Speaker 1: You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI
Speaker 1: AM six forty.
Speaker 2: Kf I am six forty. You have Dr Wendy Walsh
Speaker 2: with you. This is the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show. Right now.
Speaker 2: I'd like to welcome my Instagram audience. If you're on Instagram,
Speaker 2: just log on right now search Doctor Wendy Walsh and
Speaker 2: you can come on in the studio and see what
Speaker 2: we do here. This is the time of the show
Speaker 2: where I am taking your relationship questions by phone or
Speaker 2: answering in social media on DMS. If you'd like to
Speaker 2: give us a call, the numbers one eight hundred five
Speaker 2: two zero one five three four. That's one eight hundred
Speaker 2: five two zero one five three four. Okay, Producer Kayla,
Speaker 2: who do we have on the line. We have Dell
Speaker 2: with the question Dell.
Speaker 3: Hi, Dell.
Speaker 2: It's doctor Wendy.
Speaker 4: Hi there, how are you good?
Speaker 2: What's your question? Love? So?
Speaker 3: My question is is it a bad thing if a
Speaker 3: male has a female partner who is significantly more attractive
Speaker 3: than them? And is there any advice you'd give to
Speaker 3: this couple where though female is significantly more attractive than
Speaker 3: the male.
Speaker 2: Okay, So, dell. Let me tell you this, It doesn't
Speaker 2: matter what you think the world thinks about how attractive
Speaker 2: the male might be, how attractive the female might be.
Speaker 2: None of that is as important as what the person
Speaker 2: feels they are. And so if a guy is, you know,
Speaker 2: on the scale of one to ten by society's weirdo standards, five,
Speaker 2: and he meets a girl who's a seven, if she
Speaker 2: thinks she's a four, he's the luckiest man in the world.
Speaker 2: And there are guys who are fives who think they're
Speaker 2: tens and they are in Life is a self fulfilling prophecy.
Speaker 2: Life is a self fulfilling prophecy. So if you believe
Speaker 2: in yourself, then other people will believe it to you know.
Speaker 2: I was doing some reading this weekend the founder, the
Speaker 2: sociologist who's the founder of the whole theory of self
Speaker 2: fulfilling prophecy, he himself was. He was born in nineteen
Speaker 2: ten in South Philly. He was a son of Eastern
Speaker 2: European immigrants, and he felt discrimination, so he changed his
Speaker 2: name to be more American sounding, and he took up
Speaker 2: as a teenager magic tricks, and he realized something about
Speaker 2: magic that the audiences actually finished the illusion in their
Speaker 2: heads before he'd even finished doing the trick, meaning like
Speaker 2: they wanted to believe, they wanted the show. So how
Speaker 2: does this apply to romantic lives? If you have self
Speaker 2: confidence and you believe in yourself, you will be more
Speaker 2: attractive to more people because they are your audience and
Speaker 2: they want to believe. But it starts with something that
Speaker 2: comes from inside you. First, Thank you so much for
Speaker 2: calling Dell. It's a pleasure. Okay, Yes, we have Debbie
Speaker 2: with a question. Debbie. Hi, Debbie, it's Dr Wendy.
Speaker 4: Wendy So nice to hear your voice and talk to you.
Speaker 2: Thank you. Nice to hear you too. So what's your question?
Speaker 4: Oh gosh, I've been I've been single for at least
Speaker 4: ten years in my last committed relationship with fifteen years ago,
Speaker 4: and I just don't know how to get over my past,
Speaker 4: hurts to put myself out there again. I have a
Speaker 4: really bad picker.
Speaker 2: Picker. Yeah, so we like to colloquially call it a
Speaker 2: bad picker, when actually psychologists might say that you're reliving
Speaker 2: old trauma. Right, So we all have this idea for
Speaker 2: what love is in our head. Psychologists would call it
Speaker 2: a working model. For love. That's their psychobabble, right, And
Speaker 2: if our early life, and often this is when we
Speaker 2: were pre verbal, and we don't remember if there was
Speaker 2: feelings of loss or hurt or pain. In some way,
Speaker 2: our brain decides that that's what love is, and that's
Speaker 2: what love should feel like. And so it creates a picker,
Speaker 2: as I like to say, it takes us right back
Speaker 2: to the scene of the crime, over and over.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: I had an anxious, ambivalent attachment style for most of
Speaker 2: my adult life, and literally, if a guy treated me badly,
Speaker 2: I liked him more. It was heartbreaking. I was thinking
Speaker 2: about this. I had a big white Catholic wedding for
Speaker 2: my mother when I was like twenty one, and the
Speaker 2: guy I married of his short college marriage. The guy
Speaker 2: I married, I remember the first night I met. He
Speaker 2: and his friends out at a club and he came
Speaker 2: back with a round of drinks and you know what
Speaker 2: he said. He said, Oh, I guess when Wendy gets
Speaker 2: around to buying around, the bar will be closed. And
Speaker 2: I married him and that was the first thing he said, like,
Speaker 2: you better pay up. And I did pay up in
Speaker 2: all kinds of ways.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: So, Debbie, my answer to you is get into good therapy,
Speaker 2: perhaps with a psychoanalytic therapy bist. Ask them what their
Speaker 2: style is somebody who knows attachment theory. I promise you
Speaker 2: there's somebody for you when you're ready. I was a
Speaker 2: single mom, Debbie for twenty years, and I found the
Speaker 2: love of my life towards the end of my empty
Speaker 2: nest time when I was ready. Right, And I think
Speaker 2: he's out there when you're ready. But you might have
Speaker 2: to do the work and go to therapy like I did.
Speaker 2: I think it's very important. Thank you for calling. I
Speaker 2: appreciate it. Thank you all right. Let me head over
Speaker 2: to social media because people have been sending dms too.
Speaker 2: If you'd like to call, the number is one eight
Speaker 2: hundred five two zero one KFI. That's one eight hundred
Speaker 2: five to zero one KFI. Dear doctor, Wendy says this listener.
Speaker 2: My ex left a week ago. Oh, I'm left. I
Speaker 2: guess you're already calling her an ex, not my And
Speaker 2: now she's texting me that she loves me and hopes
Speaker 2: I'm doing well. Is she trying to come back? No? No, oh,
Speaker 2: what she's doing. If she left, then she wanted to leave,
Speaker 2: and now she feels guilty and yes, she loved you.
Speaker 2: You can actually leave someone you love. Did you know
Speaker 2: that you can actually say this person, I love this
Speaker 2: person a lot, I care about them. They're not good
Speaker 2: for me and this is not where I want to
Speaker 2: be in the long term or my future. She's missing you,
Speaker 2: but that doesn't mean she wants to get back with you.
Speaker 2: Plenty of people have feelings of ambivalence right after a breakup.
Speaker 2: Some people break up because they want to test the
Speaker 2: mating marketplace and step on out there and see what
Speaker 2: it is. And they go on one bad date and
Speaker 2: they're like, I missed that person who knew me and
Speaker 2: was nice to me, right, or maybe they want to
Speaker 2: keep you as a backup mate. I would say if
Speaker 2: she's texting you one week later saying I love you.
Speaker 2: I hope you're doing okay, she's not saying can we
Speaker 2: get together? Can we talk? I think I've made a
Speaker 2: big mistake. Let's go to a couple's therapy. Let's work
Speaker 2: on our relationship. That's a different conversation, not just a
Speaker 2: missing you that's about her loss. Because remember, even if
Speaker 2: you know when a breakup happens, it's a deep feeling
Speaker 2: of loss. It feels like losing a leg. I mean
Speaker 2: that leg might have had gangerine it was time to go,
Speaker 2: but you still lose miss that leg. Right, So in
Speaker 2: the same way, I would be cautious about texts that
Speaker 2: just say I miss you and I love you instead
Speaker 2: of let's get together. I really want to talk about this.
Speaker 2: I'm in a mistake. We need to go to therapy.
Speaker 2: Let's work on things, okay when we come back. I'm
Speaker 2: going to continue to take your calls and answer your
Speaker 2: questions from social media. The handle is at doctor Wendy
Speaker 2: Walsh at Dr Wendy Walsh. The phone number is one
Speaker 2: eight hundred five two zero one KFI. That's one eight
Speaker 2: hundred five two zero one five three four. You're listening
Speaker 2: to the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show on KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 2: Were live everywhere on the Iheartradioky if I am six forty,
Speaker 2: you have Doctor Wendy Walsh with you. This is the
Speaker 2: Doctor Wendy Walsh Show. I'm heading to my social media
Speaker 2: send me a DM. The handle is at doctor Wendy
Speaker 2: Walsh at Dr Wendy Walsh, and I'll be happy to
Speaker 2: answer your relationship question. Here from Instagram. This person tells
Speaker 2: me that they're finally about to get married, but there
Speaker 2: is an abusive uncle in their past that triggers them.
Speaker 2: Somebody who was very abusive. Now grandma still has that
Speaker 2: uncle living in the house with her. Grandma says, if
Speaker 2: you don't invite uncle to your wedding, then I'm not
Speaker 2: coming to your wedding. This is called emotional blackmail. It
Speaker 2: is your wedding. It's probably costing you a lot of
Speaker 2: money and time and energy. You have the right to
Speaker 2: have whoever you want at your wedding. And if your
Speaker 2: grandmother uses to collude with an abusive uncle either way,
Speaker 2: does she know why You might want to tell her
Speaker 2: then that that's her loss. It's her loss and the
Speaker 2: uncle's loss. She's trying to emotionally blackmail you. It is
Speaker 2: your wedding. Do what you want to do, all right.
Speaker 2: So I was scrolling through my dms on Instagram, and
Speaker 2: I found three different listeners as the same question three
Speaker 2: different ways. So I want to read their three questions
Speaker 2: and then I'll give one answer to explain them all.
Speaker 2: The first listener says, my ex was emotionally abusive, and
Speaker 2: yet I felt a wave of sadness when I saw
Speaker 2: on social media that he's having a baby with someone else.
Speaker 2: Why would I feel heartbroken over someone who hurt me?
Speaker 2: It's the first one. The next listener says, why do
Speaker 2: I sometimes still crave the love of somebody who made
Speaker 2: me feel completely unlovable? And the third listener says, if
Speaker 2: I miss someone who treated me poorly, does that mean
Speaker 2: I haven't healed or is that just part of being human? Okay, So,
Speaker 2: as I said a little earlier, breakups are a loss.
Speaker 2: Our relationships are our emotional lifeline for many people who
Speaker 2: have an insecure attachment style. Though we attach ourselves to
Speaker 2: people who may hurt us, but it's still an emotional lifeline.
Speaker 2: It's still a piece of who we are and were.
Speaker 2: So the first listener says, why would I feel heartbroken? Who?
Speaker 2: Oh this her excess having a baby with someone else
Speaker 2: over someone who hurt me? Because there is a solusion
Speaker 2: that they've found happiness and you're the problem. But I
Speaker 2: promise you the best predictor of somebody's future behavior is
Speaker 2: their past behavior. And if there's any feeling that I
Speaker 2: think would be more fair to experience, it is empathy
Speaker 2: for her is pregnant girlfriend or wife. Right, So it's
Speaker 2: because you're still he's a He's an object. He's a unique,
Speaker 2: convenient object for your feelings, right, And using this object
Speaker 2: to go and tell the story to a licensed therapist
Speaker 2: is the thing that can help you heal. And the
Speaker 2: other listener, why do sometimes still crave the love of
Speaker 2: someone who made us feel unlovable? Well, nobody makes you
Speaker 2: feel anything, right, Those feelings are already inside you. You
Speaker 2: chose somebody to help amplify those feelings. So this is
Speaker 2: not blaming you. It's all on conscious right. But your
Speaker 2: attachment style is aligned towards trauma. We call these traumatic bonds. Right.
Speaker 2: And the third listener who says, does it mean I
Speaker 2: haven't healed or is it just part of being human? Well,
Speaker 2: it's a little bit of both, right. I mean, loss
Speaker 2: is painful, we have to learn how to tolerate loss.
Speaker 2: But also if you're still pining away for somebody who
Speaker 2: is very hurtful, that means you haven't healed entirely. Right,
Speaker 2: similar question, The next listener says, everyone says I dodged
Speaker 2: a bullet when I left my ex, But why does
Speaker 2: it still feel like rejection? Back to what I said earlier,
Speaker 2: breakups hurt. Relationships become part of our actual identity, and
Speaker 2: when we split in two, it's like we've lost a
Speaker 2: piece of ourselves. You know, when you're in a relationship, well,
Speaker 2: let's assume it's a healthy one, you share the emotional
Speaker 2: work of life. You also may share the physical labor
Speaker 2: of life. I know this firsthand now because I was
Speaker 2: a single mom for twenty years where I was doing
Speaker 2: the work of mother and father and I was exhausted.
Speaker 2: And then I meet this guy who's a true fifty
Speaker 2: percent partner and we're sharing everything, and my life feels
Speaker 2: so easy now. I almost feel guilty. It's so easy, right,
Speaker 2: And so that's how a good, secure relationship should feel like.
Speaker 2: But when you break up, whether relationship was good or
Speaker 2: bad or ran its course or whatever, you lose half
Speaker 2: a brain in some way, and you have to build
Speaker 2: the neurotransmitters of being a single person again and getting
Speaker 2: everything done, the thinking, the feeling, and the labor right.
Speaker 2: So it does feel loss like a loss, It feels
Speaker 2: like rejection. Even though you did dodge a bullet. Trust
Speaker 2: your friends, you did dodge a bullet. Gosh, it's the
Speaker 2: theme that's happening to everyone seems to be writing the
Speaker 2: same question in different words. Listen to this listener, Dear
Speaker 2: doctor Wendy, I'm in a new relationship because sometimes I
Speaker 2: still think about my ex, not because I want him back,
Speaker 2: but because I don't understand how he moved on so easily.
Speaker 2: Should I tell my partner? No, this is you and
Speaker 2: your issue that is going to raise so much sexual
Speaker 2: jealousy or historical jealousy or whatever. Don't even It's like
Speaker 2: bringing a third person into the relationship, even if it
Speaker 2: only is your imagination. Right. Closure that's so interesting. This
Speaker 2: next listener asks me, is closure something you get from
Speaker 2: someone else or something you create yourself? I will tell
Speaker 2: you you will never get it from someone else. It's
Speaker 2: like getting a forced apology, right, you say you're sorry, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm sorry. How good did that feel? Right? It doesn't
Speaker 2: whin and it's extracted. Extracted apologies don't feel good, just
Speaker 2: like extracted closure. You don't need closure. You don't need
Speaker 2: to know why. You just need to work things out.
Speaker 2: You know, one time I had an ex boyfriend call
Speaker 2: me Goes. I'm in therapy and I have some questions
Speaker 2: about what happened at the end of our relationship. You
Speaker 2: said this, and you said that, and what did that mean?
Speaker 2: And I had so moved on at that point. It
Speaker 2: wasn't my business to help him heal. He has a
Speaker 2: therapist he can talk to. This had to do with
Speaker 2: him and his feelings.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: You do not get closure from somebody else. You create
Speaker 2: closure within yourself. All right. One more quick question before
Speaker 2: we go. Dear doctor Wendy, what's worse the moment you
Speaker 2: find out they cheated for the moment, oh, you realize
Speaker 2: that you knew deep down all along. I don't know
Speaker 2: about worse or better, but I will say that when
Speaker 2: you realize that you knew all along, that's called insight
Speaker 2: into your own feelings and your own experience, and then
Speaker 2: you can prevent it next time because now you have
Speaker 2: self awareness. I think that's a great gift. To realize
Speaker 2: you knew deep down all along. You gain some insight
Speaker 2: into yourself. I'm sorry it happened to you, all right.
Speaker 2: If you have questions relationship questions, you can always send
Speaker 2: me dms on Instagram during the week. The handle is
Speaker 2: at doctor Wendy Walsh. When we come back. How to
Speaker 2: shut up your brain when you're making love. You know,
Speaker 2: some people have a chatty cathy in their head and
Speaker 2: it's keeping them from really enjoying themselves. Let's talk about
Speaker 2: it when we come back. I feel called out, I
Speaker 2: feel are you in my mind right now?
Speaker 1: My gosh?
Speaker 2: Wait, do you check your phone during sex? Because people
Speaker 2: mentioned that they do in one study. I would never no,
Speaker 2: I know. Even Kayla's shocked, her gasping.
Speaker 1: All right, you're listening to doctor Wendy Walsh on demand
Speaker 1: from KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 2: Kf I am six forty. You have Doctor Wendy Walsh
Speaker 2: with you. This is the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show how
Speaker 2: to shut up your brain when you're making love. Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna say it. Have you ever been with
Speaker 2: your partner in an intimate way and you found yourself
Speaker 2: doing your to do list for the next day, maybe
Speaker 2: planning your kids' schedules, thinking about work projects, hopefully not
Speaker 2: checking out your fingernails and your manicure, or worse, are
Speaker 2: you thinking about the sex like your partner's pleasure, your pleasure?
Speaker 2: Should we do this, should we do that? Et cetera.
Speaker 2: You know, I remember when I was pregnant with my
Speaker 2: first child and I read every book on pregnancy and delivery.
Speaker 2: There was one sentence in one of them that really
Speaker 2: stood out because you know, here I was this intellectual,
Speaker 2: thinking person and I wanted to think through everything about
Speaker 2: labor and delivery. And the sentence in the book said,
Speaker 2: delivering a baby is about putting your intellect aside and
Speaker 2: letting the animal out, the animal inside you. I don't
Speaker 2: mean the baby, I mean the animal that lives inside you.
Speaker 2: Let natural reflexes do their work. But plenty of people worry,
Speaker 2: They worry, they think they're half there. There was a
Speaker 2: study that came out a few years ago where young
Speaker 2: people admitted whatever they were gen z xyzu, I don't know.
Speaker 2: They admitted that ten percent of people check their phones
Speaker 2: during sex. Crazy. Crazy, Look, all sexual relationships change over time.
Speaker 2: You're not supposed to be a swinging from chandeliers and
Speaker 2: French made costumes was ten years after you've been together.
Speaker 2: Although if you are, that's great. I'm so happy for you.
Speaker 2: That's wonderful. But you know, at the beginning, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of neural hormones on your brain. It's so easy
Speaker 2: to get in the mood, it's so easy to have
Speaker 2: spontaneous sex, and as a result, when things start to change,
Speaker 2: people think there's something wrong in a relationship. I was
Speaker 2: reading this article today from the website very Well mined
Speaker 2: verywellmind dot com, one of my favorite websites, and this
Speaker 2: particular article addressed these chronic overthinkers in bed and the
Speaker 2: authors say that today many couples report feeling mentally absent
Speaker 2: during sex. They're physically present, but emotionally they're tuned out.
Speaker 2: They're too much in their head and this is kind
Speaker 2: of actually the reason why couples lose their spark. In
Speaker 2: the article, a certified sex therapist, Heather Shannon was quoted
Speaker 2: and she said, instead of feeling your partner skin or
Speaker 2: connecting through touch, you're wondering if they're turned off, or
Speaker 2: you're wondering whether you venmo your babysitter. Right. There's also
Speaker 2: recent research I read published in the Journal of Sex
Speaker 2: and Marital Therapy that showed that sexual distractions, whether body image, worries,
Speaker 2: that's a big one with women. By the way body
Speaker 2: look at dudes do not care. You care more than
Speaker 2: they care. Trust me. I remember years ago, was a
Speaker 2: young man, but he was talking about breast implants and
Speaker 2: he said, I guess some guy had said, oh, I
Speaker 2: like them naturally, and he just said, look, if they're there,
Speaker 2: they're real. That's all guys care about. If they're there,
Speaker 2: they're real. It doesn't matter. If you're there, you're real.
Speaker 2: You're a woman, right. There is some worries sometimes about
Speaker 2: performance anxiety that more often affects men, the body image
Speaker 2: stuff more often affects women. The performance anxiety expects me.
Speaker 2: And if you leave this unchecked, you're going to find
Speaker 2: that your relationship is going to continue to become more disconnected.
Speaker 2: There is research to show that couples who report low
Speaker 2: sexual satisfaction are also more likely to experience the emotional distance,
Speaker 2: lower relationship satisfaction, and eventually a higher likelihood of divorce.
Speaker 2: Now I need to pause here to say that there
Speaker 2: is a thing called mature companionate love. If you've been
Speaker 2: together for decades, you don't have to be rocking it
Speaker 2: every single week. And in fact, sex itself may take
Speaker 2: a different form. I have friends because of health issues
Speaker 2: say that they don't have intercourse. They have outer course.
Speaker 2: It may be affection, it may not involve orgasm. You know,
Speaker 2: women after menopause, their hormones decline by the way. There
Speaker 2: is medical things you can do. Ladies, go see your gun.
Speaker 2: At the age of forty, forty percent of men experience
Speaker 2: a rectileless function at the age of fifty fifty percent
Speaker 2: of the age of six sixty sixty percent, et cetera,
Speaker 2: et cetera. If you're dating somebody who's seventy, just go
Speaker 2: to the movies, right, Caleb, are you laughing? But the
Speaker 2: real problem that happens in relationships isn't lack of physical intimacy.
Speaker 2: It's lack of emotional intimacy. And if you could have
Speaker 2: conversations about this, it would be so much better. Right now,
Speaker 2: how do you really fix it? Well, one of the
Speaker 2: things you can do is practice mental foreplay. Literally, think
Speaker 2: about something sexy in your head, get in the mood,
Speaker 2: get aroused, and guys, I just want to say this,
Speaker 2: scheduled sex is sexy for women and for you. Spontaneous
Speaker 2: nonsense is not happening anymore. Okay, there's a lot women
Speaker 2: have to do to get paired for this. Okay, you
Speaker 2: don't need to know all this stuff, but we need to. Yeah,
Speaker 2: fourplay could take three days for women. It might involve
Speaker 2: getting a new scented candle, maybe some new underwear, getting
Speaker 2: a whax somewhere. There's all kinds of things that she
Speaker 2: has to do to get ready, so putting it on
Speaker 2: the schedule is not a bad idea. Right mindfulness. There's
Speaker 2: actually a study from the Journal of Sex Research that
Speaker 2: says practicing mindful awareness, focusing on your five senses right
Speaker 2: can increase arousal and sexual satisfaction. And this is basically
Speaker 2: getting out of your head and into your body. One
Speaker 2: of the things I know this is TMI. I'm about
Speaker 2: to give you, t M, I too much information when
Speaker 2: I'm starting to become aroused, A yawn a lot, a
Speaker 2: yawn a lot. And Julio used to say, what am
Speaker 2: I boring you? And I just it's my way of relaxing.
Speaker 2: I'm getting into my body, out of my head, and
Speaker 2: I relax. That's the way it is. Don't rush the journey. Uh.
Speaker 2: If you think your sex life is gonna look like
Speaker 2: any scene from a Hollywood movie, you are so wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
Speaker 2: First of all, there's no foreplay in Hollywood. I crack up.
Speaker 2: Every time the actor comes, he slams her against the wall,
Speaker 2: he lifts up her dress. There's penetration I'm like, it
Speaker 2: never happens like that anywhere anytime in life. That looks
Speaker 2: like pain to me. That looks like rape to me. Okay,
Speaker 2: that is not so just don't rush it. Lots and
Speaker 2: lots of foreplay. Also, don't define sex as an orgasm.
Speaker 2: This is the biggest mistake people make. There's no such
Speaker 2: thing as bad sex. As my motto, no such thing
Speaker 2: as bad sex. If your whole idea is it's not
Speaker 2: a good sex unless there's orgasm, You're gonna have a
Speaker 2: hard time having long term monogamy. Okay, because sometimes it's
Speaker 2: just being tender and talking and touching each other. I
Speaker 2: do want to say you should talk to each other
Speaker 2: about sex too, You guys, you can't like just play
Speaker 2: around in the dark and hope things will work out.
Speaker 2: You need to have conversations, all right, and let your
Speaker 2: partner talk, let them say what they need to say,
Speaker 2: and do that not in the bedroom, do that somewhere else.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Look, you also might consider seeing a sex therapist. They're great,
Speaker 2: they're licensed with a sect. SAM. What does ASEX stand
Speaker 2: for American Associated? He's gone? SAM is a sex therapist?
Speaker 2: Are you a sex therapist? S? Are you a sex certified. Yeah,
Speaker 2: a sex certification. He's a double he's a double talent.
Speaker 2: Here he's a sound therapist licensing PhD and human sexuality.
Speaker 1: Yay.
Speaker 2: And so what does ASEX stand for again? American Association
Speaker 2: of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists. There you go as sect.
Speaker 2: That's all you do is you ask somebody, well, you
Speaker 2: call Sam is what you do and then and he
Speaker 2: will talk to you. How'd I do? By the way, Sam,
Speaker 2: they do okay with that segment? Thank you? Good to note.
Speaker 2: All right, when we come back, Uh, how does your
Speaker 2: personality impact your love life? I mean really your personality type?
Speaker 2: How can it influence what's going on in your romantic life?
Speaker 2: Let's talk about it when we come back. You were
Speaker 2: listening to The Doctor Wendy Wall Show and KF I
Speaker 2: am six forty with Live Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app
Speaker 2: KFI use Doctor Wendy Walls with you. Is this the
Speaker 2: home stretch of the Dr Wendy Wall Show? We made it?
Speaker 2: Why does it go so fast? Breaking news should be
Speaker 2: four hours?
Speaker 3: Great content?
Speaker 1: Hies.
Speaker 2: I know I was thinking about this today because I
Speaker 2: teach developmental psychology and I teach personality development. As part
Speaker 2: of that, and we always talk about the Big five model,
Speaker 2: the Big five personality traits. It is the most widely
Speaker 2: respont infected framework in psychology that really kind of categorizes
Speaker 2: people's personalities into five broad dimensions. Now it's not that
Speaker 2: you only fall into one of those dimensions. Everybody has
Speaker 2: all five, but to one degree or another. Right, So
Speaker 2: let me explain. And by the way, it's used in
Speaker 2: all kinds of psychological assessments. It's used in academic research,
Speaker 2: it's used in workplace evaluations. I have a theory, by
Speaker 2: the way, that Trader Joe's. I don't know if it's true.
Speaker 2: I'm making this up. Trader Joe's gives the Big five
Speaker 2: personality tests because you ever notice that everybody who works
Speaker 2: at Trader Joe's is an extrovert. You get to that
Speaker 2: cashier and you have some tomato sauce with you, and
Speaker 2: they have three different recipes that they need to tell
Speaker 2: you about, and they need to say they had it
Speaker 2: last week or whatever. I really think it is like
Speaker 2: maybe they use Meyers Briggs, which is less respective, but
Speaker 2: it can also look for that. All right, So let's
Speaker 2: talk about what these five traits are. The five factor.
Speaker 2: There's openness to experience, and that's people who are willing
Speaker 2: to try new things, be imaginative, curious. If I had
Speaker 2: to think of examples of people that might represent openness,
Speaker 2: it might be people like Oprah Winfrey, Steve Jobs, Lady Gaga,
Speaker 2: those kinds of people. Then there's conscientiousness. Here's a little fact.
Speaker 2: Conscientiousness rises in most people across the lifespan. This is
Speaker 2: people who are organized, responsible, reliable, and goal oriented. Right
Speaker 2: or Mine Granger from Harry Potter.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: And so I noticed, like I used to be sloppy.
Speaker 2: I was, my room was not well whol always say
Speaker 2: my room is still sloppy. Okay, So I was sloppy
Speaker 2: in my work. I would shortcut things, And now I
Speaker 2: dot my eyes and cross my t's and make sure
Speaker 2: everything's perfect, because you know, I've learned that when you're sloppy,
Speaker 2: it's more work later. Right, So conscientiousness tends to go up.
Speaker 2: I should also tell you that students who are conscientious,
Speaker 2: meaning they submit all their papers and homework on time,
Speaker 2: they make sure everything's been spell checked and written well,
Speaker 2: et cetera, they tend to just do better and earn
Speaker 2: higher grades. They're conscientious. Then there's extraversion, and that looks
Speaker 2: at our outgoing, energetic and being social social people that
Speaker 2: might be Richard Branson, Miley Cyrus, Donald Trump. Agreeableness, So
Speaker 2: some people are crimungeons. If you're low on agreeable agreeableness,
Speaker 2: you're the person who's like, eh, I don't want to
Speaker 2: go I don't like that person. I don't want to
Speaker 2: do that. And then high on agreeableness is, hey, let's
Speaker 2: try it. We should trust them. They seem like a
Speaker 2: nice person. If there's a gender divide, I will tell
Speaker 2: you that women tend to score a little higher on
Speaker 2: agreeableness and men score just not every man, Okay, those
Speaker 2: is anecdotal evidence, but men in general little lower on agreeableness.
Speaker 2: My girlfriends and I had a conversation one time. We
Speaker 2: were traveling somewhere and we were saying how easy it
Speaker 2: is to travel with women, because like, oh, no you
Speaker 2: go first, No you can cook today, No we'll go out,
Speaker 2: it's fine, all good, all good, And guys like, no,
Speaker 2: we got to catch the train at five, I want
Speaker 2: everyone up by far we get to They're just like
Speaker 2: so grumpy when you travel. Not my Houly, of course,
Speaker 2: he's perfect. And the fifth dimension is neuroticism. This is
Speaker 2: people who have strong feelings of anxiety, anger, sadness. I
Speaker 2: always think of Woody Allen's characters in his movies as
Speaker 2: being highly neurotic. Right, So I usually ask the students
Speaker 2: in my class and make them all take the Big
Speaker 2: Five personality test and then them before I reveal my score,
Speaker 2: which dimensions they think I score highest on? And Kayla,
Speaker 2: what do you think it is? What dimensions you score highest?
Speaker 2: I think? Did you listen to them all? Did? I? Just?
Speaker 2: Were you reading something else I was posting on the website.
Speaker 2: Go to the website see what you posted right now? Anyway,
Speaker 2: it's extraversion, conscientiousness, and openness to new experience. Those are
Speaker 2: my highest Yeah, makes sense. So let's talk about how
Speaker 2: these personality traits impact our love life. So somebody who
Speaker 2: might be highest in openness might be the partner who
Speaker 2: loves planning, you know, spontaneous weekends or getaways, exploring new ideas,
Speaker 2: having deep late night conversations. Someone who's low in openness
Speaker 2: might just want routine tradition, and those are the way
Speaker 2: things are right, And so you have to respect your
Speaker 2: partner and understand that you are often attracted to somebody
Speaker 2: who's completely opposite from you, because that's a piece you
Speaker 2: want in yourself. Conscientiousness. So a conscientious person, this is
Speaker 2: definitely Julio. He remembers birthdays, anniversaries, He has all these cards,
Speaker 2: He goes card shopping, he writes important things, He follows
Speaker 2: through on promises, He handles shared responsibilities. You know, I
Speaker 2: used to help him do the dishes, but then he
Speaker 2: told me I was doing it wrong. So there you go.
Speaker 2: I sit there and finish my glass of wine and
Speaker 2: watch him do the dishes. Extraversion. It's really interesting because
Speaker 2: extroverts and introverts are often attracted to each other, largely
Speaker 2: because introverts make a great audience and they're great listeners,
Speaker 2: and they also wish they could be a little more
Speaker 2: extroverted than the extroverted wishes they could bite their tongue more.
Speaker 2: Trust me, we do. And then agreeableness. Somebody, as I mentioned,
Speaker 2: who's highly in agreeable is a compromiser. They have lots
Speaker 2: of empathy, they're good at resolving conflicts. Low end of agreeableness, argumentative, critical,
Speaker 2: a little bit defensive, neuroticism, anxiety, worry about being abandoned, misreading,
Speaker 2: texts that could be completely neutral. If you ever heard
Speaker 2: somebody read a text and they said, oh, and they
Speaker 2: said fine, we'll talk tomorrow, I said, how do you
Speaker 2: know they use that tone of voice? Why is they're
Speaker 2: period and at an exclamation point? Right, they could have said, oh, fine,
Speaker 2: we'll talk tomorrow then love, you know, like that fine?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: By the way, if you want to take the Big
Speaker 2: five test, it's online. It's very simple. It's Big five
Speaker 2: dash test dot com. That's pretty simple. Big five. Those
Speaker 2: are the words, not the number five, The word five,
Speaker 2: Big five dash test dot Com. Now, I do want
Speaker 2: to talk about those that are high in neuroticism. They
Speaker 2: have a lot of anxiety, and they often sabotage their
Speaker 2: romantic relationships. They might have mood swings, They might be
Speaker 2: really sensitive and react very easily. So they blame often
Speaker 2: their partners because their partners are making When I hear
Speaker 2: people say you made me feel that way, I'm going
Speaker 2: to remind everybody that no human can make another human
Speaker 2: make They can't make them have a feeling. All the
Speaker 2: feelings exist inside us, and feelings are very important. They
Speaker 2: are messengers. They are messengers that things are going great,
Speaker 2: and they are messengers that, hmm, we need to change
Speaker 2: a few things. They're not going so great. But nobody
Speaker 2: makes you have a feeling, right. But we do have
Speaker 2: that one friend out there who's always worried that their
Speaker 2: partner is with another partner cheating on them, that their
Speaker 2: partner doesn't love them as much as.
Speaker 4: They love them.
Speaker 2: And then what happens is life becomes this self fulfilling
Speaker 2: you know, it's so interesting. People say, I don't know
Speaker 2: what it is, but every man I've been with cheated
Speaker 2: on me. You know, you picked him and maybe you
Speaker 2: drove him to cheat. I'm not blaming the victim here,
Speaker 2: I'm just saying, you know, there's a reason. There's a reason.
Speaker 2: So there actually is research on this. There's a new
Speaker 2: study that was published in the Journal of Sexual and
Speaker 2: Relationship Therapy. I'm sure that Sam writes for this journal
Speaker 2: all the time, and it maybe wrote this called Neuroticisms
Speaker 2: Ties to Relationship satisfaction the role of conflict tactic behaviors. Okay,
Speaker 2: so that's awesome sounding already. I think you might have
Speaker 2: written it. People high in neuroticism or anxiety are far
Speaker 2: more likely to criticize their partner emotionally withdraw during conflict.
Speaker 2: In John Gottman's work says that that's the worst thing.
Speaker 2: Don't give them the silent treatment, use guilt as a
Speaker 2: tool to manipulate somebody and escalate small arguments into big
Speaker 2: blow ups. Is that you think about it, you criticize
Speaker 2: your partner. I'm a big believer, and you want to
Speaker 2: water what you want to grow. Don't water the weeds,
Speaker 2: water what you want to grow. That means, look, catch them,
Speaker 2: be good, think about all the things that they do
Speaker 2: that's wonderful, and compliment them and say it out loud.
Speaker 2: Guess what they're going to do it more. But if
Speaker 2: you spend your time criticizing them. First of all, I'm
Speaker 2: the type of personality that when people tell me I'm
Speaker 2: doing something wrong, I literally do worse. I literally I
Speaker 2: just want to show them, Oh yeah, you think this
Speaker 2: is bad, let me show you how bad it can be. Right,
Speaker 2: Like I just I don't change based on criticism. I
Speaker 2: wonder if there's a gender thing on this, because I
Speaker 2: noticed something. Female trainers at the gym are encouraging to
Speaker 2: their clients. I hear them say, come on, you got it.
Speaker 2: I think you have two more in you. Oh that's
Speaker 2: so great, that's so much better than yesterday. You're doing
Speaker 2: so well well, And then male trainers are like, come on,
Speaker 2: I don't think you can even do ten more. Oh,
Speaker 2: come on, you weak today. I hear this, and I'm like,
Speaker 2: how does that motivate people? So I once had a
Speaker 2: male trainer like that, and the more he criticized me
Speaker 2: and told me that I couldn't do things, the less
Speaker 2: I did it. I said, okay, fine, I won't do
Speaker 2: it right. That's how I am. Don't criticize your partner.
Speaker 2: Water what you want to grow, and no matter how
Speaker 2: hard it is. I know you may have learned this
Speaker 2: in your family of origin. When you're upset, don't withdraw.
Speaker 2: Stay in it. Stay in it, even if it's just
Speaker 2: to listen to them, just say I'm you know. The
Speaker 2: first time I had that feeling to run away, I
Speaker 2: think Hulu and I have been dating only like six
Speaker 2: weeks or something, and we had some little tiff I
Speaker 2: don't know what it was, and I said to him,
Speaker 2: I have a running feeling right now, and he did
Speaker 2: something spectacular. He stood up from his chair, came over
Speaker 2: to me, touched my shoulder and said, no, no, it's
Speaker 2: not that big. Don't leave, and he it was I
Speaker 2: bid for care. I want to run away. He met
Speaker 2: that bid with care, So don't leave. Don't run. That's
Speaker 2: all I'll say. Hey, I'm here every Sunday from seven
Speaker 2: to nine pm, and if you want to follow me
Speaker 2: during the week, the handle on all my social media
Speaker 2: is at Dr Wendy Walsh at doctor Wendy Walsh. You
Speaker 2: can even go onto my website on my contact page
Speaker 2: and sign up from a newsletter. I don't send them
Speaker 2: very often, but when I do, you want to hear
Speaker 2: from me first. I always say there's no gossip about
Speaker 2: me because I've told people first. It's always my pleasure
Speaker 2: to be here. I am so obsessed with the science
Speaker 2: of love and I want you to have the best
Speaker 2: relationship possible. Thanks so much for being with me. You've
Speaker 2: been listening to the Doctor Wendy wallsh Show on KFI
Speaker 2: AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You've
Speaker 2: been listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh. You can always hear
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