Speaker 1: This is doctor Wendy Walsh and you're listening to KFI
Speaker 1: AM six forty the Doctor Wendy Waalsh Show on demand
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app KFI AM six forty. You have
Speaker 1: Doctor Wendy Walsh with you. This is the Doctor Wendy
Speaker 1: Walsh Show. You know, I love to talk about the
Speaker 1: science of love. Not a lot of love in the air,
Speaker 1: bombs in the air. Instead, we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: how what's going on internationally and on our news channels
Speaker 1: it might be impacting our mental health. Also, should universities
Speaker 1: be teaching students how to love the science of love?
Speaker 1: And later in the show, my take on the new
Speaker 1: romantic comedy. The material lists some things they got really
Speaker 1: right and a few things they didn't get wrong but
Speaker 1: they forgot. I want to welcome Sam. It's good to
Speaker 1: see you, Samseyah. I'm usually having rat Wohl there. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I took over. I'm here. Hi, fabulous, Hi, and you
Speaker 1: have someone working with you. Hi, Nikki, she's not on
Speaker 1: my good How are you, Nicky. Nice to meet you,
Speaker 1: to see you look good. Thank you well, thank you.
Speaker 1: That really means a lot of a woman of a
Speaker 1: certain age. Heather Brooker. Always good to see you, my dear. Hi,
Speaker 1: you too happy to be here. You've had a busy
Speaker 1: couple of days, I'm sure, and you know there's going
Speaker 1: to be a moment. I swear, No, I don't swear
Speaker 1: it's not really going to happen. But I said to myself,
Speaker 1: you know, I prepared all this wonderful content to talk
Speaker 1: about on my show, and I bet you I'm going
Speaker 1: to say, hey, we have to go to the newsroom
Speaker 1: with Heather Brooker because something's happening.
Speaker 2: I would not be surprised.
Speaker 1: But let's knock on wood just in case. Let's knock
Speaker 1: on wood. Because I'm a nice, easy Sunday evening, right,
Speaker 1: and plenty of my listeners want to hear more about
Speaker 1: the science of love. Let us just as a side note,
Speaker 1: I want to hear more about what you think about
Speaker 1: the materialist. Yes, I'm very excited for that. I went
Speaker 1: with a group of girlfriends because I had to. So
Speaker 1: what happened is I got called from all these reporters
Speaker 1: like on Newsweek and Yahoo and whatever to comment on it,
Speaker 1: and I hadn't seen it. So I his friand like
Speaker 1: watching trailers and reading synopsis and trying to give them
Speaker 1: some smart sounding things, and then I went to see
Speaker 1: it and I was like, Oh, there's so much more
Speaker 1: I could be saying. I'll be saying it a little while.
Speaker 1: But first we do have to talk about our mental
Speaker 1: health after the bombing in Iran. First of all, I
Speaker 1: have a feeling that I like to call not like
Speaker 1: to call I have to call cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance.
Speaker 1: I have a great deal of empathy and compassion. And
Speaker 1: while I am very patriotic, I am an American in
Speaker 1: some ways as an immigrant, I feel like I'm more
Speaker 1: American than Americans because I actually had to stand up
Speaker 1: I think George Bush was in charge then, and to
Speaker 1: swear to you know, raise take up arms for my country.
Speaker 1: There were words I had to say that you know,
Speaker 1: many Americans are just born you have to but they
Speaker 1: don't never have to actually take an oath, and I
Speaker 1: had to take an oath as to become a patriotic American.
Speaker 1: I'm also a Canadian, so therefore I have great empathy
Speaker 1: and compassion for what's been going on in the last
Speaker 1: six months or so in Canada. And I also have many,
Speaker 1: many friends who are Persian and In fact, just last
Speaker 1: week I spoke at the Persian or the Iranian Jewish
Speaker 1: Iranian Association. Blah blah blah blah. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of words, but it's a beautiful ballroom, and I met
Speaker 1: some fabulous women and so many k if I listeners.
Speaker 1: They came up to me and said, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I love your show. It was really wonderful. My therapist
Speaker 1: of twenty seven years on and off is Persian. When
Speaker 1: I hear a Persian accent, because you know, therapy is
Speaker 1: kind of like reparenting. It is like hearing my mother talk.
Speaker 1: You know, I have this warm affinity and I asked her,
Speaker 1: you know, does she have relatives over there? She worried,
Speaker 1: and she said, everybody in my country is my brother
Speaker 1: and sister. And that is how I feel about Canadians too,
Speaker 1: and that is how I feel about Americans. So this
Speaker 1: is why I'm experiencing cognitive dissonance, and that is the
Speaker 1: ability to hold opposing feelings at the same time in
Speaker 1: your head. You see, many people feel like they can't
Speaker 1: stand the feeling of being on the fence and not knowing,
Speaker 1: so they grab one feeling and hold it tight and
Speaker 1: literally reject the other. Feeling when it's okay to feel
Speaker 1: it all. And even when war isn't in our backyard,
Speaker 1: it can certainly be alive in our minds. It can
Speaker 1: quietly impact our mental health. So when the news broke
Speaker 1: last night about the bombing in Iran, many Americans and
Speaker 1: definitely including me, turned to our phones. We were scrolling, refreshing,
Speaker 1: we were doomed, scrolling. Even this morning, I was up
Speaker 1: there going. I kept saying, Julio, my husband. He's on
Speaker 1: with Farreed Zakaria and CBS. Margaret Brenner, by the way,
Speaker 1: she's so official. I love her. I love her. She
Speaker 1: had Marco Rubio, and he was trying to not answer
Speaker 1: our questions, and I kept saying, go to Fox, see
Speaker 1: what they're saying, see what they're saying. I want to
Speaker 1: see it. I need to see every side of a
Speaker 1: question and a situation. I really think of myself as
Speaker 1: you know, I hate saying right or left or centralist,
Speaker 1: none of that. I think of myself as a curious
Speaker 1: mind who wants as many different facts and opinions as
Speaker 1: I can get a hold of. So anyway, there was
Speaker 1: a lot of scrolling, refreshing, doom scrolling, turning, on TV's
Speaker 1: turning channels, et cetera. According to the American Psychological Association,
Speaker 1: about seventy percent of US adults report that news in
Speaker 1: general causes them significant stress. In the case of war,
Speaker 1: even far away wars, that stress can manifest in very
Speaker 1: real ways. It can impact your sleep, It can increase
Speaker 1: your anxiety, your irritability. If you are susceptible depression, it
Speaker 1: can bring on feelings of depression. For people who have
Speaker 1: had past trauma, this can reactivate post traumatic stress symptoms.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: The word for it is vicarious trauma.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It's where you feel traumatized, but not by the direct experience,
Speaker 1: but by witnessing or hearing the suffering of others. And
Speaker 1: I'm telling you, with this twenty four hour media coverage
Speaker 1: and all the social media clips and all people arguing
Speaker 1: back and forth with their opinions, it's no wonder that
Speaker 1: our nervous systems cannot find peace today. Before I came
Speaker 1: to work, I was feeling tired because I took a
Speaker 1: killer studio MDR class. If you have never taken Studio MDR.
Speaker 1: They don't pay me to say anything. I'm just saying
Speaker 1: it's the best workout on the planet. But you're exhausted afterwards.
Speaker 1: I laid down, and my heart rate in a laying
Speaker 1: down position. I don't know if you know, the average
Speaker 1: heart rate of a human at rash should be between
Speaker 1: sixty and seventy beats a minute. I'm in pretty good shape.
Speaker 1: I wake up in the morning, minds around fifty five.
Speaker 1: I like that. I laid down and it was seventy
Speaker 1: eight seventy eight, so I took a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: deep breaths. I got it down to sixty eight. The
Speaker 1: funny little aside, I was watching my Apple Watch. It
Speaker 1: was taking my heart. Right as I was doing my
Speaker 1: deep breathing, I thought about Julio, and I thought about
Speaker 1: how much I love him, and it's shot back up again.
Speaker 1: Not because he brings me stress, but I think love
Speaker 1: does make your heart go bit or bad or even
Speaker 1: five years later. Anyway. We need to do this for
Speaker 1: our mental health. We need to limit our exposure. We
Speaker 1: need to turn off all those AutoPlay videos as much
Speaker 1: as possible. I mentioned earlier as I was briefly on
Speaker 1: the Chris Merrill Show, we have to learn to name
Speaker 1: our feelings. When you can give your feelings a name,
Speaker 1: it takes away the power. And also instead of saying
Speaker 1: I am mad, say I'm feeling mad. Big difference. One
Speaker 1: is your whole identity and the other is huh, that's
Speaker 1: a feeling, it's a messenger. Wonder what I should do
Speaker 1: with that? Right? How can I not turn that into
Speaker 1: negative behavior? Hey, there are things you can do that
Speaker 1: are good that will relieve your stress. Donate to humanitarian organizations,
Speaker 1: Write to your elected officials if you have an opinion,
Speaker 1: attend a piece for vigil, do something that helps other people.
Speaker 1: And like I did today, use some grounding practices deep breathing, nature, walks, prayer,
Speaker 1: hugging your loved ones, hugging your pets. Right, so, even
Speaker 1: though the bombs are falling thousands of miles away, I
Speaker 1: know those shockwaves can ripple through all of our minds.
Speaker 1: I want you to be gentle with yourself this week
Speaker 1: and everyone in your family. Forgive people stress. Response isn't weakness, Okay,
Speaker 1: it's really a sign of empathy. When we come back,
Speaker 1: we're going to have one of my mentors and role models,
Speaker 1: doctor Kevin Vulcan from California State University, Channel Islands. He's
Speaker 1: got some things to say about how war. He actually
Speaker 1: teaches a course on Nazi psychology, but how war actually
Speaker 1: helps leaders gain more love and more power. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about this phenomenon and a few other things before we
Speaker 1: come back. You are listening to the Doctor Wendy Walsh
Speaker 1: Show on KFI AM six forty. We're live everywhere on
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app KFI AM six forty. You've got Doctor
Speaker 1: Wendy Walsh with you. This is the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show.
Speaker 1: As we continue to talk a little bit about our
Speaker 1: mental health in the face of the bombing in Iran,
Speaker 1: I wanted to invite on the show someone who I
Speaker 1: consider to be a mentor and someone who I really respect.
Speaker 1: You've heard him before, psychology professor doctor Kevin Vulcan from
Speaker 1: California State University, Channel Islands. Hi, doctor Kevin, how are.
Speaker 3: You, Hi, Wendy, how are you doing good?
Speaker 1: I know you teach some things about leaders, the psychology
Speaker 1: of leaders and how followers follow them. We were talking earlier,
Speaker 1: and you have a particular take on what's going on
Speaker 1: and how it can actually help the leaders of both countries.
Speaker 1: Can you explain that.
Speaker 3: Well? I think you know, from a psychology point of view,
Speaker 3: you know there's certain psychological patterns that tend to play
Speaker 3: out over and over and over again anytime we have
Speaker 3: conflicts like this, and these things have been going on
Speaker 3: for a long time, especially with Iran and the United
Speaker 3: States and Iran and Israel, and I think knowing those
Speaker 3: and being aware of those can be something that can
Speaker 3: be helpful.
Speaker 1: And what are the things that have been going.
Speaker 3: On, Well, there's a lot of you know, again, there's
Speaker 3: a lot of external things in the world, actual real
Speaker 3: life things that are out in the real world that
Speaker 3: are you know, important concerns and things people should be
Speaker 3: thinking about. And people have varying opinions on those kinds
Speaker 3: of things. You know, whether we should have bombed Iran
Speaker 3: or that we shouldn't have, or was this the right
Speaker 3: time to do it, or should we have waited and
Speaker 3: tried diplomacy. Those are all real world concerns. But from
Speaker 3: the point of view of psychology, you know, we have
Speaker 3: a lot of things that we call and say ecology projection,
Speaker 3: where we take all the things that we don't like
Speaker 3: about ourselves and we project them onto the other guy
Speaker 3: or the other group, and the other group does the
Speaker 3: same thing to us simultaneously, and then we have ourselves
Speaker 3: mutually projecting these negative things on each other, and that
Speaker 3: allows us to you humanize the other, to make the
Speaker 3: other group somehow, you know, a target for violence, those
Speaker 3: kind of things. And I think, you know, given the
Speaker 3: history of Iran and America, there's a lot of that
Speaker 3: going on. There's certainly a lot of that going on
Speaker 3: with Israel and Iran and other places as well. And
Speaker 3: I think one thing to be on the outlook for,
Speaker 3: looking out for is the idea of, you know, how,
Speaker 3: you know, to pull back those projections. Can we look
Speaker 3: at the situation going on without projecting our bad stuff,
Speaker 3: things that we don't like about ourselves on to the
Speaker 3: other person. And this is the job that I think diplomats,
Speaker 3: you know, have to take on. And this is very
Speaker 3: hard because the diplomats act from a kind of rational
Speaker 3: actor model. You know.
Speaker 1: I want to interrupt you to help, but to give
Speaker 1: people like firm example, you're talking about projection, and I'm
Speaker 1: hearing the theory of Carl Jung's shadow. When I was
Speaker 1: an undergrad in psychology, our teacher had a really great
Speaker 1: little exercise. So I'm going to teach you about Carl
Speaker 1: Jung's shadow today and what I want you to do
Speaker 1: is take out a piece of paper, and I want
Speaker 1: you to write the name of somebody who you absolutely despise,
Speaker 1: somebody you completely hate. It might be a coworker, a friend,
Speaker 1: a family member, but somebody you hate. And then I
Speaker 1: want you to list all the things you hate about them.
Speaker 1: And then once we've done that, she said, now I'd
Speaker 1: like you to erase the name at the top of
Speaker 1: the page and write your own name in, because that's
Speaker 1: your shadow.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's a good exercise.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And in union psychology to call it a shadow in,
Speaker 3: you know, in other psychology you might call it a projection,
Speaker 3: or it could be a negative projection. Can also be
Speaker 3: a positive projection too, right, But then you get these
Speaker 3: kind of dynamics going on. I think one thing for
Speaker 3: diplomats is to not think of things rationally. If we
Speaker 3: do this, they'll do this, but also to own their
Speaker 3: own projection, to own their own shadow, you know, and
Speaker 3: then go into the then go into the negotiation. That's
Speaker 3: very difficult to do. And this is where I think
Speaker 3: psychologists have a role to play in international relations and negotiations.
Speaker 3: I wish when they got together with the Iranians, and
Speaker 3: the Israelis and the Americans and then whoever else is
Speaker 3: spoken at. My wish would be they would have somebody
Speaker 3: who had some psychological training in the room with them
Speaker 3: to help with this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you say they should become aware of their
Speaker 1: own shadow. But the truth is, if you have what
Speaker 1: it takes to become a national leader, you probably don't
Speaker 1: have a lot of insight because it is the narcissism
Speaker 1: and the alligator skin that helps you get there. Right.
Speaker 3: So, yes, yes, there aren't.
Speaker 1: Many empathetic leaders, even though their job is to protect us.
Speaker 1: It's interesting, huh.
Speaker 3: Well, some narcissists, not all, but some narcissists, you know,
Speaker 3: they they are very good at projecting their negative stuff
Speaker 3: on other people. And then what they do is they
Speaker 3: can they can rally the people around this stuff. And
Speaker 3: you know, in in in the book that I just
Speaker 3: wrote on human aggression, war and genocide, you know, we
Speaker 3: talk about two things chosen glories and chosen traumas and
Speaker 3: show glories where you have some kind of national thing,
Speaker 3: we did this great thing. You know, a good example
Speaker 3: would be landing on the moon something like that. You know,
Speaker 3: we did just great things in nation. We all rally
Speaker 3: around that, and then the other thing would be some
Speaker 3: kind of trauma that's happened. You know, we got bombed
Speaker 3: or you know, a good example in America's nine to eleven,
Speaker 3: you know, and we all rallied around that, and it
Speaker 3: brought us all together. And a lot of times, leaders,
Speaker 3: especially in arcisistic leaders will will will use these things
Speaker 3: to rally people now, especially when they're having a little
Speaker 3: bit of trouble. So one way you could look at
Speaker 3: and maybe I'm you know, I'm speculating here to tell
Speaker 3: you with a grain of salt. But one way you
Speaker 3: could look at the Uranian thing is, you know, I'm
Speaker 3: I'm running the United States, I'm the president. You know,
Speaker 3: my polls are not doing very well. I'm done some
Speaker 3: deeply unpopular policies with regard to immigration, and you know,
Speaker 3: you know, disappear ring people et cetera, et cetera, who
Speaker 3: aren't illegal immigrants, all this kind of stuff going on.
Speaker 3: And you know, but if I start a war with Iran,
Speaker 3: now I've done this great thing. We've had this great
Speaker 3: military victory, and this is a chosen glory, right, we
Speaker 3: can all rally around the chosen glory. Then my guess
Speaker 3: is what will happen and then just speculating again, Iran
Speaker 3: does some kind of retaliation. Americans are killed, and now
Speaker 3: the leader uses that to rally people around the chosen trauma.
Speaker 3: And I think, unfortunately that is something that I would
Speaker 3: guess there's a very big possibility of that happening. And
Speaker 3: you'll see if that does happen, that it will be
Speaker 3: an attempt to rally everybody around the chosen trauma. The
Speaker 3: chosen traumas are more powerful than the chosen glories.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I think of nine to eleven. Now, it
Speaker 1: brought us all together over this trauma, right, we didn't
Speaker 1: choose it.
Speaker 3: And yeah, yep, and it rallies people together. And then
Speaker 3: guess what everybody forgets about the immigration policies and the
Speaker 3: other things that are deeply popular, you know, with the
Speaker 3: American public right now. And you know, that's one way
Speaker 3: you can look at this, and you know, you know,
Speaker 3: if you look back in history, you know, starting wars
Speaker 3: has been a way that you know, presidents and other
Speaker 3: leaders have used to deal with these kinds of you know,
Speaker 3: deeply unpopular you know, times when the population isn't like them,
Speaker 3: or the economy's gone bad go out and start a war,
Speaker 3: and it's you know, you can ramp up production, you
Speaker 3: can help the economy, you know. So you know, if
Speaker 3: you're a little paranoid like I can be some time,
Speaker 3: you start thinking about these kind of things, you know,
Speaker 3: this is a you know, you've got a crisis, say
Speaker 3: you go out and start a war, and that seems
Speaker 3: to take care of it. The problem that we have,
Speaker 3: we saw this with the Bush administration in the Iraq War,
Speaker 3: is that it doesn't work very well in the Middle East.
Speaker 3: These strategies have not worked very well in the Middle East,
Speaker 3: and people who have gotten involved in wars I think
Speaker 3: I think a lot of the conflicts are are very historical.
Speaker 3: They they they they They've been around for a long time,
Speaker 3: you know, I mean, you know, back to Biblical times
Speaker 3: if you want to go back to that far, but
Speaker 3: certainly back to when the British were involved. And yeah,
Speaker 3: you can you can trace back bad things in the
Speaker 3: world role usually where the British were around. You can
Speaker 3: chase a lot of stuff in the Middle East back
Speaker 3: to the British and you know, it's been going on
Speaker 3: for a long time, and you know, these are deeply
Speaker 3: intrinsed things. You know, you have lots of you know,
Speaker 3: religion is involved with it. You know, the a lot
Speaker 3: of these are existential questions for the Israelis, existential question
Speaker 3: you know, of their own existence and their right to
Speaker 3: exist and have their own homeland and these kinds of things.
Speaker 3: Then you have you know light likewise, you know Palestinians
Speaker 3: and other people, and so I think, you know, Americans,
Speaker 3: we don't understand the psychology of what's going on in
Speaker 3: the Middle East very well. And I think we get
Speaker 3: into these things thinking, you know, like an American, like
Speaker 3: irrational American, and then we realize there's a lot of
Speaker 3: stuff below the surface that we haven't dealt with.
Speaker 1: In fact, we have a very short period of time left,
Speaker 1: doctor Vulcan. But I do want to ask you this,
Speaker 1: what role does religiosity pay in play in aggression? You know,
Speaker 1: it's one thing if you're fighting over land or fighting
Speaker 1: over resources like oil, But when someone has a religious conviction,
Speaker 1: how does that change the game.
Speaker 3: My bias is that I think leaders will used religion
Speaker 3: to rally people around and to use it as a
Speaker 3: kind of a point of identity that we identify as
Speaker 3: a certain religion. Therefore, if somebody says something against our religion,
Speaker 3: we need to go out and get them. We again
Speaker 3: project onto them. I think if you talk about just
Speaker 3: religious people in general, like just regular people, civilians living
Speaker 3: in whatever country, everybody just you know, it's kind of
Speaker 3: like the same. Everybody wants, you know, the best for
Speaker 3: their family. They want to raise their family, want to
Speaker 3: be comfortable, they want to be able to have a
Speaker 3: spiritual dimension of their life. So I separate that kind
Speaker 3: of religion from the religion that the leaders use to
Speaker 3: rally people to get them their negative projections onto other people.
Speaker 3: And so that's how I'm seeing religion, how it plays
Speaker 3: out as a form of getting people to put their
Speaker 3: negative projections on another group. And I don't think that's
Speaker 3: especially healthy, and I don't think that's especially what most
Speaker 3: religions actually advocate. If you actually read Christianity, read Islam, it's.
Speaker 1: All about love and family and caring. Yes, doctor Kevin
Speaker 1: will can thank you so much from psychology professor from
Speaker 1: California State University, Channel Islands. We'll keep close to you
Speaker 1: in the next few weeks as things transpire because you
Speaker 1: always have so much insight. Thank you very much for
Speaker 1: being with us.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Wendy. Always good to talk to you.
Speaker 1: Coming up next, I'd like to turn things if we can,
Speaker 1: to the science of love. I did go to see
Speaker 1: the movie The Materialist this week. It's the latest romantic
Speaker 1: comedy and I've got some things to say about it.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about it when we come back.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI
Speaker 2: AM six forty.
Speaker 1: KFI AM six forty. You have Doctor Wendy Walsh with you.
Speaker 2: This is the.
Speaker 1: Doctor Wendy Walsh Show. I want to remind everybody. I'm
Speaker 1: a psychology professor at cal State Channel Islands, and I
Speaker 1: am obsessed with the science of love. I've written three
Speaker 1: books on relationship. I'm actually deep into my fourth book
Speaker 1: writing it right now. I wrote a dissertation on attachment theory,
Speaker 1: and I am obsessed with the science of love. So
Speaker 1: when a romantic comedy comes out and reporters are calling
Speaker 1: me wanting me to comment on it, I have to
Speaker 1: see it. You should see it too. It's cute, Okay,
Speaker 1: It's called The Materialist and it's in theaters right now.
Speaker 1: So the story is very simple. A New York City matchmaker,
Speaker 1: she herself is kind of emotionally guarded. She's looking at
Speaker 1: her clients as pieces of meat, in the sense of
Speaker 1: she's looking at, you know, how tall they are, how
Speaker 1: much money they make, how old they are, how she
Speaker 1: can match them up, et cetera. But she meets a
Speaker 1: billionaire who she calls a unicorn. He's so perfect and
Speaker 1: he's totally into her. But then she meets her free
Speaker 1: spirited ex an actor who's a waiter. The lead characters
Speaker 1: are played by Dakota Johnson. That's Don Johnson's daughter. Do
Speaker 1: you know that? Seans and Pedro Pascal. Let's hear a
Speaker 1: little clip from the movie Sam. Clip from the movie
Speaker 1: here it comes.
Speaker 2: Are you single?
Speaker 1: I'm a matchmaker, Give me a call if you want
Speaker 1: to meet somebody. I deserve someone who fulfills all of
Speaker 1: my criteria. Nothing over twenty PM. I don't want someone
Speaker 1: who likes cats. I'm trying to settle my promise. You're
Speaker 1: going to marry the love of your life. How many
Speaker 1: marriages are you responsible for?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: Lucy nine? If the girl asks for as all drink
Speaker 1: waters fine with a salary over five hundred grand, always
Speaker 1: miss you deliver? Okay, So basically this group gets together,
Speaker 1: it becomes a love triangle, and the big question that
Speaker 1: America is asking is should she take the billionaire with
Speaker 1: all the money or should she take this ex boyfriend
Speaker 1: apparently they've been together five years, who she has deep
Speaker 1: feelings of love for, but he's still in an apartment
Speaker 1: with two roommates and living like a grungey twenty something
Speaker 1: in his thirties because he's still trying to make it
Speaker 1: as an actor. So here's my take on the movie
Speaker 1: and love in general. The movie did an excellent job
Speaker 1: of describing the social pieces of love. You see, love
Speaker 1: is partly biological, it's partly psychological, and it's partly social.
Speaker 1: Social are the things that are in your dating app profile.
Speaker 1: You know where you live, what your zip code is,
Speaker 1: how you like to eat, are you vegan? Are you
Speaker 1: a carnivore? What your politics are? Are you conservative or liberal?
Speaker 1: How educated you are, where you went to school. This
Speaker 1: is part of your social world. And this is not
Speaker 1: the full picture of love. Now it can influence love,
Speaker 1: of course it can. Certain traits are more attractive. When
Speaker 1: men make more money, they tend to be more attractive
Speaker 1: to women. Listen, if you're out there, ladies, and you
Speaker 1: say you're not a gold digger. Let me ask you this.
Speaker 1: Let's say you meet some identical twins. They're gorgeous guys.
Speaker 1: One of them's a waiter and one's a billionaire. Who
Speaker 1: are you gonna marry? I promise you it's going to
Speaker 1: be the billionaire. Everybody, every woman is a gold digger
Speaker 1: somewhere in there. All right, let's talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about the biological piece. So here's this matchmaker in New York.
Speaker 1: She's trying to fix up all these people, and she's
Speaker 1: wondering why they don't connect because on paper it looks
Speaker 1: so good. It's everything they wanted on their checklist, but
Speaker 1: they don't have the chemistry. Because love is partly biological.
Speaker 1: Love has to do with pheromones. How somebody smells. Think
Speaker 1: about it, the best sex you ever had in your life,
Speaker 1: Think back of they smell delicious, didn't they? They smelled
Speaker 1: absolutely delicious because you had a different disparate immune system
Speaker 1: in your ancestral past immune system, genes expressed themselves as
Speaker 1: body odor, as pheromones, and you pick it up. And
Speaker 1: so that means mother nature is saying, hey, if you
Speaker 1: procreate with this person, you'll actually make really fit babies.
Speaker 1: So pheromones are part of it, but there are other
Speaker 1: things too. Let's talk about psychology. So in our early life,
Speaker 1: we have certain kinds of developmental things that happened to
Speaker 1: us that might be sexual triggers, triggers for arousal, you know.
Speaker 1: I remember one time meeting a guy and as we're
Speaker 1: walking home from our first date, he picked up my hand.
Speaker 1: He looked at my nail polish and he said, I'm
Speaker 1: so glad you don't have bright red nails, because that
Speaker 1: would have been a deal breaker for me. And I'm thinking, really,
Speaker 1: this guy's going to be this superficial that the color
Speaker 1: of my nails are going to be the thing that
Speaker 1: turns them off. Then later, once we got a little intimate,
Speaker 1: I asked him about it again. He told me a
Speaker 1: story that when he was in middle school, a teacher
Speaker 1: was walking down the aisle, his middle school, female teacher,
Speaker 1: and she stopped and planted her hand on his desk
Speaker 1: to make a point. While she's talking to the rest
Speaker 1: of the class, she spread her fingers out. She had
Speaker 1: lovely light pink or a French manicure or something, and
Speaker 1: he accidentally, because it's spontaneous, folks men cannot control their erection.
Speaker 1: He got a spontaneous erection. He was mortified. He was
Speaker 1: so embarrassed, and so he was trying to hide it
Speaker 1: under the desk and he just stared at her fingernails, surprise, surprise,
Speaker 1: for the rest of his life. He has a thing
Speaker 1: for French manicures or light ballet pink nails. Right, this
Speaker 1: would be an environmental trigger, So we have to think
Speaker 1: about that part of psychology. We also have to think
Speaker 1: about our attachment style. Our attachment style is partly genetic,
Speaker 1: and it's partly what happens in the first three years
Speaker 1: of life with those genes. So some people are more
Speaker 1: angry in their relationships. They want to know, They want
Speaker 1: to know where the person is. Why aren't they texting more?
Speaker 1: Why aren't they calling more? They had a lot of
Speaker 1: abandonment anxiety. Other people are more emotionally avoidant. They can
Speaker 1: obtain sex, but emotional intimacy is very difficult for them.
Speaker 1: And then there are people like my wonderful husband Julio,
Speaker 1: who has a secure attachment style. They can give and
Speaker 1: receive love comfortably. They have enough stealth, esteem and backbone
Speaker 1: to say when they're wrong. They know how to resolve conflict.
Speaker 1: I can say that I used to have an anxious,
Speaker 1: ambivalent attachment style, but after years and years of therapy
Speaker 1: and probably attaching so securely with my children, I change
Speaker 1: my attachment style and you can too. And so now
Speaker 1: I really believe one of the reasons why I met
Speaker 1: the love of my life later in life was because
Speaker 1: I developed a secure attachment. So the movie was great,
Speaker 1: but it missed some beats. It was one note just
Speaker 1: talked about the social parts of love. Speaking of love
Speaker 1: and the things that I just talked to you about.
Speaker 1: Do you think love should be a course that you
Speaker 1: should take in university and that it should be compulsory. Well,
Speaker 1: some universities are actually doing this. Let's talk about it
Speaker 1: when we come back. You're listening to the Doctor Wendy
Speaker 1: Walsh Show and k I Am six forty live everywhere
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app. I Am six forty. You have
Speaker 1: Doctor Wendy Walsh with you. This is the Doctor Wendy
Speaker 1: Walsh Show. I'd like to welcome my TikTok audience. If
Speaker 1: you want to come in the studio and see what
Speaker 1: we're doing here, just log onto TikTok my handle is
Speaker 1: at Dr Wendy Walsh. In a few minutes, I'm going
Speaker 1: to be taking your calls, your relationship questions. The number
Speaker 1: is one eight hundred five two zero one five three four.
Speaker 1: That's one eight hundred five two zero one five three four.
Speaker 1: If you're new to my show, remember I'm not a therapist.
Speaker 1: I'm a psychology professor. But i have a lifetime of
Speaker 1: wisdom to share with you, and I've written three books
Speaker 1: on relationships and wrote a dissertation on attachment theory. All right, First,
Speaker 1: I want to talk about should colleges and universities be
Speaker 1: teaching the science of love as a prerequisite? I mean,
Speaker 1: would you take a college course that was designed to
Speaker 1: help you recognize the red flags and love's race course? Well, actually,
Speaker 1: one major university just launch a comprehensive course like this
Speaker 1: for gen z to help them navigate intimacy, from DMS
Speaker 1: on social media to working the dating apps. I think
Speaker 1: we actually need this more than we have ever needed
Speaker 1: something like this. I mean, think about it. You're nineteen
Speaker 1: years old, twenty, you're away at college. I teach developmental psychology.
Speaker 1: It is a time that Eric Erickson, the famous developmental psychologist,
Speaker 1: called time of intimacy versus isolation. Friendships are so important
Speaker 1: to mental health and building healthy, secure romantic relationships are
Speaker 1: so important, but it's just so difficult in today's times. Well,
Speaker 1: the latest university to create a course is actually in
Speaker 1: India and Delhi University. Starting next year, they're going to
Speaker 1: offer in their psychology department a course called Negotiating Intimate Relationships.
Speaker 1: I love the word negotiating because I think it's all
Speaker 1: about negotiation. They're going to help people recognize the red
Speaker 1: flags of toxic love, which is great. They're going to include,
Speaker 1: you know, real stuff like Robert Sternberg's triangular theory of love,
Speaker 1: John Bowlby's attachment theory of love. They're going to get
Speaker 1: into the dynamics of intimate partner violence. So I think
Speaker 1: it is a great thing that these kinds of courses
Speaker 1: are being offered for good reason. I want you to
Speaker 1: think about the numbers. According to the Centers for Disease Control,
Speaker 1: one in three women and one in four men will
Speaker 1: experience some form of physical violence from their intimate partner
Speaker 1: in their lifespan. It's amazing, right, more than half of
Speaker 1: all female homicide victims are killed by the person they
Speaker 1: love and of course, America has one of the highest
Speaker 1: divorce rates in the world, and preventing divorce is often well.
Speaker 1: I think it's mostly about relationship skills, but it's also
Speaker 1: about learning how to choose the right partner. So what
Speaker 1: Delhi University is doing is not completely unique. Here in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, UCLA offers a class called the Science of
Speaker 1: Love in its Psychology department, and they get into attachment
Speaker 1: and attraction and how to form a healthy relationship. That
Speaker 1: it's all about the early stages, right. I remember years
Speaker 1: ago I was actually in a business meeting with some
Speaker 1: business lawyers and I was putting together a business plan
Speaker 1: and I said, well, it doesn't matter because we're not
Speaker 1: actually making any money yet. And this lawyer said, all
Speaker 1: the biggest mistakes happen at the very beginning of the partnership.
Speaker 1: You know that applies to romantic love too, if you
Speaker 1: set up a system from the very beginning, and then
Speaker 1: it's very difficult to change the system later. I should
Speaker 1: tell you that NYU, New York University, and Cornell University
Speaker 1: have also had seminars on dating and digital relationships in
Speaker 1: their sociology and psychology department. Stanford even had a course
Speaker 1: called love as a force for social justice. I love
Speaker 1: that one, connecting interpersonal love with community healing. But these
Speaker 1: really are exceptions, and I really think that more and
Speaker 1: more universities should be teaching this practical thing. You know,
Speaker 1: we criticize high schools for teaching kids math like algebra
Speaker 1: and calculus, but never how to balance a checkbook, or
Speaker 1: how to make an annual budget, or some basic rules
Speaker 1: of finance personal finance. Right, we don't teach personal finance.
Speaker 1: And yet in psychology we're teaching all these grand theories
Speaker 1: about how to be a great therapist, but not like
Speaker 1: real practical news you can use. I should say I'm
Speaker 1: a little different because no matter what I'm teaching, I
Speaker 1: throw in elements of the science of love, whether it's
Speaker 1: evolutionary psychology or in developmental psychology, I do get into
Speaker 1: Robert Sternberg's triangular theory of love, et cetera. So if
Speaker 1: you take my courses, I definitely talk a lot about it.
Speaker 1: So if you can't take a course like this, what
Speaker 1: can you do to educate yourself on the science of
Speaker 1: love or what kinds of skills can you acquire so
Speaker 1: that you can have a healthier love life? Well? I've
Speaker 1: said this over and over. Everybody should know their romantic
Speaker 1: attachment style. Okay, you can go online. You can take
Speaker 1: a test. My favorite if you google the words Chris
Speaker 1: Frehley fr l e Y. He's one of the world's
Speaker 1: most renowned researchers in attachment and it's continuing to collect data.
Speaker 1: You google the words Chris Frehley attachment test and you
Speaker 1: will come up with a very reliable attachment test that
Speaker 1: you can take. You can take, you can learn and
Speaker 1: understand how important boundaries are. I want to say this
Speaker 1: about boundaries. Boundaries are not about putting up a wall
Speaker 1: and saying, like an ultimatum, if you don't do this,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do that. Boundaries are just a little fence
Speaker 1: around yourself and if they get crossed, you say no,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, that gate is closed. This is not okay.
Speaker 1: So you need and every boundary does need a consequence.
Speaker 1: You can't say, don't talk to me in that tone
Speaker 1: of voice. That's not a boundary. A boundary is I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: That tone of voice doesn't feel helpful to me. So
Speaker 1: if you continue that, I'm going to have to leave
Speaker 1: the room. And then you do a consequence and you
Speaker 1: actually have to leave. Right, that's a boundary. Learning about
Speaker 1: boundaries and how to set them. Also watching for red flags,
Speaker 1: very like my whole brand, social media, my podcast, my
Speaker 1: radio show. Really, I'm talking about red flags all the time.
Speaker 1: Sometimes when people express jealousy early in a relationship, the
Speaker 1: other person interprets it as love and caring. Well, they
Speaker 1: must they're really into me because they're so jealous, right, No, no, no,
Speaker 1: This can be a real indicator that this person might
Speaker 1: be controlling, manipulative, and maybe even violent in the future. Right,
Speaker 1: I mean a little bit of jealousy. Like my sweet
Speaker 1: Julio when we've start first started dating, I told him
Speaker 1: too much about I mean too much for a male
Speaker 1: sexual psychology to hear too early on. I told him
Speaker 1: too much about my past, and so he would always
Speaker 1: use the term I have historical jealousy with you. I
Speaker 1: have historical sexual jealousy with you, right, And it was
Speaker 1: sort of a joke and it's cute, but that's different
Speaker 1: from him going where are you going? Who are you with?
Speaker 1: I don't like that, right, Although I have to tell
Speaker 1: you this funny story I actually made who I didn't
Speaker 1: make him. You can't make anybody feel something, but I
Speaker 1: was aware that he was going to experience feeling of jealousy.
Speaker 1: So because we've been together five years, I milked it
Speaker 1: just a little bit. We were out at a wine
Speaker 1: bar and there was a dude over there who kind
Speaker 1: of waved at me, and he said, who's that? And
Speaker 1: I said, oh, this is this guy. He always talks
Speaker 1: to me when you're not here. And he goes really
Speaker 1: and then I said, in fact, I'm going to go
Speaker 1: say hello. I wasn't really going to say hello. I
Speaker 1: was going to walk past this guy to this other
Speaker 1: woman and say hello to her. But I I tricked him.
Speaker 1: His face looked startled, and I got up and walked
Speaker 1: past like, of course, ignored the dude. I didn't stop
Speaker 1: and flirt with him, but it was just my little
Speaker 1: And then I came back and I gave hul you
Speaker 1: a big kiss. I go scared you, didn't I. It's
Speaker 1: also important if we're talking about learning the science of love,
Speaker 1: to understand rejection. Every human on the planet experience his
Speaker 1: rejection at some point in their love life. Everybody, right,
Speaker 1: rejection is not rejection of you. It's just a redirection.
Speaker 1: I always say, you are not bad. It was just
Speaker 1: a bad match. Right, you are good for somebody. I
Speaker 1: promise you you are right. Sometimes rejection is protection. Right,
Speaker 1: if you meet somebody and they're looking for a short
Speaker 1: term relationship and you're looking for a long term relationship,
Speaker 1: and they have the kindness and the insight to realize
Speaker 1: they would hurt you if they hung around, this is
Speaker 1: good news that they rejected you. You know, I have
Speaker 1: a friend actually who met a guy. They dated for
Speaker 1: I don't know, I think like six or eight months,
Speaker 1: and then you know, he almost goes. I mean it
Speaker 1: was sort of light dating whatever, but he kind of
Speaker 1: he waned her off pretty fast. He was gone. So
Speaker 1: like a year later, they run into each other at
Speaker 1: the grocery store and he's now flirting with her, wants
Speaker 1: to get together, and she her boundaries are up like this,
Speaker 1: because you know, I gave you six months of my
Speaker 1: life and now a year later, here you are. Whatever.
Speaker 1: He said, just have one drink with me. I just
Speaker 1: want to talk to you. So she consented, and he said, listen,
Speaker 1: I had just moved to town from across the country.
Speaker 1: I didn't know anybody. I had just gone through a divorce.
Speaker 1: I met you, and I said to myself. This is
Speaker 1: serious girlfriend material, this is somebody to spend a life with.
Speaker 1: But I knew I was ready. I knew I was already.
Speaker 1: I needed to sew my wild oats a bit in
Speaker 1: this town. And he said, if you will give me
Speaker 1: a chance, I will tell you I'm ready. Now. Well
Speaker 1: loved his insight. Anyway, they've been married twelve years, so
Speaker 1: all good.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: So when I was in college, I took economics, I
Speaker 1: took journalism. I major in journalism. I took a film
Speaker 1: studies class. But nobody ever offered me the science of love.
Speaker 1: This is something I learned myself, and I should say
Speaker 1: I am working on a new book and hopefully you
Speaker 1: all will buy and it will explain all the science
Speaker 1: of love. All right, when we come back, I am
Speaker 1: going to be taking your relationship calls. The number. Write
Speaker 1: it down one eight hundred five two zero one five
Speaker 1: three four. That's one eight hundred five to zero one KFI.
Speaker 1: Call me with your relationship questions. I'm happy to weigh
Speaker 1: in with my life wisdom, my knowledge of the science
Speaker 1: of love. You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh Show on
Speaker 1: KFI AM six forty Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI
Speaker 2: AM six forty