Speaker 1: This is doctor Wendy Walsh and you're listening to kf
Speaker 1: I Am six forty, the Doctor Wendy Wallsh Show on
Speaker 1: demand on the iHeartRadio app k I AM six forty.
Speaker 1: You have Doctor Wendy Walsh with you. This is the
Speaker 1: Doctor Wendy Wallsh Show. Good to have you with me.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about your relationship. What happens when one partner
Speaker 1: changes and the other doesn't. How does a relationship adapt?
Speaker 1: Also therapy speak in dating people throwing around some pop
Speaker 1: psych terms in their dating life. Is this a good
Speaker 1: thing or a bad thing? And also we're in the
Speaker 1: spring time for lots of breakups and why one partner
Speaker 1: usually doesn't see it coming. We're going to talk about
Speaker 1: the science of this. Producer, Kayla, how are you live
Speaker 1: in the dream? Doctor Wayndey live in the dream?
Speaker 2: Raight?
Speaker 1: Well, good to see you. How are you excellent? And
Speaker 1: happy to see you too? Thank you? Andrew? Do we
Speaker 1: have you with us?
Speaker 2: You do?
Speaker 1: Oh my god?
Speaker 3: How are you great?
Speaker 4: So this is the first time I've done your show
Speaker 4: since you moved to this time slot.
Speaker 1: Oh right, We pass each other in the parking garage, Yeah,
Speaker 1: pass some ships in the night. That's right, Well, good
Speaker 1: to have you with us. Yeah, so today I was, well,
Speaker 1: let me go back a couple days ago. I was
Speaker 1: on a young woman's podcast. She was bright and smart,
Speaker 1: and she talks about her life and dating, et cetera.
Speaker 1: She was at a Toronto and you're gonna ask your name,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna say I don't remember. She'll send me
Speaker 1: the link to it and then we'll know. But anyway,
Speaker 1: she used some terms that a lot of young women,
Speaker 1: successful women use when they talk about dating. One is
Speaker 1: when she heard my prescription for using the dating apps,
Speaker 1: which is get on the phone quickly, have a quick
Speaker 1: coffee date, and then decide if you want to have
Speaker 1: a first date, she said, I would never do that.
Speaker 1: A coffee date doesn't that lower the bar? I want
Speaker 1: someone to take me out, wind me, dine me, I
Speaker 1: go a total stranger off the street that you haven't
Speaker 1: assessed yet. No. And the other term she used is
Speaker 1: that she doesn't want to settle. I find it fascinating
Speaker 1: how many people say I don't want to settle, because
Speaker 1: what they're hoping is that there will be some person
Speaker 1: out there that is so high value to them that
Speaker 1: if that person turns and gives them a look and
Speaker 1: invites them into their life that somehow they will like
Speaker 1: themselves better settle for what did she mean a man
Speaker 1: with less money? Did she mean? She didn't mean an
Speaker 1: unkind man. She wants somebody high up on that totem pole.
Speaker 1: And when I started talking to her about how we
Speaker 1: have an oversupply of successful women in the mating marketplace
Speaker 1: and that the idea of a power guy might just
Speaker 1: be a guy who can power a stroller, she said,
Speaker 1: I've got to get my head around that. I said, yes,
Speaker 1: patriarchy lives in your head too. Patriarchy is the thing
Speaker 1: that keeps it. Basically, the more education and money a
Speaker 1: woman makes, the more she wants a malemate to make
Speaker 1: more than her. And there's only a small group of
Speaker 1: those guys, and they're riding this wave of free sex
Speaker 1: in today's culture. They're not about to commit, and then
Speaker 1: women have the fertility window that men don't have, so
Speaker 1: it's a hard time for a lot of women. I
Speaker 1: told her about this trend that I'd seen years ago
Speaker 1: when I visited my daughter in Stockholm when she was
Speaker 1: on her semester abroad. I witnessed these roving bands of muscled, tattooed,
Speaker 1: bearded men in coffee shops, all wearing babies and changing
Speaker 1: diapers and strolling kids around. And now they're actually a
Speaker 1: trend on TikTok called the latte dads. They call the
Speaker 1: latte Dads, and I've seen a few videos and they
Speaker 1: literally just like walking around Stockholm. And you know why
Speaker 1: that is because the government legislated that, yes, eighteen months
Speaker 1: of parental leave pay parental leave are necessary to take
Speaker 1: care of a young infant, but they can't all be
Speaker 1: taken by one parent. At least three months or more
Speaker 1: have to be taken by the other parent. So it's
Speaker 1: the government is legislating fatherhood, or shall I say, they're
Speaker 1: underwriting fatherhood, so that guys can do what they are
Speaker 1: naturally good at if you give them the space and
Speaker 1: the time and the money to do it. So today
Speaker 1: I was reading the New York Times and we now
Speaker 1: have an American version this club in Brooklyn called the
Speaker 1: Brooklyn Stroll Club, founded by a guy named Joe Gonzales,
Speaker 1: and their slogan is where men find community and all
Speaker 1: fathers are welcome, and they do parenting classes, baby classes,
Speaker 1: music classes, and they hang out the park they stroll together,
Speaker 1: so they're making PDFs normal public displays of fatherhood, normalized right,
Speaker 1: And this is what women have to learn to see
Speaker 1: more often, respect more often, because if we do have
Speaker 1: we're in the information age. Or I like to say
Speaker 1: women are better suited to make money in the information
Speaker 1: age because well, we're better talkers and texters and we
Speaker 1: have more social sensitivity.
Speaker 3: This is our.
Speaker 1: Time to earn money and get ahead. I have told
Speaker 1: you enough. I teach on a college campus. We have
Speaker 1: seen the feminization of college campuses for the last twenty
Speaker 1: years and it continues. I'm on a campus. It's about
Speaker 1: sixty nine percent female. For every one guy that graduates
Speaker 1: from college in America, there are two or three women.
Speaker 1: And even the hard sciences in medical schools, in law
Speaker 1: schools at least fifty percent women. So, ladies, if you
Speaker 1: would like to be in your fertility window at the
Speaker 1: same time you're earning your career, who's going to help
Speaker 1: you with the kid? So in your dating life, why
Speaker 1: are you saying I don't want to settle and I
Speaker 1: want I want to male right, No, you want a
Speaker 1: kind hearted, good guy. You know, there's research from the
Speaker 1: University of Texas Austin doctor David Buss, and he looked
Speaker 1: at a cross cultural study around the world of what
Speaker 1: women look for most often and men, and I'm talking
Speaker 1: specifically about heterosexual women, and they tend to look at
Speaker 1: resource potential first, but right behind that they look at
Speaker 1: intelligence because if there was a bad season and the
Speaker 1: crops failed or they couldn't forage and find food, you
Speaker 1: hope he'd be smart enough to figure it out. They're
Speaker 1: saying that this is in our evolution by the way
Speaker 1: that it's old, old feelings women have. But third, right
Speaker 1: behind resource potential and intelligence is kindness. So what I'm
Speaker 1: saying is, for this life and this time, why can't
Speaker 1: we put kindness first? And ladies, don't make a man
Speaker 1: court you like he's the prince and you're Cinderella at
Speaker 1: a ball. Go have a quick coffee. You do not
Speaker 1: need to give him any more of your time a
Speaker 1: total stranger than like twenty minutes, and then leave early, right,
Speaker 1: leave them want more at all times, and assess them
Speaker 1: for kindness. Last week I talked about micromancing guys who
Speaker 1: can't afford the big gestures, who are doing things like
Speaker 1: washing your car and fixing stuff around the house and
Speaker 1: being kind to you. These should be the traits that
Speaker 1: will show you that he'll be a great dad someday.
Speaker 1: All right, when we come back, maybe you are in
Speaker 1: a relationship and maybe something's changed. Somebody decides they're going
Speaker 1: to change careers, or they lost their job, maybe they
Speaker 1: were laid off. Maybe somebody says I'm going to go
Speaker 1: back to school and get this, or I want to
Speaker 1: stay home with the kids. I know we said we didn't,
Speaker 1: but I'm unprepared for how much I missed the kids
Speaker 1: I want to be. You know, so one person changes,
Speaker 1: how does the relationship adapt when that happens. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about it when we come back. You are listening to
Speaker 1: the Doctor Wendy Walls Show and k I Am six forty.
Speaker 3: You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI
Speaker 3: Am six forty.
Speaker 1: K I Am six forty. You have Doctor Wendy Walsh
Speaker 1: with you. This is the Doctor Wendy Walls Show. I'd
Speaker 1: like to welcome by TikTok audience.
Speaker 3: Hig TikTok.
Speaker 1: If you want to come in the studio and say
Speaker 1: hello and see us, just take out your cell phone
Speaker 1: and go to TikTok and search doctor Wendy Walsh d
Speaker 1: R Wendy Walsh, and there we will be. If you're
Speaker 1: new to my show, I have a PhD in clinical psychology.
Speaker 1: I'm a psychology professor at California State University, Channel Islands,
Speaker 1: Go Dolphins, and I am obsessed with the science of love.
Speaker 1: I've written three books on relationships, did my dissertation on
Speaker 1: attachment style and well, I'm just obsessed because I had
Speaker 1: a bad love life myself for a long time. Happily married.
Speaker 1: Now I took my own advice, learned how to use
Speaker 1: those apps and date well, choose well. Okay, I want
Speaker 1: to talk specifically about and just to let you know
Speaker 1: after a couple more. What time are producer, Kayla, when
Speaker 1: are we going to startaking people's calls? Seven forty five
Speaker 1: Pacific time? We will start taking your calls live, So
Speaker 1: you want to write down the number one eight hundred
Speaker 1: and five, two zero, one, five, three four, but not
Speaker 1: till seven forty five.
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about what happens when one partner
Speaker 1: changes in a relationship. Now, I'm talking about major or
Speaker 1: sort of around the middle of things that happen to
Speaker 1: humans across a lifespan. Maybe the change is because they,
Speaker 1: sadly happening a lot in America right now, lost their
Speaker 1: job and all of a sudden, this upsets the whole dynamic.
Speaker 1: Maybe one of them has children and says, you know,
Speaker 1: I was going to keep working, but now I see
Speaker 1: how attached I am to my child. That happened to me.
Speaker 1: I was unprepared for the overwhelming desire to nurture that
Speaker 1: I would have, and I had to somehow try to
Speaker 1: adjust my whole work life to that. So maybe that's it.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's that somebody just is unhappy with their work
Speaker 1: and want to do something completely different, or they want
Speaker 1: to go back to school, or god forbid, maybe they
Speaker 1: have health problems and it changes the whole dynamic of
Speaker 1: the relationship. So how can you effectively support your partner
Speaker 1: during these kinds of life transitions. Well, I want to
Speaker 1: remind you that it's important to know that relationships are
Speaker 1: always changing. They're dynamic because they involve two people. You know,
Speaker 1: my favorite metaphor, if you will, for a romantic relationship
Speaker 1: is a Venn diagram, two circles, right, So one person's
Speaker 1: here and one person's here, and they're going to overlap
Speaker 1: a little, and that part in the middle is the relationship.
Speaker 1: But each person outside of that circle, that middle part
Speaker 1: is going to continue to grow. They should because they
Speaker 1: bring newness into the relationship, whether it's new places they
Speaker 1: go to, new people they meet, new jobs. They come home,
Speaker 1: there's new stuff to talk about.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: With my husband Julio, I love it when he comes
Speaker 1: home from a day wherever he is, his meetings or whatever,
Speaker 1: and he'll always come in the door and say something
Speaker 1: like this, get this. And I know when he says
Speaker 1: get this, there's going to be a good story about
Speaker 1: his day. And this is one of the things that
Speaker 1: keeps our relationship exciting because we both have different careers
Speaker 1: in different areas and we sort of know who all
Speaker 1: the players. Of course, I have to stop and a
Speaker 1: number mimind me who that person is again and what
Speaker 1: project are they working with. I have to kind of
Speaker 1: catch up because I haven't met everybody, right, get this,
Speaker 1: he says. So it's important that people do continue to
Speaker 1: grow across the lifespan, because if not, you become enmeshed
Speaker 1: circle on top of a circle where nobody can remember
Speaker 1: whose problem is who's and at a certain point, one
Speaker 1: person will want to completely break free just to have
Speaker 1: some autonomy. So you want to be able to grow
Speaker 1: and then still nurture the relationship. So I also want
Speaker 1: to remind you that a romantic relationship is an exchange
Speaker 1: of care. That care can take many forms. It could
Speaker 1: be financial care, it could be sexual care. It could
Speaker 1: be emotional support care. It could be intellectual stimulation care.
Speaker 1: It can be childcare. It can be domestic responsibility care. Right,
Speaker 1: whatever that exchange of care is, to somebody looking from
Speaker 1: the outside, they might think it doesn't look fair. But
Speaker 1: each individual places high value on those things. So example,
Speaker 1: I was a single bomb for twenty years. I had
Speaker 1: two kids. I was busy working, being the nurture provider, everything,
Speaker 1: one hundred percent custody, zero dollars child support. I was everything,
Speaker 1: And when I would come home if the place was
Speaker 1: messy or whatever, I didn't have the time to be
Speaker 1: a good parent and say, okay, honey, let's clean up
Speaker 1: before we move to the next thing. All right, who's
Speaker 1: going to help me cook dinner? Oh no, The rule
Speaker 1: is you don't get to eat unless you have I
Speaker 1: did not have time for what those textbooks say is
Speaker 1: good parenting. I came in and went out of my way.
Speaker 1: I got to clean up fast as a result. I
Speaker 1: have kids who are lazy. Oh they keep their own
Speaker 1: apartments very spotless now, but in my house they were lazy.
Speaker 1: So I marry Julio, and Julio loves to judicious. Julio
Speaker 1: loves to fold laundry. When I go away on business,
Speaker 1: he decides to do the floors. I mean, the value
Speaker 1: I place on that is so high, so high, so
Speaker 1: somebody might look at it and be like, well, he's
Speaker 1: not doing this or that. I'm like, are you kidding?
Speaker 1: I come home to a spotless place with clean, changed
Speaker 1: sheets that smell delicious, all because of him. Right, So
Speaker 1: what happens when one partner changes is the exchange of
Speaker 1: care may change. If one person's been giving a lot
Speaker 1: of financial care, it may be time for them not
Speaker 1: to be giving so much financial care. If they've lost
Speaker 1: their job, they may need more emotional care. So every
Speaker 1: relationship has an unconscious contract, right. It's usually silent and unspoken,
Speaker 1: and it just kind of unfolds my relationships. Certainly with Julio.
Speaker 1: Everything is discussed, so everything's out there on the table.
Speaker 1: But when a big life transition happens. This is not
Speaker 1: the time for silence. This is not the time to ignore.
Speaker 1: This is the time to talk about how the contract
Speaker 1: is changing and how you're gonna accommodate it. Right, It
Speaker 1: just means the contracts being renegotiated. It doesn't mean the
Speaker 1: relationship has to end. It doesn't mean that the relationship
Speaker 1: is going to fall into an unfair exchange of hair. Hare.
Speaker 1: Maybe they are exchanging hair. I know Julio would probably
Speaker 1: like some of my hair. It's okay, baby, I like
Speaker 1: you bald, It's fine. And if it comes to the
Speaker 1: financial piece, you know what, that's the prickly conversation that
Speaker 1: I hope you've been having your entire relationship. You got
Speaker 1: to talk about money. It's the hard thing, right, all right?
Speaker 1: When we come back. I have noticed, have I noticed
Speaker 1: that there's a lot of a therapy speak happening in dating?
Speaker 1: You know, people will say, oh, I went out with him,
Speaker 1: but I think he's a narcissist or she's an avoidant,
Speaker 1: And I'm like, really, do you know how to diagnose?
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not even clinician. I can't shouldn't diagnose, right,
Speaker 1: but yet people are doing it on date? Is this
Speaker 1: a good thing or a bad thing. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: this when we come back. You are listening to the
Speaker 1: Doctor Wendy Wall Show on KFI AM six forty live
Speaker 1: everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 3: You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI
Speaker 3: AM six forty k I Am six forty.
Speaker 1: You have Doctor Wendy Walsh with you. This is the
Speaker 1: Doctor Wendy Walls Show. I'm trying to go live on Instagram,
Speaker 1: but it keeps taking my audio off. Is it this
Speaker 1: last week too? I wonder because I'm saying, like live
Speaker 1: on KFI and iHeartRadio and download the iHeartRadio app. And
Speaker 1: maybe they think I'm promoting some thing or something. If
Speaker 1: anyone knows the answer to that of why my live
Speaker 1: streams on Instagram when I'm in this studio the sound
Speaker 1: keeps getting taken away. If anybody knows the rule, send
Speaker 1: me a DM on ig and explain it to us.
Speaker 1: All right, therapy speak in dating. It is the new thing. Everybody,
Speaker 1: it seems, is an armchair psychologist, right. And I have
Speaker 1: to say, I'm of two minds here. I think it
Speaker 1: is both good and it is bad. Of course, the
Speaker 1: best thing about increased use of psychological terms in our
Speaker 1: personal lives in general, especially when we're exploring interpersonal relationships,
Speaker 1: is that people are starting to realize that emotional health
Speaker 1: is important and this is one thing we should be
Speaker 1: assessing when we're assessing whether somebody would be a good mate.
Speaker 1: You did a kit Kayla, got me up and going,
Speaker 1: thank you. If you want to come on to Instagram,
Speaker 1: come on, tell me if there's volume or not on Instagram.
Speaker 1: There we go. So I think it's a good thing
Speaker 1: that we're caring about mental health. I think it's a
Speaker 1: good thing that we're learning about some of these psychological terms.
Speaker 1: People are starting to realize that choosing a mate is
Speaker 1: a life altering decision. Your choice of mate can impact
Speaker 1: your quality of life for the rest of your life. Literally,
Speaker 1: it can sink you into poverty or help you accumulate wealth.
Speaker 1: It can cause you to have good or bad mental health,
Speaker 1: or it could, you know, cause you to have good
Speaker 1: or bad physical health. Even you know, there's so much
Speaker 1: research to support the idea that long term committed people
Speaker 1: in secure attachments actually live longer, they have better mental health,
Speaker 1: better physical health, and they tend to accumulate more wealth.
Speaker 1: So it's understandable that people see the importance of this decision, right,
Speaker 1: and single people have an awareness of good emotional health
Speaker 1: and how important that is for a mate. The problem
Speaker 1: lies in the fact that the average person does not
Speaker 1: hold a PhD in psychology, and becoming an armchair psychologist
Speaker 1: can lead to dangerous misdiagnoses, or at least big misunderstandings
Speaker 1: of human behavior. You know, sometimes people just have atypical
Speaker 1: behavior and you don't have to see it as a
Speaker 1: symptom of something bigger. You don't have to pathologize everything
Speaker 1: in dating. And it makes me want to think about
Speaker 1: who are the people who are most likely to do that,
Speaker 1: you know, not just saying oh is that a red flag?
Speaker 1: Or are they being a narcissist? Are they gaslighting? I
Speaker 1: don't know. They seem to have a personality disorder. I
Speaker 1: think he's a sociopath. I think she's a little crazy.
Speaker 1: That's a good word they use, right, Let's talk about
Speaker 1: who those people are who diagnose dates instead of saying, oh,
Speaker 1: we're a good match or not a good match. The
Speaker 1: single people who are most at risk of pathologizing dating
Speaker 1: behaviors are people who have probably suffered trauma in their
Speaker 1: own early lives and as a result, they're missing a
Speaker 1: clear definition of love, of attachment security. In other words,
Speaker 1: they've been hurt in the past, okay, now they want
Speaker 1: to protect themselves from hurt in the future. But psychologists
Speaker 1: would say that they don't have a healthy, internal, working
Speaker 1: model of love. That means they don't know what normal
Speaker 1: feels like, normal love feels like, or typical love. So
Speaker 1: in an attempt to protect themselves from future pain, they
Speaker 1: question their dates behaviors and wonder if their date is dangerous.
Speaker 1: And also, plenty of these people using these psychological terms
Speaker 1: for dates probably picked them up in their or they're
Speaker 1: reading a lot of self help books, so they're getting
Speaker 1: the lingo down, but not the deeper definition. Right now,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to lie to you. Attachment style is important.
Speaker 1: It is the most studied and quantifiable theory of psychology.
Speaker 1: Our early life attachment organization that happens usually in the
Speaker 1: first often the first twelve months of life, when the
Speaker 1: brain triples in size in response to how our caregivers
Speaker 1: took care of us. That becomes our model for love,
Speaker 1: our idea of what love should feel like, and so
Speaker 1: early life attachment has been studied so much that it's
Speaker 1: been correlated with educational attainment, income, number of divorces, even
Speaker 1: physical health. Right, So I'm not going to lie attachment's important.
Speaker 1: But what does that mean. It means you need to
Speaker 1: understand your own attachment style. That's what you need to do.
Speaker 1: You need to understand your own And I just want
Speaker 1: to tell everybody. I tell everybody, I tell my students.
Speaker 1: We take this test in class. If you want to
Speaker 1: know where your attachment style is, you take a test
Speaker 1: written by a researcher by the name of Chris Frayley
Speaker 1: fr L E. Y. Just google the words Chris Frayley
Speaker 1: Attachment test and it'll come up and you can find out.
Speaker 1: Take the longer one. There's a short version along one.
Speaker 1: Take the longer one and you can find out your
Speaker 1: own attachment style. But the point is not to diagnose
Speaker 1: somebody else's attachment style. It's about you and your feelings
Speaker 1: in relationships. So instead of saying I think I'm with
Speaker 1: yet another avoidant person, instead say hmm, I didn't feel
Speaker 1: like my needs were taken care of, and yet I'm
Speaker 1: still feeling strangely attracted to them. I wonder if that's
Speaker 1: my anxious attachment style, rearing up, self diagnose right instead
Speaker 1: of somebody else. Someone asked me this week, how can
Speaker 1: you stop looking for red flags when you're dating and
Speaker 1: instead find some peace and enjoyment while dating. I think
Speaker 1: they have the whole idea of dating wrong. Dating is
Speaker 1: not about finding peace and enjoyment. All dating is fraught
Speaker 1: with anxiety. It's a period of mate evaluation. It's not
Speaker 1: meant to be fun in games, folks. It's about making
Speaker 1: a very serious decision for your life, and so you're
Speaker 1: going to have a healthy amount of anxiety. Oh sure,
Speaker 1: people put on an Academy Award winning performance of Oh
Speaker 1: my god, I'm this, I'm you're this, you're that. Oh
Speaker 1: you like that music, you like that movie. That's great,
Speaker 1: that's fun, let's have another drink. But inside they're both
Speaker 1: really anxious. They're both wanting to be liked. They're both
Speaker 1: wanting to assess the compatibility of the person right now.
Speaker 1: Exception might be somebody looking for a short term relationship,
Speaker 1: which is okay if that's what you're looking for, you know,
Speaker 1: just go have fun, don't assess whatever. We're a condom,
Speaker 1: That's all I'm saying. But you don't need to do
Speaker 1: the big assessment. Look, dating involves strategy. When I use
Speaker 1: that term to a friend this week, she said, it
Speaker 1: sounds like game playing, and I said, oh no, no,
Speaker 1: it's not playing games. It's an ancient art form. And
Speaker 1: you're here today because your parents and their parents, and
Speaker 1: their parents and their parents excelled at the mating game,
Speaker 1: and so you can learn those skills too. Hey, when
Speaker 1: we come back, I'm taking your calls. The numbers one
Speaker 1: eight hundred five two zero one five three four. That's
Speaker 1: one eight hundred five two zero one KFI. If you're shy,
Speaker 1: you can send me a DM on Instagram. Otherwise, give
Speaker 1: me a call one eight hundred five two zero one
Speaker 1: five three four. If you have a relationship question, let
Speaker 1: me weigh in on your love life. You're listening to
Speaker 1: the Doctor Wendy wallsh Show on KFI AM six forty
Speaker 1: 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: KFI AM six forty, you have Doctor Wendy Walsh with you.
Speaker 1: This is the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show, and I am
Speaker 1: taken your calls. If you'd like to give me a call.
Speaker 1: The number is one eight hundred five to zero one
Speaker 1: five three four. That's one eight hundred and five to
Speaker 1: zero one k fi. Okay, producer, Kayla, who do we have?
Speaker 1: We have with the question? I'm sorry? Who is that like?
Speaker 1: Darryl with an oh? Doral? Okay, Hi, Doryl, Darrel, Darryl
Speaker 1: bad connection, Hi Daryl, it's doctor Wendy.
Speaker 4: Yes, thank you for thinking my call. So if surveys
Speaker 4: saying women along guys who are respectful and gentlemen like,
Speaker 4: why do nice guys end up finding being the most
Speaker 4: difficult in finding true love?
Speaker 1: I'll tell you why. So, first of all, Darryl, I
Speaker 1: just want to say this politely, generally the guys. There's
Speaker 1: other research to show guys who self identify as the
Speaker 1: nice guys usually aren't. But I know what you mean.
Speaker 1: What you mean is if I treat a woman with
Speaker 1: kindness and respect, she seems to not be as interested
Speaker 1: as when those other guys treat her badly. Well, that's
Speaker 1: not the woman for you. That's a woman who has
Speaker 1: trauma in her past or has an anxious attachment style,
Speaker 1: and her model for love in her head, says pain
Speaker 1: must be connected with love in order for it to
Speaker 1: be real. And they use the words like passion right, Well,
Speaker 1: that's their own arousal that happens when they meet someone
Speaker 1: who will cause them pain. So your job as a good, kind,
Speaker 1: respectful human is to move away from those women, because
Speaker 1: there's going to be a woman out there who clearly
Speaker 1: is looking for kindness. Now, having said that, Daryl, I
Speaker 1: want to add one more thing. Women love a guy. Well,
Speaker 1: all people of all genders love partners. They have to
Speaker 1: work for a little bit, right, and so women will
Speaker 1: use this term he's too nice, And what they mean
Speaker 1: is does he have any self esteem? Self worth? Does
Speaker 1: he allow me to kind of chase him a little bit?
Speaker 1: And wonder where he is? Is just a little bit,
Speaker 1: because you can be overly attentive and that makes you
Speaker 1: look less valuable no matter what your gender. Anybody who's
Speaker 1: too available, who's too easy, nobody wants, right, and so
Speaker 1: you have to find that fine line between showing them
Speaker 1: a little bit of kindness and respect and then disappearing
Speaker 1: just a little bit. So they go, where'd that person go?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: So there's your answer, Darryl, and I think you can
Speaker 1: do this all right, producer Kayla. Who do we have next?
Speaker 1: We have Mike with the question, Mike, we got the
Speaker 1: guys calling again tonight. Hi, Mike gets doctor Wendy.
Speaker 2: Hi, grieving doctor Wendy.
Speaker 1: What's your question?
Speaker 2: My question is I was in a twenty year verbally
Speaker 2: and emotionally abusive relationship and I left about two years ago,
Speaker 2: and I still find myself wanting to go back.
Speaker 1: Oh, Mike, I know it's painful. Twenty years you were
Speaker 1: in a relationship that you describe as being emotionally and
Speaker 1: verbally abusive, and yet you still miss this person, You
Speaker 1: still want to be with them. And this is exactly
Speaker 1: the kind of situation where instead of going back to
Speaker 1: them and going back to that familiar pain, Remember it's
Speaker 1: familiarity that we crave, not necessarily happiness. Right, Instead of
Speaker 1: going back to that familiar pain, I would encourage you
Speaker 1: to go and see a licensed therapist and find out
Speaker 1: where this began, because I promise you it didn't begin
Speaker 1: with this relationship. It began much earlier. You see, we
Speaker 1: all have this idea in our head. We have a
Speaker 1: model for love, We have an idea for love. Love
Speaker 1: is not about finding happiness. Love is not about finding pleasure.
Speaker 1: Love is about finding the familiar, and our model for
Speaker 1: love gets established in like the first three years of life.
Speaker 1: And so I know you miss this person, but you know,
Speaker 1: like you started off this conversation by saying I was
Speaker 1: in an emotionally and verbally abusive relationship. So you started
Speaker 1: off with your intellectual brain telling me what I'm supposed
Speaker 1: to tell you, which is don't go back. But I
Speaker 1: do want to see you get help from a licensed
Speaker 1: therapist so that you don't choose, because that's the other thing.
Speaker 1: Until you heal, you'll choose a similar person because that's
Speaker 1: what love feels like to you. So you'll fall back
Speaker 1: into the same kind of situation but with a different person,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to see that happen to you. Mike,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for calling. Okay, let me go
Speaker 1: to social media if you want to call. The number
Speaker 1: is one eight hundred five two zero one KFI. That's
Speaker 1: one eight hundred five to zero one five three four.
Speaker 1: All right. Here's a DM that came to me. Hey,
Speaker 1: doctor Wendy, does lining up two to three first and
Speaker 1: second dates in a week count as dating multiple people?
Speaker 1: I'm assuming these two to three first and second dates
Speaker 1: are with different people, right, I think once you get
Speaker 1: to a third date, that's the time to start making decisions,
Speaker 1: and definitely before sex. I guess I need a little
Speaker 1: more information. I'm just looking into dating now after twenty
Speaker 1: three years of marriage. Okay, I understand the question. Now,
Speaker 1: So this person is asking, first of all, what's wrong
Speaker 1: with dating multiple people? You actually got it right. If
Speaker 1: you're not having sex with them, you can see as
Speaker 1: many people as you want in the course of a week.
Speaker 1: But I mean three dates a week is a lot. Okay,
Speaker 1: don't you got to go work, go to the gym,
Speaker 1: get some sleep. That's a lot. Two or three? I
Speaker 1: mean yeah. So I'm just saying take it slow. I'm saying,
Speaker 1: don't have sex with them, and as long as you're
Speaker 1: not having sex with them, you can date them as
Speaker 1: long as you want while you're making your decision. But
Speaker 1: don't get cloudy, meaning don't fall victim to paradox of
Speaker 1: choice where you're presented with so many dates and so
Speaker 1: many well I like this one for this, but I
Speaker 1: like this one for that, and I just can't really decide.
Speaker 1: This is what our brain does when it's presented with
Speaker 1: too much choice. It doesn't make a choice, and if
Speaker 1: it does make a choice, it doesn't value that choice
Speaker 1: very much. So just letting you know, go slow, don't
Speaker 1: have sex till you're ready, and it's okay to date
Speaker 1: a couple or three people at once. That's my feeling,
Speaker 1: that's my permission, all right. When we come back, I'll
Speaker 1: continue to answer your relationship questions live as well as
Speaker 1: go to social media. The handle is at Dr Wendy
Speaker 1: Walsh and the phone numbers one eight hundred and five
Speaker 1: two zero one, five three four. You've been listening to
Speaker 1: Doctor Wendy Walsh. You can always hear us live on
Speaker 1: KFI Am six forty from seven to nine pm on
Speaker 1: Sunday and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.