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 kf I Am six forty.
Speaker 1: You know doctor Wendy Walsh with you. This is the
Speaker 1: Doctor Wendy Wall Show, and I am taking your calls
Speaker 1: and answering your social media questions. Reminder, I'm a psychology professor,
Speaker 1: not a therapist, but I've written three books on relationships
Speaker 1: and I'm obsessed with the science of love. If you'd
Speaker 1: like to give me a call, the number is one
Speaker 1: eight hundred and five two zero one KFI. Okay, Producer Kayla,
Speaker 1: who do we get? We have Paul with the question.
Speaker 1: Hi Paul, It's doctor Wendy Paul. Are you there? Hello, Hidy, Yes,
Speaker 1: do you have a question? Hi?
Speaker 2: Hi, I can here. I turned down my radio, but
Speaker 2: I got.
Speaker 1: You now good. What's your question?
Speaker 2: Well, my question kind of reflects upon the last caller
Speaker 2: and the caller before. I think it was Mike that
Speaker 2: said he was in love with still in love with
Speaker 2: this twenty year old the ex wife I personally was
Speaker 2: married for twenty years, exactly twenty years. We decided to
Speaker 2: get divorced pretty much when the kids got old enough.
Speaker 2: And we we're divorced for over ten almost ten years,
Speaker 2: you know, off and on, you know, we saw each
Speaker 2: other off and on. We couldn't we were inseparable. We
Speaker 2: thought we were going to get back together. Well, we
Speaker 2: ended up getting married again. And this was this was
Speaker 2: four years ago. It was it was beautiful. I mean,
Speaker 2: we ended up, but things were way different now, That's
Speaker 2: what I was going to say.
Speaker 1: I bet it's a different relationship, right, It's.
Speaker 2: Way different now. The I'm I'm diabetic now and I'm
Speaker 2: pretty much blessed with everything that a diabetic has and
Speaker 2: that I'm possibly going to be losing my foot here
Speaker 2: and couple months, oh dear, I but my life is
Speaker 2: going to change, and it's causing me, causing anger, causing
Speaker 2: resentment towards my wife because of the things that we
Speaker 2: do together. We're very outdoorsy, very very we I mean,
Speaker 2: we have a boat, we have already, We do stuff
Speaker 2: outside all the time. And now that pretty much put
Speaker 2: the hall to everything for at least a year. And
Speaker 2: I am just you know, trying to get through this,
Speaker 2: and it's causing a lot of rift in our marriage.
Speaker 1: And earlier I was talking about relationship transitions, right. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you heard. And this is when I
Speaker 1: want to address two things Paul. First of all, thank
Speaker 1: you for being so candid and sharing your situation with us.
Speaker 1: I want to make sure that everybody knows when we
Speaker 1: listened to the previous caller, Mike, who said, you know,
Speaker 1: he'd been in this relationship that was abusive for twenty
Speaker 1: years and why does he still miss her? And then
Speaker 1: you said, you guys were married twenty years and then
Speaker 1: you got divorced, and then on and off for ten years,
Speaker 1: and then you got married again to each other four
Speaker 1: years later. The most common length of marriage where divorce
Speaker 1: is the highest is about around twenty years, when the
Speaker 1: empty nest happens, right, and then they haven't repurposed their relationship.
Speaker 1: And so I want to remind you that you probably
Speaker 1: divorce not only because of the kids getting older and
Speaker 1: leaving the house, but also because sometimes relationships become so
Speaker 1: ingrown and meshed, and in order for people to grow
Speaker 1: as an individual, they feel they have to separate to
Speaker 1: do it. Now, you guys are at the stage where
Speaker 1: you're pretting presented with a challenge, which is you finally
Speaker 1: got your groove back, you got remarried to each other,
Speaker 1: you were able to communicate I hope your needs and
Speaker 1: able to establish a new kind of relationship that you describe.
Speaker 1: And now your relationship is about to hit a big
Speaker 1: vulnerable point a transition, and I would suggest again getting
Speaker 1: into the hands of a good therapist so that you
Speaker 1: can have a co pilot navigating this transition, because the
Speaker 1: relationship contract is going to have to be rewritten yet again,
Speaker 1: and you're obviously having an emotional experience as well as
Speaker 1: your physical health experience, right, and she's going to have
Speaker 1: a reaction to it. And sometimes having a neutral party
Speaker 1: helping you make sense of all the chaotic feelings that
Speaker 1: come up when an unplanned for transition like this happens
Speaker 1: is the thing to do. So, Paul, I wish you
Speaker 1: the best. I wish you guys continue to love and
Speaker 1: support of each other. I personally think if you can
Speaker 1: get through divorce and then getting back together, that this
Speaker 1: is a piece of cake and you're going to be
Speaker 1: able to get there. But thanks for calling, Paul. All right,
Speaker 1: let me move to social media. Dear doctor Wendy, I
Speaker 1: get the ick because I have a guy that will
Speaker 1: not use a condom, he complains when I try to
Speaker 1: get him to use one. I feel he doesn't respect
Speaker 1: me because he ignores my request. Should this be a
Speaker 1: deal breaker. I don't even have to think on this one. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's a deal breaker. Your needs are being ignored. Your
Speaker 1: body is being put in peril. No, I'm telling you
Speaker 1: one hundred percent. That's the easiest test to find out
Speaker 1: if somebody would be a good mate to say, hey,
Speaker 1: put a condom on. If he says no, oh, then
Speaker 1: you're not gonna walk the baby a stroller. Dad, I
Speaker 1: don't know. You don't respect my needs. Forget it, get
Speaker 1: rid of them. Pay attention to that ick, she said,
Speaker 1: I got the ick. Yeah, you get the ick. Because
Speaker 1: it's time to say goodbye to him. That's a deal breaker.
Speaker 1: I don't care how cute he is. I don't care
Speaker 1: how much money he makes. I hear you right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but but he does this, I don't care. This is
Speaker 1: a life and death decision. He could bring any number
Speaker 1: of germs into your body to hurt you. He could
Speaker 1: bring an unwanted child into your body. Just don't know. Goodbye,
Speaker 1: deal Baker, all right, dear doctor, Wendy. I have a
Speaker 1: best friend since I was six years old who recently
Speaker 1: got divorced. It's a very tough time for her. My
Speaker 1: husband told me that she has been ooh flirty and
Speaker 1: suggestive with him. He wouldn't lie to me. I feel
Speaker 1: really angry with her. What's the best way to handle
Speaker 1: the situation? Okay, let me tell you what's happening. This
Speaker 1: is so common. So what happens when people go through divorce? First,
Speaker 1: I want to remind you that divorce is highly contagious
Speaker 1: within social circles, as marriage is too. By the way,
Speaker 1: I always say, if you're dating, always ask the person
Speaker 1: you're dating, like how many of their friends have gotten
Speaker 1: married recently or are engaged? Right, Because it's very contagious.
Speaker 1: Divorce is also contagious. So, but when people first go
Speaker 1: through a breakup or divorce, they want to get their
Speaker 1: mojo back. They want to basically determine what their value
Speaker 1: is in the mating marketplace, so they're going to naturally
Speaker 1: be a little flirty. They're testing boundaries, etc. Now, you
Speaker 1: don't do it with your best friend's husband. You and
Speaker 1: I both know this is a moral dilemma here, and
Speaker 1: you're really feeling angry. You have to tell her your feelings.
Speaker 1: Now she's gonna deny. I don't know. My husband said
Speaker 1: that it's not even true. I wasn't even dressed at
Speaker 1: sexy and I would just be nice to him. She's
Speaker 1: going to get defensive. So in order to prevent her
Speaker 1: from getting defensive, here's what you're going to First of all,
Speaker 1: you need to have seen something, because when you report
Speaker 1: back on gossip it's really hard. My husband said, you
Speaker 1: need to actually witness something and then say later, Hey,
Speaker 1: you know when we were all over at my place
Speaker 1: and I noticed you put your hand on his arm
Speaker 1: a little bit when you were talking, I didn't like that.
Speaker 1: Stayed on your feelings and what you witnessed. Just stay
Speaker 1: with what you see, what you hear her doing, what
Speaker 1: you can observe, and then talk about your feelings about it.
Speaker 1: That made me feel uncomfortable. I'd like you to stop
Speaker 1: doing that. That's all you do. Talk about what you
Speaker 1: saw or heard from hersey whatever, and then talk about
Speaker 1: how it fell to you, and then give her the
Speaker 1: new prescription. That's how you let people know that they
Speaker 1: pissed you off. All right, I think we have time?
Speaker 1: Do we have time for one more. Yes, okay, hey,
Speaker 1: doctor Wendy. Oh interesting. I wear wigs all the time,
Speaker 1: and no one but me sees my real hair. A
Speaker 1: fellow I am dating requested I take it off on
Speaker 1: one of our sleepovers. I feel he won't like me
Speaker 1: anymore if he sees me without it. He thinks I'm
Speaker 1: not comfortable with him if I don't show him my hair.
Speaker 1: Who is in the wrong. You're both in the wrong
Speaker 1: because you're having sleepovers before you have trust and intimacy.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm gonna say. Okay, like, that's a lot.
Speaker 1: You're going to expose most of your body, but not all.
Speaker 1: There's gonna be like pick and shoes here on which
Speaker 1: body parts get to show up in bed. So there,
Speaker 1: you're wrong, But he's also wrong for I mean, he's right,
Speaker 1: and you're right. You have a right to protect yourself.
Speaker 1: But you moved way too fast towards physical intimacy without
Speaker 1: being ready to be fully physically intimate. Right. I remember
Speaker 1: one time, Okay we'll go unnamed, but one person said
Speaker 1: to me before we had sex for the first time,
Speaker 1: we had been dating a little bit, and I thought
Speaker 1: he was going to he was so serious. He said,
Speaker 1: there's something you have to know before we before we
Speaker 1: have sex. I'm just so embarrassed about this. But you know,
Speaker 1: if we're going to be intimate, I think she'd know
Speaker 1: everything about my body. And I'm like, oh, on on,
Speaker 1: he's got three of them. Is what is happening here?
Speaker 1: What is it is happening? And so I take it
Speaker 1: very seriously. I say yes, what is it? And he goes, well,
Speaker 1: I was hiking recently and a lot of downhill and
Speaker 1: my hiking boots I lost a toe, now, swear to God,
Speaker 1: to him that was like he'd lost every hair on
Speaker 1: his body or something. And I was like, so, like,
Speaker 1: I probably won't be sucking toes. I don't know, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't why, who cares? Right? But it was a
Speaker 1: big deal to him. So I had to ask act
Speaker 1: really respectful. Right, So I think you need to say
Speaker 1: to him, when I feel safer, I'll be able to
Speaker 1: do this for now, Let's not be physically intimate until
Speaker 1: we get to that place emotionally, right. It's perfectly okay
Speaker 1: to do that, all right? So do I have time
Speaker 1: for one more? Are we going to the quickly? Okay?
Speaker 1: Dear doctor Wendy, I'm dating for the first time in
Speaker 1: almost a year. Congratulation. I was avoidant because relationships make
Speaker 1: me anxious. How can I help myself not overanalyze every
Speaker 1: single thing? Yeah, over it's the word over analyze. We're
Speaker 1: supposed to be analyzing, but just don't over analyze. I
Speaker 1: hope you're not over analyzing yourself. You should be just
Speaker 1: assessing the other partner and relaxing and having good time. Look,
Speaker 1: if you suffer from social anxiety and you have problems
Speaker 1: presenting yourself in intimate situations, this is something that's so
Speaker 1: highly treatable in therapy, So I would get yourself a wingman.
Speaker 1: Not sure your therapist is going to go on a
Speaker 1: date with you, but you know somebody who can talk
Speaker 1: to about strategies for this because they are easily easy
Speaker 1: to overcome. But I'm glad you're out there. That's wonderful. Hey,
Speaker 1: when we come back, it is spring, a very exciting
Speaker 1: time of year. But there's something interesting that happens in
Speaker 1: relationships only, not only mostly in the springtime. I'll tell
Speaker 1: you about it when we come back. You're listening to
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.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Dr Wendywall Show on KFI AM
Speaker 1: six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You know
Speaker 1: spring is about growth, isn't It isn't about new beginnings,
Speaker 1: isn't about new life and all that. Why is it
Speaker 1: the season with the most breakups? Well, there have been
Speaker 1: many studies that point to this, especially Facebook's own relationship
Speaker 1: status data. Did you know Facebook now can track relationship
Speaker 1: trends because they see when people put like in a relationship,
Speaker 1: out of relationship, single again, whatever. Apparently there are two
Speaker 1: major spikes during the year when there are lots of breakups.
Speaker 1: You're going to be surprised about one. It's two weeks
Speaker 1: before Christmas. In a couple weeks before Christmas, it's almost
Speaker 1: like people are like, I am not going through the
Speaker 1: holidays with you, or if it's a young relationship, like
Speaker 1: they haven't been seeing each other. It's like I don't
Speaker 1: want to bring it home to the family. It's not
Speaker 1: going to happen. So mid December that's when we see
Speaker 1: people changing their relationship status a lot on Facebook, and
Speaker 1: the other time is April springtime. I can't believe that
Speaker 1: breakups bloom in spring more than any other time. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about why.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 1: First of all, cuffing season is finally over, or if
Speaker 1: you don't know, what cuffing season is, is the dark
Speaker 1: days of winter beginning in November before Thanksgiving, where people
Speaker 1: think it's time to hunker down and cocoon for those
Speaker 1: dark days. I'm gonna get somebody, right, so no one
Speaker 1: wants to be alone at their maybe Christmas office party.
Speaker 1: They don't want to have questions from those old aunties
Speaker 1: at their holiday parties saying why aren't you married? Don't
Speaker 1: you have somebody? So they cuffed down, right, They just
Speaker 1: they literally ignore a bunch of red flags and go,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take this person for the holidays. It's gonna
Speaker 1: be fine. Well spring happens and cuffing season is over.
Speaker 1: Then they look at that person, I'm like, how did
Speaker 1: I ignore all those red flags? That's one reason. Another reason,
Speaker 1: now we're past Valentine's Day, there's something called the post
Speaker 1: Valentine's Day effect, or as I like to call it,
Speaker 1: Singles Awareness Day. As soon as you hit the middle
Speaker 1: of February, people realize how unhappy they might be in
Speaker 1: their relationship, that everybody else seems to be having the
Speaker 1: most romantic time and they're not so. But by March
Speaker 1: people are starting to act on these ideas right and
Speaker 1: into April. But the other thing is I think having
Speaker 1: to do with the fact that we just get outside.
Speaker 1: You know, we've been hibernating, We've had all our Netflix marathons,
Speaker 1: we're at outdoor gatherings, vacations, and we're meeting new people.
Speaker 1: The world feels expansive, our mating marketplace feels bigger. So
Speaker 1: we look around and go, should I put up with
Speaker 1: this person? Because look at all this opportunity out in
Speaker 1: the bright sunshine. And speaking of that, we clean house
Speaker 1: right spring. Cleaning is not only something we do because
Speaker 1: it's time to do it in our house, and if
Speaker 1: you haven't cleaned your house, this is the time. Clean
Speaker 1: out those closets the garage too. This is the season.
Speaker 1: But it's a metaphor because when we exp eternally organized,
Speaker 1: it's a bid for us to internally organize. So you'll
Speaker 1: see people like cleaning like crazy because they're really trying
Speaker 1: to clean up inside. They're going to declutter their emotional lives, right,
Speaker 1: and maybe ask themselves, is this relationship helping me? Is
Speaker 1: it helping me grow? Do I feel seen? Do I
Speaker 1: feel connected? The other thing that happens in spring, I
Speaker 1: know with me, temperatures start to rise, we start to
Speaker 1: wear less clothes, which means we suddenly become very conscious
Speaker 1: of our bodies. And so people start to eat less,
Speaker 1: they move more. They're getting in shape for bikini season.
Speaker 1: When you start to get in shape, that increases your hormones. Yeah,
Speaker 1: those sexy hormones. But it also I mean, what is
Speaker 1: getting in shape? It's getting yourself ready for the mating marketplace. Right.
Speaker 1: I also, because I am someone who suffers from seasonal
Speaker 1: effective disorder, know that when the spring comes, my mood lifts.
Speaker 1: I feel so happy. People who do suffer from depression
Speaker 1: and anxiety around the darker days of the year feel
Speaker 1: themselves uplifted. Now, how does that cause a breakup? Because
Speaker 1: you look at your curmudgeon partner and you're like, you
Speaker 1: know what, they know, I'm not hanging out with that.
Speaker 1: I'm happy now. And also, some people just want to
Speaker 1: be single for the summer, especially young people. It's like
Speaker 1: I'm going to be traveling, and if they're in maybe
Speaker 1: they've got a college boyfriend or girlfriend and they're going
Speaker 1: home for the summer to work. They're like, I don't
Speaker 1: want to be tied down, right, So, yes, spring is
Speaker 1: breakup season. But I would not be doing my job
Speaker 1: if I did not say that. There's a psychological mechanism
Speaker 1: that I haven't talked about. I talk about a lot
Speaker 1: which is attachment theory. Right, So people who might have
Speaker 1: a secure, anxious, avoidant or fearful avoidant attachment style, let's
Speaker 1: see how spring plays into that. Well, somebody who was
Speaker 1: emotionally avoidant values autonomy and personal space, and so in
Speaker 1: spring ah feeling of new growth, reinvention, desire for independence.
Speaker 1: People might feel suffocated after the winter, hunkering down in
Speaker 1: cuffing season. Now, people with an anxious attachment actually probably
Speaker 1: sense their partner, if their partner is avoidant moving away,
Speaker 1: they crave closeness, They fear abandonment. So the social buzz
Speaker 1: that happens around spring might trigger fears of being left behind,
Speaker 1: and this makes the clingy partner more clingy, and that
Speaker 1: pushes the partner away. And you know, people with a
Speaker 1: secure attachment style Let's assume they don't break up, But
Speaker 1: if they do, they're only going to break up if
Speaker 1: the relationship clearly doesn't align with their values or their
Speaker 1: new growth. So attachment plays a role into it all
Speaker 1: the time as well. If you've ever been blindsided by
Speaker 1: a breakup, I mean it's rare that two people come together,
Speaker 1: have a meeting and say, you know what, No you
Speaker 1: go first? No, no, you go first. Well, I was
Speaker 1: thinking maybe we should break up. Oh, I was thinking
Speaker 1: just the same thing. Never happens except in the movies. Instead,
Speaker 1: there's one person who's been on a slow burn getting
Speaker 1: ready for the breakup, and the other partners completely oblivious.
Speaker 1: Uh huh. There's actually new research that looks at the
Speaker 1: science of falling out of love, or as I like
Speaker 1: to say, when that window closes. Let me talk about
Speaker 1: how this works and this new study. When we come back.
Speaker 1: You are listening to the Doctor Wendy Wall Show on
Speaker 1: KFI 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 home stretch of the Doctor Wendy
Speaker 1: Wall Show on KFI AM six forty Live wear on
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app. You know, breakup's hurt. I've talked about
Speaker 1: breakers for a lot. I've talked about how to get
Speaker 1: over breakups, what we need to do. But there's a
Speaker 1: group of researchers who just published a study in the
Speaker 1: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology that found that when
Speaker 1: relationships fall apart, they don't just randomly deteriorate. They actually
Speaker 1: follow a two phase decline. Oh no, you're not. You're
Speaker 1: gonna look at your partner totally differently after I explain
Speaker 1: the two phase decline. Look, plenty of people stay in
Speaker 1: relationships that aren't so happy anymore, and they do it
Speaker 1: because they're in love with hope and they just hope
Speaker 1: that things are gonna get better. But this new study
Speaker 1: indicates that for at least one partner, there's a point
Speaker 1: of no return. They call this a transition. I love
Speaker 1: how the psychobabble of researchers a transition into terminal decline.
Speaker 1: We're saving the relationship is pretty much impossible. All right,
Speaker 1: let me break it down. So the inn the study,
Speaker 1: researchers tracked thousands of couples over time, and they measured
Speaker 1: two things. They asked them about their general life satisfaction
Speaker 1: and their satisfaction in their relationship, and then they compared
Speaker 1: people who eventually separated with people who stayed together. Right,
Speaker 1: So they followed thousands of couples over a few years,
Speaker 1: quite a number of years in fact, as looking at
Speaker 1: this data, I think it was longitudinal studies that existed.
Speaker 1: And then they compared those that broke up with those
Speaker 1: that stayed together. This is a German study, by the way.
Speaker 1: German researchers. They found that couples who go on to
Speaker 1: break up typically experience a mild decline in happiness for years,
Speaker 1: but then it's followed by this dramatic drop by at
Speaker 1: least one partner, drop in happiness by one partners. So
Speaker 1: what the researchers say, I'm going to explain these two
Speaker 1: phases in just a second. But what the researcher say
Speaker 1: is it doesn't matter how many years a couple has
Speaker 1: been together. This is not a predictor of whether they're
Speaker 1: going to break up. So some of these breakups were
Speaker 1: people who had been together twenty years. Some of the
Speaker 1: breakups were people that were together two years. Right. What
Speaker 1: this research shows is that the time remaining until the
Speaker 1: breakup tells you more about the relationship health health. So
Speaker 1: they talk about time to separation. Okay, so let's talk
Speaker 1: about these phases. The first phase. So breakups happen in
Speaker 1: two stages. The first is called the pre terminal phase.
Speaker 1: So what they found by looking at the data is
Speaker 1: that there is a small decline in relationship satisfaction by
Speaker 1: both parts nurse and one partner has a big decline
Speaker 1: in life satisfaction. Like in other words, I'm not happy
Speaker 1: in my relationship and I'm not happy in my life.
Speaker 1: I don't like my job, I don't like my friends,
Speaker 1: and I like where we live, whatever it may be
Speaker 1: that associates life satisfaction. So at least one partner has
Speaker 1: a two pronged dissatisfaction. They're not happy in their relationship
Speaker 1: and they're not happy with their life. But the other
Speaker 1: partner is just not happy in their relationship. They know
Speaker 1: something's going on, so they're the ones that hang on
Speaker 1: and wait until there is this transition point. No, I
Speaker 1: got to say, I didn't need science to tell me
Speaker 1: this because back in the day, when I was single,
Speaker 1: when my friends were in relationships whatever, women always talked
Speaker 1: about this moment where the window just closes for a
Speaker 1: woman and there's nothing he could say or do to
Speaker 1: get you back, and you're just filling time until you're
Speaker 1: ready to leap right. THEO we call it. Once that
Speaker 1: window closes, there's nothing you can do. Well, these researchers
Speaker 1: call it the transitional point, that window closing. Now, how
Speaker 1: long does it take to break up after that window closes?
Speaker 1: This is really interesting. The researchers found, and they looked
Speaker 1: at thousands of couples. It takes anywhere from seven months
Speaker 1: to two years. Now, I remember years ago, I had
Speaker 1: a woman on this show who is like not a lawyer,
Speaker 1: but she's like an investor, and she invests in really
Speaker 1: high end divorces, right, because what happens in really wealthy
Speaker 1: couples is one person likes to hide the money and
Speaker 1: leave the other one house rich, cash poor till they're
Speaker 1: forced to sell the house. Is the common thing. And
Speaker 1: you can guess the genders on that anyway. And so
Speaker 1: she says, divorces happen two to four years before anybody
Speaker 1: says the d word, because people are busy. You know,
Speaker 1: in traditional heterosexual relationships, the dudes are busy stashing money
Speaker 1: with family members or offshore accounts, and the women are
Speaker 1: busy getting boob jobs and butt jobs and their lips injected,
Speaker 1: all because I just want to feel fresh, you know.
Speaker 1: But actually they're both unconsciously or consciously planning for the divorce.
Speaker 1: So this research is interesting because it kind of supports that.
Speaker 1: It says, you know, once that transition point happens, it's
Speaker 1: seven months to two years before the actual breakup happens,
Speaker 1: and then it comes the terminal phase. In that timeframe,
Speaker 1: the terminal phase is characterized by a sharp decline in
Speaker 1: relationship satisfaction. But get this, less of a decline in
Speaker 1: life satisfaction. So here's what the researchers think that once
Speaker 1: one partner has closed the window and went, Okay, I'm out,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to stay in this relationship, the other
Speaker 1: partner's hanging on with hope. But what is that other
Speaker 1: partner doing and why is their life satisfaction going up?
Speaker 1: Because they're either shopping for new maids, having affairs, getting
Speaker 1: in shape, getting you know, their finances in order. They're preparing,
Speaker 1: they're preparing, and the other person just waiting by the
Speaker 1: study also found that many people are blindsided by a breakup.
Speaker 1: People who were the recipients of the breakup entered the
Speaker 1: terminal phase much later. Oh, that's why breakups do feel asymmetrical.
Speaker 1: One person wants out and the other one doesn't. So
Speaker 1: they wanted to look at these couples and say, is
Speaker 1: there a way to save the relationship. It's one of
Speaker 1: the most common questions I get, doctor, Wendy, Do you
Speaker 1: think it's worth it? Or should I throw in the towel?
Speaker 1: Is it worth working on? Of course I always say
Speaker 1: it's worth working on, even if you're just going to
Speaker 1: go to marital therapy to do some conscious and coupling.
Speaker 1: But most people go to marriage and family therapists way
Speaker 1: too late, when they're already in the terminal phase. So
Speaker 1: these researchers say, the key is that you want to
Speaker 1: get there in the pre terminal phase when you're both
Speaker 1: feeling a little eh, this isn't going so great. I'm not.
Speaker 1: At least one of you is like, I'm not so
Speaker 1: happy with my life. Ayeh, just feel a little h
Speaker 1: and the other one saying, well, maybe we'll just wait
Speaker 1: and see if things get better. No, no, no, no no.
Speaker 1: If you suspect things are declining, Do not wait for
Speaker 1: them to get better, get into couple's therapy. That's all
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say. Hey, that brings it to an end.
Speaker 1: I love being with you guys every Sunday from seven
Speaker 1: to nine. Sometimes we end a little early because there's
Speaker 1: other important special stuff for you. If you miss any
Speaker 1: part of the show. Here's what you need to do.
Speaker 1: You need to download the iHeartRadio app. You need in
Speaker 1: the search bar, you need to write in doctor Wendy
Speaker 1: Walsh and there I come. There's my face and then
Speaker 1: there's a little button above my face and it says
Speaker 1: preset hit that button. And then whenever you open the app,
Speaker 1: all the shows you missed will come up, and any
Speaker 1: part you missed will come up. It'll be great. So
Speaker 1: if you ever miss any just iHeartRadio app. Otherwise I'm
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Speaker 1: It's all my always, my pleasure to be with you. You've
Speaker 1: been listening to the Doctor Wendy Walls Show on KFI
Speaker 1: Am six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You've
Speaker 1: been listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh. You can always hear
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Speaker 1: nine pm on Sunday, and anytime on demand on the
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