me. He and his wife had two little daughters. They
were like aged three and five. They divorced, but they decided to stay
together for the kids and helped raise the kids, not lived together, so
they had two separate houses. Although he admits he had some stuff at her
house, she had some stuff at his house, and if there ever was
a late night with the kids and drop off, they would just sleep on
the couch or whatever. Right, But he said, honestly, we did
not have sex in thirteen years. We didn't date other people, mostly because
we were busy work and raising the kids. So flash forward thirteen years plus
five year old one turns eighteen, right, so he goes out and gets
a girlfriend. The kids are raised it's time, right, And he tells
his ex wife who's his best friend, and he thinks, you're ready for
those guys. He thinks she's going to be happy for him. He thinks
she's going to celebrate him. That's great. You know our daughter's eighteen.
Now it's time. But no, no, no, no, no,
she explodes. She takes a fit. She says, come get your stuff
out of my place. It's over. We're not getting together friendly family dinners
anymore, no more birthdays, and she loses it and he is devastated.
Now all of this was obvious to me, but I listened to stories.
I listened to the parallel universe with a PhD in psychology, So our emotional
brain is very different from our intellectual brain. And I would say, as
I told him that you were her primary attachment figure, and you change the
relationship contract without permission. It might have been easier, but not that much
easier for you to say to her ahead of time. Hey, our kids
are getting raised. I know you're my best friend. I always want to
keep you as my best friend, but I would like to have a sex
partner now, so I'd like to start dating and then sort of ease her
into it, or see how she dealt with it, right, that would
be the thing to do. It might not have been any better because being
undivorced means that you still have this emotional lifeline between each other. And although
the divorce took place on paper, and you each have your own sets of
spatulas in two separate houses, and you've each got your own sets of sheets,
and you've each got your own cars and your own roof over your head,
there's an emotional tie between two of you. And although you could rationalize
you but it was just about for the kids. No, you leaned on
each other, you needed each other. You were happily undivorced, and now
you're actually going through the real divorce. Right. I have a girlfriend she
has been divorced for oh gosh, I want to say six years now,
and her ex husband hasn't been doing as well, and so she is taking
him to court for more alimonia whatever, child, I don't know, whatever,
But I say to her, you know, all these hiring of lawyers,
all these going back to court is keeping you attached to him. The
relationships not over to you as long as you keep going back to fight.
Because you see there's a fine line between love and hate, and we will
stay attached even to something we hate because we love it and need it.
Case in point, the father of my drin and I broke up, Oh
gosh, eighteen twenty years ago. Whatever. I literally forgive him for everything
that happened. If you listen to my show for a long time, you
know I'm a survivor of domestic violence and went I forgive him. I understand
his traumatic childhood, I understand everything. I want nothing more than our daughters
to have a good relationship with their father. I totally forgive him. I
don't necessarily want to hang with him. I mean, I'm not calling him
up to say let's do family stuff together. Oh I have to tell you
something so you wouldn't believe. My daughter is turning twenty and we, for
each of our kids, made one of those baby time capsules. Will you
keep it open for the first year of their life, and you put in
memorabilia, and then you seal it up and for twenty five years they can't
open it. So it's supposed to be twenty five. So my oldest daughter's
turning twenty five in a couple of weeks. She lives in Paris. It's
a heavy, heavy time capsule. If I shipped that thing to her,
it is going to cost me so much money. So I said, you
know, honey, when you come home at Christmas, you'll still be twenty
five. Can you open it? Then? So then starts the younger one,
Well, she's getting to open hers, I should get to open mine.
And I said, I'll only consent to it if your older sister says
it's okay, because you know the sibling rivalry and whatever. So she comes
back with she doesn't care. And I called dad, and Dad said he
would be on zoom with us, and since you and Dad made that time
capsule together, you should both be there when I open it and unpack it.
I said, fine, I don't care. I mean literally when I
say I don't care. Of course I care. I care that my daughter
has a dad involved. I'm not worried or embarrassed or ashamed or nervous about
seeing him on a zoom. I literally have no ties, no connection.
I've done all the emotional work, I did the therapy. He's a human
being who deserves to see his daughter do this. I'm a human being.
I deserve to see my daughter do this. So and that's how we're not
undivorced, is my point. We are fully separated emotionally, financially, physically,
we are fully separated, but there are a lot of people who have
different stages of separation. And by the way, I was talking on the
phone with my older daughter this week and I said, so, your sister
says, it's okay, she opens her time chap, and she said,
no, she did not. She said she called me and I said,
no way, you cannot open it. So you will have to stay tuned
for this little bit of family drama because the birthdays in two weeks. And
I don't know how we're going to resolve this because I told her only if
her older sister approves. I don't know. What do you think? Send
me a message on social media. I don't know how to deal with this,
a parent parenting dilemma I'm having. Should I make her wait till she's
twenty five? Should I? Because her sister had to wait? Yes?
Oh, look that's fair. Sorry, yeah, And that's what the older
one says. She you spoil her, You give her whatever she wants because
she's the little one, and if she wants this now, that's why.
But then here she's got her dad involved now and he's gonna be and I
want the two of them to be together. And I know, I know,
Listen, when we come back, I want to talk about other ways
that people are undivorced, either living separately, still best friends, divorced yet
family. Some people are not divorced, but they're living separately, and it's
basically having your cake and eating it too. Let's talk about when I come
back, let's talk about the people who should never try being undivorced, because
trust me, it's going to go south. It's going to be a huge
drama. You are listening to the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show on kf I 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 Walls Show on KFI AM six forty. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio
app. You can always follow me on my social media at doctor Wendy Walsh.
All right, we're talking about undivorced people who are kind of married and
kind of divorced and I want to explain that it's a natural and normal phenomenon
to have evolved in our species for a couple of reasons. First of all,
our long life expectancies. So when Till Death Do Us part was invented,
death was pretty imminent. We were dying of disease and war, and
women were dying in childbirth. And so if you got married in the year
nineteen hundred, the average length of that marriage was twelve years. If you
got married in nineteen ninety, the average length of that marriage was twelve years.
But we're separating through divorce now instead of death. Now. The other
thing that's making undivorce happen is that we're reducing our village around us, and
we are replacing our village with one single human being, our partner. We
are making our partner be our emotional support, our financial support, our intellectual
support, our sexual support, domestic report. So we're everything. We're putting
all our eggs into one basket. And I will say in particular, men
do that with women. They use one woman as they're everything, right,
And that's why men do worse after divorce than women, because women are more
likely to have social support and a social circle and they often take the social
capital with them. And guys are more alone and isolated, so they may
more want to keep this little string attached. They may want to keep this
undivorced best friend relationship. So it's these two phenomenon that our lives are much
longer than ever. And even the most monogamous of humans can expect two or
even three long stints of monogamy. And I know you're thinking about my grandparents.
They were married for a six day five years. Good for them,
were they happy? Just saying we also are forcing people to stay on unhappy
relationships. I never judge the quality of a relationship or the success of a
relationship based on duration. You know, you can have a relationship that's three
dates long and go, oh, I see the red flags. That person's
not for me. And that's a successful relationship for you that you moved on
quickly, right that you knew you could read the writing on the wall,
you had grown instead of becoming attached to somebody who could hurt you. Right.
So never use duration as a litmus test for a relationship's quality or its
health. But some people, instead of having these two or three long stints
of monogamy, are having their marriage and then this long period of being undivorced.
Undivorced meaning that they're divorced. They live separately, but they're still best
friends and use this person as their emotional lifeline. Some of them women hook
up once in a while, a little sex with your ex action going on.
Then there are others who have children, so they get divorced, but
they stay family for the kids. They get together for the kid's birthdays,
for all the religious holidays. If they're dating other people, they don't invite
those other people because I know because you guys send me the private messages,
the dms on Instagram, and you say, I'm a dating this guy for
two years, but on the holidays he goes with his ex wife's family and
whatever, and I can't sell it. I'm not invited. Should I be
invited? Yeah, you should be invited if he's fully divorced from her emotionally
and financially and everything else. Then there are others, and I had a
friend who did this. They're actually not divorced, but they move out and
they live separately because the cost of divorce is so much. Right, And
I remember this girlfriend of years and years and years ago, and her husband
was paying like two hundred thousand dollars a year to support her in another house.
And all I kept saying to her is, look, any man who's
paying two hundred thousand dollars a year to not get a divorce is saving money.
She's like, no, I don't think he has that much Anyway.
Later they finally got divorced because she did fall in love and that guy wanted
to marry her, and he was a good guy, and that wonderful guy
said, let's go to court and see what happens. Wow, she got
a couple of houses and boats and cars and enough for money for life.
I don't say that that is a good savings plan for women. I'm all
about making your own money, ladies. I'm just saying it's kind of funny
if somebody says so. There's lots of reasons why people might be not divorced.
Now. Also, we see celebrity couples like Ben Stiller and Christine Taylor
get divorced and then get back together, or like j Lo and Aflac.
Right, they get but that's different than undivorced. That's called being retrosexual.
Right, that's a little bit different. I will say this that we are
always struggling as every human being to manage our needs for autonomy versus our needs
for union. Right, So every relationship is this constantly struggle for boundaries,
like who am I as an independent, separate person? But how can I
get the benefits of you know, using this other brain thinking as a half
a brain person cooperative thinkers, that's what we are when we're in couples.
And how can I get the benefits of union but still not lose myself?
And this is a struggle in every relationship, but it's particularly pronounced in people
who are undivorced. And they get undivorced for these benefits. They get that
emotional support that I'm talking about, They get that best friend, They may
get financial support like my friend who you know was still not divorced and living
separately. They may also get to maintain their connection with the tribe. Remember,
marriage relationships are a bridge between tribes, and when you divorce somebody,
you don't just lose them. You lose their friends, you lose their family,
and maybe you wanted some of those relationships. So being undivorced is a
way to keep the tribe there. Now I will say this, there are
a few people who should never try being undivorced. And I'm not judging undivorced.
I'm just saying there are many ways to have a relationship across the lifespan.
But here are the people who should avoid becoming undivorced. Anybody with an
anxious attachment style, if you have big abandonment issues, if you're still thinking
where are they, who they with, what's happening when they're not with you,
then you are going to constantly be triggered with the inconsistency of an undivorced
relationship. Also, if you have complete financial dependency on somebody, you're not
actually able to give consent. You're not able to negotiate boundaries or rules in
your undivorced relationship. You really can't enter in the relationship contract because you're too
worried about losing the gravy train. So as a result, you can't be
undivorced if you're still financially dependent on somebody. And also those who had an
acrimonious divorce, Look, if you just came out of the war the roses,
you should not dip one toe back in. You should cause that real
separation that no contact, right, You've got to do that. So again,
it's not for everybody. It's often a temporary thing that people do to
get the kids finished being raised. When I applaud that, but ask yourself.
Is your spouse, your ex spouse, your best friend? And why
is it keeping you from finding real love? Is it keeping you from finding
a secure attachment and a thriving sex life? Yeah, think about it,
think about why you're undivorced. When we come back, let's talk about how
to have a healthy relationship. Nine phrases to show that you are an emotionally
mature and emotionally secure relationship. You're listening to the Doctor Wendy Walls Show on
KFI AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You've been listening to
Doctor Wendy Walls. You can always hear us live on kf I AM six
four from seven to nine pm on Sunday and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.