Speaker 1: This is doctor Wendy Walsh and you're listening to k
Speaker 1: I AM six forty, the Doctor Wendy wallsh Show on
Speaker 1: demand on the iHeartRadio app. Welcome to the Doctor Wendy
Speaker 1: Walls Show on I AM six forty live everywhere on
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio App. Okay, if you have been listening to
Speaker 1: my show for the ten years ten years. I think
Speaker 1: it's going to be ten years in September, which is
Speaker 1: like in a minute, ten years that I've been on
Speaker 1: k I AM six forty. You know that I have
Speaker 1: a PhD in clinical psychology. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm a
Speaker 1: psychology professor, not a therapist.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: But I'm a little bit obsessed with the science of love.
Speaker 1: I have spent three decades of my life reading every
Speaker 1: little bit of scientific research that there is on dating, mating,
Speaker 1: and relating and the wide spectrum of how people couple
Speaker 1: up or triple up or whatever it may be with
Speaker 1: them right, And I feel like I've educated myself very well.
Speaker 1: I also feel that I've done a very good job
Speaker 1: of taking scientific information and turning it into language everybody
Speaker 1: can understand. And I want to be very clear, this
Speaker 1: does not mean that I dumb anything down. This means
Speaker 1: that I try my best to not use psychobabble and
Speaker 1: instead just say, in plain English, this is what the
Speaker 1: research says. Now, why you might ask have I spent
Speaker 1: three decades of my life studying this subject and continuing
Speaker 1: to do so, And I will tell you it is
Speaker 1: because I had so many relationship problems in my own life,
Speaker 1: from a young woman onwards. I have been when people say, well,
Speaker 1: have you been married, have you been divorced? Have you
Speaker 1: ever really had an affair? One?
Speaker 2: Have you been?
Speaker 1: I've been everything from a mistress to a girlfriend, to
Speaker 1: a wife, to a live in girlfriend, to a divorcea
Speaker 1: to a survivor of domestic violence, a survivor of financial abuse.
Speaker 1: And you're like, well, it sounds like that that's all
Speaker 1: your fault and your poor choices that you made. Yes,
Speaker 1: I did make a few porn choices. Are you holding
Speaker 1: your pearls when you say that poor choices? Because they
Speaker 1: were unconscious choices. And I want us to all stop
Speaker 1: judging each other and understand that our model for love,
Speaker 1: our idea in our head for love, is formed in
Speaker 1: the first three years of life, and then we go
Speaker 1: out in our adul romantic life and we say, hmm,
Speaker 1: that person feels familiar. You know, love is not about
Speaker 1: finding happiness, it's not about finding pleasure. Love is about
Speaker 1: finding the familiar. And sadly, through most of my decades
Speaker 1: of single life and married life and living in life
Speaker 1: and divorce life and single mother life and everything else,
Speaker 1: I was finding the familiar in people who would leave
Speaker 1: me with feelings of loss abandonment, sometimes highly criticized, because
Speaker 1: in my early life that was what love felt like.
Speaker 1: You see, kids are going to love their parents no
Speaker 1: matter what. And this is not to put down my parents.
Speaker 1: I think I had great parents. Like every parent, they
Speaker 1: did the best they could with the tools they had.
Speaker 1: But because of life circumstances, my dad was in the navy,
Speaker 1: and he was gone. He was gone more than six
Speaker 1: to eight months a year, in a very inconsistent pattern,
Speaker 1: gone for three weeks, back for two days, gone for
Speaker 1: three months, back for three weeks. You know, it was craziness.
Speaker 1: And this is the nineteen sixties where there was nobody
Speaker 1: had help.
Speaker 2: The village wasn't there.
Speaker 1: We were always sort of the strangers moving around all
Speaker 1: the time. There was no giant village of cousins because
Speaker 1: we were moving so much, and so half time, my
Speaker 1: frazzled mother with three children under the age of three,
Speaker 1: stop right there, three children under the age of three,
Speaker 1: I'm sure would leave the three of us in a
Speaker 1: playpen while she would just go vacuum to tune out
Speaker 1: the screaming. And I was at the bottom of the
Speaker 1: toddler tumble because I was the only girl. So I
Speaker 1: had brothers who were doing very naturally normal, high testosterone brotherly.
Speaker 2: Things like beating me up.
Speaker 1: And there's my model for love, longing for a man
Speaker 1: who would come back and save me, but being pummeled
Speaker 1: by what was there at the moment. Now, nobody's fault here.
Speaker 1: This is the nineteen sixties. The term parenting as a
Speaker 1: verb was never even coined until the nineteen seventies. It
Speaker 1: wasn't something you did. It was just you were a
Speaker 1: parent because there was a git around. But you didn't parent.
Speaker 1: You didn't try to enrich their lives, you didn't try
Speaker 1: to help shape their mental health. You just fed them
Speaker 1: until they got up. Right was the time. And so
Speaker 1: after many many decades suffering all kinds of relationships that
Speaker 1: you would judge me is for making poor choices. I
Speaker 1: went to therapy. I was in therapy on and off
Speaker 1: for eighteen years, and I learned about myself and I
Speaker 1: shared everything in my books. I've written three books about relationships.
Speaker 1: I did a dissertation on attachment theory. I know more
Speaker 1: about attachment theory as it relates to me than maybe
Speaker 1: even my therapist. So the question is why did I
Speaker 1: study it? Because I was obsessed with healing myself. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, I knew that I wasn't alone,
Speaker 1: that other people were struggling men and women with attachment
Speaker 1: I need to use the word disorders, but attachment pain,
Speaker 1: attachment injuries. And I am so happy to tell you.
Speaker 1: If you've been following me, you know that back in December,
Speaker 1: I proposed to my boyfriend live on air. We've been
Speaker 1: together four years, and this weekend we tied the knot.
Speaker 1: We got married. Yes, I'm missus now. No I'm not
Speaker 1: taking his name, and no he's not taking my name.
Speaker 1: Why was I able to make this commitment Because I
Speaker 1: reached a stage in my personal journey where I could
Speaker 1: tolerate kindness, where I could learn to accept care and
Speaker 1: know that it was okay and that I deserved it.
Speaker 1: And the world wasn't going to fall apart and he
Speaker 1: wasn't going to abandon me. But it was a very
Speaker 1: long journey for me. And the reason why I continue
Speaker 1: to do this show, continue to talk about relationships is
Speaker 1: because I want everyone to have the feeling I have,
Speaker 1: and that feeling is trust, security, and a sense of calmness.
Speaker 1: Now we are all also to people of a certain age,
Speaker 1: and people's needs change across the lifespan when they're choosing partners.
Speaker 1: You know, when till Death Do Us part was invented,
Speaker 1: death was pretty imminent, and if you're having a kind
Speaker 1: of grayish marriage.
Speaker 2: Death might be pretty imminent.
Speaker 1: He hates it when I make that joke, by the way,
Speaker 1: but I love it because a relationship is an exchange
Speaker 1: of care, and care can take many different forms, and
Speaker 1: the care that we're both anticipating in the future is
Speaker 1: real care in the last third of our lives. So anyway,
Speaker 1: congratulations to me, Congratulations to my wonderful new husband. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, husband, I can't believe I'm saying that after
Speaker 1: all these years. All right, on this show, I want
Speaker 1: to talk a bit a lot about love here and there,
Speaker 1: but also stay tuned because I have a very special
Speaker 1: guest at the end of the show, Who's going to
Speaker 1: talk to us about not only ray marriage, but gray divorce. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to prevent that. Okay, gray divorce. Hey, it
Speaker 1: may be natural for some, but not if you've got
Speaker 1: married when you're already gray. Look, I'm not gray. I
Speaker 1: color my hair. I just want to say, you can't
Speaker 1: even see a gray hair. You're listening to the Doctor
Speaker 1: Wendy Walls Show on KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 2: We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 3: You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI
Speaker 3: AM six forty.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Doctor Wendy Walls Show on k
Speaker 1: I AM six forty. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. So,
Speaker 1: if you follow me on social media, specifically TikTok, you
Speaker 1: know that I've got a million followers.
Speaker 2: You know probably if you've been following me for a while,
Speaker 2: that my brand is slowly in transition. So here's the thing.
Speaker 1: When you get stuck in one space on social media,
Speaker 1: it becomes everything. And the truth is, I'm so much
Speaker 1: more than relationship advice. Although I love to give relationship advice.
Speaker 2: Here's my theory.
Speaker 1: By the way, about my little identity transformation here. During
Speaker 1: all the years that I was single and had attachment
Speaker 1: injuries and was in therapy and was in graduate school,
Speaker 1: trying to put an intellectual eye on love to ultimately
Speaker 1: heal myself right, And so I wrote three books on relationships.
Speaker 1: I did a dissertation on attachment theory. I became obsessed
Speaker 1: with our romantic attachment style and how we could heal
Speaker 1: early life trauma that could lead to us finding constantly
Speaker 1: being attracted to partners who hurt us. So I really
Speaker 1: walked my walk. I don't know if you've ever heard
Speaker 1: that saying. I think it's from the book Jonathan Livingston
Speaker 1: segul we teach best what we most need to learn,
Speaker 1: And so I would every time I would learn something new.
Speaker 1: And you know, my career as a journalist a real
Speaker 1: taught me how to take scientific information and put it
Speaker 1: into language everybody could understand. So I blogged, and I
Speaker 1: do podcasts, and I go on radio, and I write
Speaker 1: books and I talk about wow, this aha moment, Oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, just well, look what I learned. People with
Speaker 1: an avoidant attachment style are mostly attracted to people with
Speaker 1: an anxious attachment style, and there's this constant running all
Speaker 1: the time in their relationship and nobody's really happy. But
Speaker 1: those relationships tend to last a really long time, by
Speaker 1: the way, because the running becomes the glue instead of
Speaker 1: emotional intimacy. Anyway, that would be one example of what
Speaker 1: I might have put in a TikTok video. So when
Speaker 1: I met my fiance during the pandemic and we you know,
Speaker 1: I continued to do all the things I've been teaching
Speaker 1: you guys for the last ten years on KFI. I
Speaker 1: did them. I did them because I've been teaching them.
Speaker 1: We teach best what we most need to learn. And
Speaker 1: I was able to build a secure attachment for the
Speaker 1: first time in my life. I literally this morning, we
Speaker 1: were in bed and I said I was going somewhere
Speaker 1: for the day and he was going somewhere for the day,
Speaker 1: and I said, oh, I'm not going to see you
Speaker 1: all day and he's and I said, I don't think
Speaker 1: I've ever had this kind of feeling where I didn't
Speaker 1: even want to take a day off from somebody, And
Speaker 1: he said me either, never had this feeling. So now
Speaker 1: that I have what's called a secure attachment, I find
Speaker 1: myself just a little a little less interested in lot,
Speaker 1: you know, hardcore relationship advice, although you'll notice coming up
Speaker 1: later in the show, I have a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: for happily together couples to keep it happily together. Right,
Speaker 1: So we're going to talk about whether a relationship can
Speaker 1: survive cheating. Ten topics you should be talking about to
Speaker 1: make your relationship stronger, et cetera. I'm still learning that, Okay,
Speaker 1: still keeping it with you. But anyway, So on TikTok, lately,
Speaker 1: you know i'd circle around. I say this to my
Speaker 1: students too. I get off on side railroad trains of
Speaker 1: stories and then I circle it back. We're talking about
Speaker 1: social media and kids. So on my TikTok, I've been
Speaker 1: doing lots of videos talking about how I'm changing, And
Speaker 1: one of the videos is describing a road trip I
Speaker 1: took during COVID with two teenagers to eight different states,
Speaker 1: and I at one.
Speaker 2: I've attended many Black Lives Matter.
Speaker 1: Protests because it was during those days, and one of
Speaker 1: them was up in a tiny town in Montana, and
Speaker 1: I showed video of this and I was really quite
Speaker 1: astounded at how many people came.
Speaker 2: Out fully armed.
Speaker 1: Well, I just showed the video right very few seconds
Speaker 1: of it, TikTok banned me, warned me, shut me down.
Speaker 1: It was the craziest and I couldn't figure out why
Speaker 1: I got this warning.
Speaker 2: I was just talking about a road trip and.
Speaker 1: Teenagers and what we ate and where we stayed. But
Speaker 1: then one of my I posted another video saying does
Speaker 1: anybody know why my last video was taken down? And
Speaker 1: then they said they don't allow pew pews. That's the code,
Speaker 1: that's the code that the robots can't understand pew pew.
Speaker 1: Apparently that means again anywhere on TikTok. So I was
Speaker 1: both happy about this news and upset. My wonderful video
Speaker 1: that I spent a long time editing got taken down.
Speaker 1: By the way, it did get put back up because
Speaker 1: I edited out that particular scene, So if you want
Speaker 1: to go look at it, it's up.
Speaker 2: There on TikTok.
Speaker 1: So, you know, as our government is trying harder and
Speaker 1: harder to protect kids, and there's all these rumors that
Speaker 1: TikTok is going to be banned because the Chinese are
Speaker 1: spying on us and our kids, and they're dominating and
Speaker 1: manipulating and controlling the brains of our youth.
Speaker 2: All very true.
Speaker 1: By the way, I think the social media companies are
Speaker 1: starting to get nervous and take some personal responsibility. The
Speaker 1: data is undeniable, this infinite scroll that young brains enacting.
Speaker 1: They're scrolling and scrolling and scrolling where they stay engaged
Speaker 1: in those videos as long as possible. The research is
Speaker 1: clear that this is not okay for kids. You see,
Speaker 1: because of children's brain development, they don't have a fully
Speaker 1: developed prefrontal cortex that's impulse control. They don't have the
Speaker 1: ability to stop themselves or regulate their behaviors. Right, we
Speaker 1: get mad at them that they're on their phones too long,
Speaker 1: and that's like saying, why do you keep eating all
Speaker 1: that sugar when we're the ones feeding it to you? Right,
Speaker 1: So they're addicted. They're addicted mom and dad. So technology, now,
Speaker 1: there have been some of the tech companies have enacted
Speaker 1: forty four changes across different platforms to improve youth safety
Speaker 1: and well being. So this includes things like listen up.
Speaker 1: Instagram has announced that it will filter comments considered to
Speaker 1: be bullying. So now, because of good AI and the robots,
Speaker 1: it'll scroll through the comments if it looks like it's nasty,
Speaker 1: then they're just going.
Speaker 2: To get rid of it.
Speaker 1: It's also using machine learning to identify bullying photos. I
Speaker 1: wonder what's a bullying photo. Maybe when they take someone's
Speaker 1: face and do weird things with it or whatever and
Speaker 1: making fun of them.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Also, YouTube is now going to alert users when their
Speaker 1: comments are deemed defensive, so you'll get a little note
Speaker 1: saying we don't like this on this platform, and YouTube
Speaker 1: promises to remove hate speech now. Privacy is another issue right.
Speaker 1: Instagram says it will notify miners when they are interacting
Speaker 1: with an adult who has been flagged for suspicious behaviors.
Speaker 1: Owannder of miners would be alerted about me because I
Speaker 1: got flagged for the gun thing. You never know, I
Speaker 1: might be in a system now as a bad person.
Speaker 1: Not that I send dms to minors anyway. And it
Speaker 1: also does not allow adults to this one to message
Speaker 1: miners who are more than two years younger than they are,
Speaker 1: you know, the two year gap. You know why because
Speaker 1: that conforms to the statutory rape thing. So statutory rape
Speaker 1: is like, obviously you can't have sex with somebody under
Speaker 1: the age of eighteen, but if you're nineteen, you could
Speaker 1: have sex with a seventeen year old. That's to keep
Speaker 1: the nineteen year olds and their girlfriends from going to
Speaker 1: jail for that, right, So it's two year gap. The
Speaker 1: other thing they're trying to do is improve time management.
Speaker 1: So many of the platforms YouTube Kids has in fact
Speaker 1: turned off auto play. You know how when you get
Speaker 1: on YouTube and it goes from one video to the
Speaker 1: another video to another video. Won't do that for kids.
Speaker 1: They have to search and select the new one, which
Speaker 1: takes time. They're also going to have more notifications telling
Speaker 1: people like, you've been on too long, But I'm telling
Speaker 1: you that doesn't work. There's this guy on TikTok who
Speaker 1: jumps and he goes, hold up, now you've been scrolling
Speaker 1: for too long, and as soon as I see him.
Speaker 2: I just swipe past him. So I don't really think
Speaker 2: that works.
Speaker 1: Hey, speaking of social media, when we come back, there's
Speaker 1: an unlikely social media platform you probably use every single
Speaker 1: day that's now the number one platform being used to
Speaker 1: find love. Let's talk about how you could use it
Speaker 1: if you're single. When we come back, you are listening
Speaker 1: to the Doctor Wendy Walls Show on k I Am
Speaker 1: six forty We're live everywhere on the iHeart app.
Speaker 3: You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI
Speaker 3: AM six forty.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Doctor Wendy Walls Show on KFI
Speaker 1: AM six forty. Well, the way that people meet and
Speaker 1: mate in the mating marketplace seems to have changed. I
Speaker 1: think people are getting sick of traditional dating apps. I
Speaker 1: don't know why, by the way, because I used Bumble
Speaker 1: and I found my love on Bumble. But I do
Speaker 1: want to say this, it's not about the dating apps
Speaker 1: that are bad. People always say I hate the dating apps.
Speaker 2: They're bad.
Speaker 1: It's not about the apps, it's about the skill. And
Speaker 1: I've done lots of segments in the past where I
Speaker 1: talked about how to use dating apps. Well, I'm going
Speaker 1: to continue to continue to teach that, so stay with me. Also,
Speaker 1: you know, I do this Patreon zoom group every Wednesday
Speaker 1: night at six thirty, So if you ever want to
Speaker 1: come on, you can ask me any questions about dating apps,
Speaker 1: et cetera. I'll be happy to even weigh in on
Speaker 1: your profile. I'll tell you what you can do. But
Speaker 1: new research this week from datingnews dot Com also published
Speaker 1: on Datingadvice dot com says that the number one platform
Speaker 1: that people are looking.
Speaker 2: For mates on is Kayla. You're not going to believe this.
Speaker 1: LinkedIn really LinkedIn the business more on Instagram? Uh huh wow,
Speaker 1: more than Instagram. Okay, So let's talk about dating and
Speaker 1: mating in the workplace. According to research from getnuxs dot org,
Speaker 1: twenty two percent of married couples in America met through
Speaker 1: work and fifty two percent of employees have been involved
Speaker 1: at one point or another in a workplace romance.
Speaker 2: Uh huh.
Speaker 1: A survey from the Society for Human Resource Management, they
Speaker 1: found that a quarter there's about twenty five percent, folks.
Speaker 1: One in four of US workers reported that they are
Speaker 1: open to having a workplace romance. And just last year,
Speaker 1: Forbes Advisor commissioned a survey of two thousand employed Americans
Speaker 1: and they found that sixty percent of adults have had
Speaker 1: a workplace romance, and of those, forty three percent married
Speaker 1: someone they worked with. Now, this is a problem because
Speaker 1: we are post me too now hashtag me too. Human
Speaker 1: resources departments know that romances at the workplace can be
Speaker 1: a legal nightmare. So it kind of makes sense to
Speaker 1: me that LinkedIn has exploded as an online mating marketplace.
Speaker 2: Let's think about it.
Speaker 1: Since the pandemic, everyone had to pivot right and go
Speaker 1: online for everything their work, et cetera. So people moved
Speaker 1: from water cooler conversations at the office to emails, DM zooms,
Speaker 1: even online networking events. I'm going to go out on
Speaker 1: a limb here and tell you that I would say
Speaker 1: that evolutionary psychologists would argue that the whole darn reason
Speaker 1: why people have occupations, professions, and work is less about
Speaker 1: basic survival and much more about increasing their mate status
Speaker 1: in the eyes of others.
Speaker 2: Let me tell you.
Speaker 1: When I was on the dating apps, there was no
Speaker 1: such thing as an employee, no such thing as a coworker.
Speaker 1: There were founders, vps, managers, consultants. I mean, I had
Speaker 1: a handyman once and I said, what do you put
Speaker 1: on your app profile that you do?
Speaker 2: And he goes, oh, that I'm in construction management. Okay,
Speaker 2: why not? That's what people do now.
Speaker 1: If you compare a LinkedIn profile with a dating app profile,
Speaker 1: you get so much more. In LinkedIn, you can do
Speaker 1: a deep dive into somebody's background. You could estimate their income,
Speaker 1: you can look at their whole network of people they
Speaker 1: even might mention their hobbies, any volunteer work they do.
Speaker 2: Schooling is a good one.
Speaker 1: What if they went to your alma Mada and you
Speaker 1: can call them up and go, hey, I'm an alumni,
Speaker 1: or what if they're from your hometown. All that is
Speaker 1: in most LinkedIn profiles. So here are the best benefits
Speaker 1: from meeting on LinkedIn. In my opinion, I'm going to
Speaker 1: tell you the best way to do it. After this
Speaker 1: Number one, you can find someone with real world common interest.
Speaker 1: They could be from a specific industry that you might
Speaker 1: be in. They might be doing charity work your college. Also,
Speaker 1: it allows you, when you scroll through LinkedIn profiles, to
Speaker 1: find really targeted commonality rather than what I would like
Speaker 1: to call the pithy self promotion that people write on
Speaker 1: dating app profiles. I mean, who doesn't love sunset, walks
Speaker 1: on the beach? Gag me, I'm done with it, right hiking,
Speaker 1: Let's go hiking right now. Another benefit of LinkedIn is
Speaker 1: that you can really vet people. I know that the
Speaker 1: dating apps in recent years allow people to connect their
Speaker 1: profiles with their Instagram profiles, so you can kind of
Speaker 1: see who their friends are. See if you know someone
Speaker 1: in common, but on LinkedIn, their professional network is right
Speaker 1: there before your eyes. You can investigate them through real
Speaker 1: world contexts. You can look at their comments, you can
Speaker 1: see who they're reviewing. And here's the best part about LinkedIn.
Speaker 1: Just want to say it, get it out there. There's
Speaker 1: no HR policy to worry about. Since the advent, as
Speaker 1: I mentioned of the me too movement, workplace romances have
Speaker 1: become a nightmare for human resource departments. Many companies have
Speaker 1: even enacted love contracts or complete romance prohibitions in their
Speaker 1: employment contracts. So so far, I mean until next month,
Speaker 1: I guess I don't know. LinkedIn doesn't have any HR
Speaker 1: hall monitor to get nosy about you noodling?
Speaker 2: So how do you do it?
Speaker 1: First of all, I do want to say this, do
Speaker 1: not send a private DM to a stranger on LinkedIn
Speaker 1: with anything flirty. You wouldn't do it if you met
Speaker 1: somebody in a restaurant or a grocery store. Why would
Speaker 1: you do it online? So the first thing you do
Speaker 1: if you identify somebody who's attractive to you is you
Speaker 1: follow them, and then you become a watcher. You follow
Speaker 1: them and you ask yourself what posts are they commenting on?
Speaker 1: How active are they on the site. What can you
Speaker 1: learn about them by what they're posting? Just watch them
Speaker 1: for a while and it sounds creepy, but this is
Speaker 1: what people do. Okay a second. Now you're going to
Speaker 1: enlist your mutual connections. They have a thing on LinkedIn
Speaker 1: mutual connections. You click on them and you see who
Speaker 1: you know in common. So are you intimate enough with
Speaker 1: any of those people to get some information? Could you
Speaker 1: send them a simple message saying like, hey, so and
Speaker 1: so singled you know? Or could you introduce me or whatever?
Speaker 2: You can? You see the network right there.
Speaker 1: Now, when you get brave, you can finally send a
Speaker 1: private message. Now, please make it short and sweet and
Speaker 1: keep the topic on business at first. Include a mention
Speaker 1: of whatever your common interest is. You know, maybe you
Speaker 1: have the same you work for the same charity, you
Speaker 1: went to the same university, whatever, same hometown, whatever.
Speaker 2: But don't be flirty.
Speaker 1: It's creepy when a complete stranger sends a flirty kind
Speaker 1: of DM, and then all you do is you watch
Speaker 1: for their response. Do they reciprocate? When they reciprocate, do
Speaker 1: they extend the conversation by asking you a question? If
Speaker 1: they're Kurt short perfunctory or worse, completely silent. You got
Speaker 1: your answer, don't pursue further. Okay, silence is an answer.
Speaker 1: And then my suggestion would be getting the real world fast,
Speaker 1: find a professional pretense to get on the phone or
Speaker 1: zoom and then you know. Then you got the advantage
Speaker 1: of visuals right and voice, and your brain will be
Speaker 1: able to pull in more information about whether this person
Speaker 1: is right for you. So then it gets back to
Speaker 1: real world dating. That's how you do it. Don't be creepy,
Speaker 1: keep it light, keep it on business. You want to
Speaker 1: keep them as a business contact if it doesn't work out, right,
Speaker 1: But I totally understand why people are doing it. Alrighty,
Speaker 1: when we come back, let us talk on the same
Speaker 1: note about why your company needs a love contract, because
Speaker 1: there's some Shenana agains going on when it comes to
Speaker 1: love in real world workplaces.
Speaker 2: You are listening to the Doctor wendywallsh Show on KFI
Speaker 2: AM six forty. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 3: You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI
Speaker 3: AM six forty.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Doctor Wendy Walls Show on k
Speaker 1: I AM six forty we're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 1: You know, in life and in our culture, rules are
Speaker 1: changing all the time, and it's really important that we
Speaker 1: keep up with the changes in our culture. Remember, the
Speaker 1: very existence of a human being is every day and
Speaker 1: sometimes in every moment, making a decision between your personal
Speaker 1: survival you might call it selfishness and the survival of
Speaker 1: the tribe. Because we are not meant to be alone.
Speaker 1: We are wired to bond, we are wired to have
Speaker 1: social support. In fact, the worst thing for humans is isolation.
Speaker 1: We learned that during quarantine, and so we also have
Speaker 1: to keep our ear to the ground of the tribe
Speaker 1: says is acceptable. You know, before the break, I was
Speaker 1: talking about how LinkedIn is now one of the most
Speaker 1: powerful platforms where people are finding love, and I think
Speaker 1: that's sort of a digital way of people moving away
Speaker 1: from being direct in workplaces. In workplaces, it is very
Speaker 1: important that we understand that people need to feel safe
Speaker 1: in a work environment. Now that doesn't mean that you
Speaker 1: cannot meet somebody at work, but it does mean that
Speaker 1: if you do make an overture to somebody, who better
Speaker 1: be on your level, meaning not somebody under you, and
Speaker 1: you're the manager, Okay, can't do that. That's sexual harassment
Speaker 1: for sure. If you hold any kind of power over
Speaker 1: a person, influence even for a promotion, their paycheck, whatever,
Speaker 1: you can't ask.
Speaker 2: Them out, just don't, okay.
Speaker 1: But if they're in another department and on around the
Speaker 1: same level, of course you might meet somebody. However, you
Speaker 1: don't want them to feel uncomfortable. So if you make
Speaker 1: a little overture and it's not responded to, then move away.
Speaker 1: That's actually I think employment lawyers would agree with me
Speaker 1: that that's not considered sexual harassment. Sexual harassment is continual
Speaker 1: or it is quid pro crow. If you don't do this,
Speaker 1: then you're not going to get this promotion, or it's
Speaker 1: like this toxic environment where you're constantly people are making
Speaker 1: comments about your body all the time. Right. I have
Speaker 1: a coworker, not here, not here, at another place who
Speaker 1: always mentions if I've lost weight or gained weight every
Speaker 1: time I see them, And I don't know if you're
Speaker 1: aware that women lose and gain four or five pounds
Speaker 1: on a regular basis. That's just our life. That's what
Speaker 1: women do, and it irritates me every time. So I
Speaker 1: finally de tend to gently say, hey, you know, nowadays
Speaker 1: we don't talk about women's bodies at all in the workplace.
Speaker 2: It just like I said, it real sweet and cute
Speaker 2: and he stopped. So there you go.
Speaker 1: So many companies to protect themselves from all the sexual
Speaker 1: harassment lawsuits that have flown around is they write a
Speaker 1: love content tract for their employees. Now, these things have
Speaker 1: been used for decades, but since the Me Too movement
Speaker 1: in twenty seventeen, their use is pretty widespread in a
Speaker 1: lot of industries. It's essentially a legal document. It's signed
Speaker 1: by two employees who are having a romantic relationship, and
Speaker 1: your original employment contract might say something like if you
Speaker 1: enter into a romantic relationship in the workplace, you must
Speaker 1: report it to HR and then you will be asked
Speaker 1: to sign a love contract. The whole reason it's designed
Speaker 1: to protect the company from claims right and also from
Speaker 1: other coworkers witnessing. Would you guys get going on and
Speaker 1: calling that a hostile work environment. There is nothing more
Speaker 1: uncomfortable when you're trying to get your job done to
Speaker 1: see two colleagues canoodling over by the water cooler. So
Speaker 1: the love contract might have rules about that too, So
Speaker 1: The love contract should prohibit all kinds of sexual harassment
Speaker 1: as I mentioned, including quid pro quo and toxic environment.
Speaker 1: They also make you both admit that the relationship is
Speaker 1: consensual and that it won't have a negative impact on
Speaker 1: your work at all. It also may include the possibility
Speaker 1: of department transfer. So if you do fall in love
Speaker 1: with the office and you do report it to HR
Speaker 1: as you were told you're supposed to do, one of
Speaker 1: you might have to be transferred. That might just be
Speaker 1: a rule. At our company, their HR department says, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about our company, iHeart. I mean they're
Speaker 1: whatever high hypothetical company I'm talking about. Their HR department
Speaker 1: might say, here, at our company, as soon as you
Speaker 1: admit that you're in a romantic relationship, one of you've
Speaker 1: got to go, not leave the company, but will facilitate
Speaker 1: a transfer. It also this istant important part. So relationships
Speaker 1: at the office usually aren't so bad until it ends right,
Speaker 1: and then people don't want to work with the person
Speaker 1: and it's a.
Speaker 2: Toxic environment there.
Speaker 1: So the love contract might include things about what happens
Speaker 1: that ends that protects employees from inappropriate conduct retaliation.
Speaker 2: Also, of course, love.
Speaker 1: Contracts are going to include limitations on public displays of
Speaker 1: affection at the office.
Speaker 2: This is gross. Don't be kissing in the hallway, that's
Speaker 2: just weird.
Speaker 1: So according to research, there are plenty of reasons why
Speaker 1: HR departments need to have love contracts. One study showed
Speaker 1: that one in four employees are open to having an
Speaker 1: office romance, and one in five married couples in America
Speaker 1: actually met at work. So even if you do lay
Speaker 1: down the law and attempt to say enforce a no workplace.
Speaker 2: Dating at all rule, that rule is going to be broken.
Speaker 1: There are exceptions in love contracts, like you can't date subordinates.
Speaker 1: That's a lose lose for the subordinate. You got to
Speaker 1: know that. And also remember, love gets messy. There's gossip
Speaker 1: around the office. It's going to happen when it starts.
Speaker 1: There could be envy, jealousy, resentment.
Speaker 2: Ugly breakups.
Speaker 1: This can be a big problem for companies and for
Speaker 1: HR departments. So it's really important that to avoid all
Speaker 1: this drama that companies set up some specific guidelines.
Speaker 2: I personally think it's a great idea.
Speaker 1: I think in everybody's employment of contract it should be Look,
Speaker 1: if you date anybody at the office. You've got to
Speaker 1: disclose it to us, and if you don't, then that
Speaker 1: could lead to termination of your contract. And then if
Speaker 1: you do, you'll be asked to sign a love contract
Speaker 1: in some way. Let's face it, workplace romances are land mines, okay,
Speaker 1: but we're doing it like one in four people, right,
Speaker 1: it's so crazy.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: When we come back, I'm going to go to my
Speaker 1: social media and I'm going to be answering some of.
Speaker 2: Your relationship questions.
Speaker 1: The handle everywhere is at doctor Wendy Walsh, at Dr
Speaker 1: Wendy Walsh, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok wherever. Just send me a message.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to say your name on air, we'll
Speaker 1: keep it private, but send me a question. I'll be
Speaker 1: happy to answer it. You are listening to the Doctor
Speaker 1: Wendy Walls Show on KFI AM six forty We Live
Speaker 1: everywhere on.
Speaker 2: The iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 1: You've been listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh. You can always
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Speaker 1: to nine pm on Sunday and anytime on demand on
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