Speaker 1: This is doctor Wendy Walsh and you're listening to KFI
Speaker 1: AM six forty, the Doctor Wendy wallsh Show on demand
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app k I AM six forty. You
Speaker 1: have Doctor Wendy Walsh with you. This is the Doctor
Speaker 1: Wendy Walsh Show. If you are new to my show,
Speaker 1: sit back, relax. I got all kinds of news about
Speaker 1: the science of love. I have a PhD in clinical psychology.
Speaker 1: I'm a psychology professor at cal State Channel Islands. Go Dolphins.
Speaker 1: We're back in school tomorrow. Kids, You're not kids, you're adults,
Speaker 1: the adults of cal State Channel Islands. And tomorrow we're
Speaker 1: actually going to do a fun thing in class, Kayla.
Speaker 1: I had all my students take a Meersbriggs personality test.
Speaker 1: I know they're pros and cons to that test, although
Speaker 1: lots of employers use it, and I tried to make
Speaker 1: productivity groups so that for the whole semester, the group
Speaker 1: that their work the small group in class they'll be
Speaker 1: working with, is like a perfect match compatibility wise and
Speaker 1: personality wise. Oh that should be nice. Yeah, it'd be
Speaker 1: really interesting to see. So anyway, I spent half this
Speaker 1: today looking at spreadsheets trying to figure that out. I'm
Speaker 1: also obsessed with the science of love. I've written three
Speaker 1: books on relationships, did my dissertation on attachment theory, and
Speaker 1: I have been here for ten years reporting on the
Speaker 1: science of love. On KFI producer Kayla, do you remember
Speaker 1: we had a woman on a tragic story from New
Speaker 1: Jersey whose son died by suicide after a sextortion sextortion?
Speaker 1: I do remember the case. He was a teenager, he
Speaker 1: was home alone, he just had his braces titan, and
Speaker 1: he was in pain. So he stayed home from school
Speaker 1: and met what he thought was a cute little girl
Speaker 1: online and then this person in Africa, so that they
Speaker 1: were gonna put these naked pictures of him everywhere and
Speaker 1: blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: And he wasn't even addicted to social media. He just
Speaker 2: got on for that day and he was a victim. Unfortunately.
Speaker 1: Oh, very very very sad. Well. I have been angry
Speaker 1: for a long time about the romance scams that happen
Speaker 1: online and the sextortion, so that you understand the difference,
Speaker 1: not a big difference, but romance scams are more likely
Speaker 1: to be targeted against the elderly or lonely divorces over
Speaker 1: the age of forty or fifty, and it's where some
Speaker 1: and it's often a syndicate, a group of people, not
Speaker 1: just an individual, will give makeup fake profiles. They'll go
Speaker 1: on and try to friend request a bunch of people
Speaker 1: in your group so it looks like a legitimate person
Speaker 1: that your friends know, and then they start chatting with you,
Speaker 1: whether it's on Facebook, Instagram, whatever, or the dating apps
Speaker 1: themselves right, and before you know it, with a romance scam,
Speaker 1: they get you to fall in love. And it's really
Speaker 1: easy to do because we're all wired to bond. And
Speaker 1: in fact, the drug called love is the most delusional
Speaker 1: drug that we have. We actually there's lots of research
Speaker 1: on this. We are unable to discern well when we
Speaker 1: are high on love, and when that love is filled
Speaker 1: with our own fantasies of what could be and hope
Speaker 1: is even worse. So before you know it, with romance scams,
Speaker 1: this person at the other end, who they're pretending to be,
Speaker 1: claims that you know, they need money for you know,
Speaker 1: a family member surgery or plane fair to come over
Speaker 1: or whatever, and people just start sending money. Well, with teenagers,
Speaker 1: it can be even more dangerous because teenagers are at
Speaker 1: a developmental stage of their brain where they are particularly
Speaker 1: susceptible to something called social evaluative threat, which means your
Speaker 1: teenager is always saying to you, mom, don't say that
Speaker 1: that's awkward, Mom, don't embarrass me, right, because they really
Speaker 1: are feeling deep shame and embarrassment more than the rest
Speaker 1: of us. It's a developmental stage. And so some of
Speaker 1: these syndicates, many of them out of the country called Nigeria,
Speaker 1: target teenagers pretending to be young, attractive females and then
Speaker 1: they end up well getting the saying that they're going
Speaker 1: to post these pictures with families. So in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: a young teenager named Jordan de Maay. He played in Michigan.
Speaker 1: He was a high school football player. He was contacted
Speaker 1: online by what he thought was a pretty young woman
Speaker 1: on Instagram. Since she seemed to be friends with people,
Speaker 1: this seventeen year old knew, they began chatting. Eventually she
Speaker 1: convinced him to take a picture of his you know
Speaker 1: what with his face in it, So send some nude
Speaker 1: pictures and then this person wrote, I have screenshot all
Speaker 1: of your followers and tags and can send your nudes
Speaker 1: to family and friends until it goes viral. All you
Speaker 1: have to do is cooperate with me. Well, this poor
Speaker 1: kid was so scared he sent all the money he
Speaker 1: had to savings account three hundred dollars, but his extorters
Speaker 1: continued to harass him. At one point, they even encouraged
Speaker 1: him to take his own life if he didn't have
Speaker 1: enough money to pay. His last text was sent to
Speaker 1: his mom. It simply read, mother, I love you. Jordan
Speaker 1: was found dead of a self inflicted gunshot wound. There's
Speaker 1: some good news here. A year later, the Nigerian government
Speaker 1: finally began to cooperate with American investigators and are starting
Speaker 1: to allow extradition of those people charged with operating sextortion rings.
Speaker 1: And this week a federal judge in Michigan sentenced two
Speaker 1: brothers they were aged twenty one and twenty four, to
Speaker 1: seventeen and a half years in prison for their roles
Speaker 1: in extorting money for more than one hundred victims. And
Speaker 1: we don't know how many deaths. We know for sure
Speaker 1: the death of Jordan Debay. Two others are currently being
Speaker 1: extra guided extradited to Pennsylvania. The biggest message here is
Speaker 1: We're going to track you down. Now, We're going to
Speaker 1: hold you accountable. Did you know in the a two
Speaker 1: year period from twenty one to twenty three, the FBI
Speaker 1: got more than thirteen thousand reports of sex stortion and
Speaker 1: more than twenty teenagers took their own lives because of this.
Speaker 1: This is why we have to talk to our teenagers
Speaker 1: about this. We have to tell our kids that, you know,
Speaker 1: to be wiser online. But also it's not their fault.
Speaker 1: Is something like this happens? All right. I also want
Speaker 1: to move to other news, which is Nicole Kidman's new film,
Speaker 1: Baby Girl. How much time do I have? I know
Speaker 1: I've been rattling away here only one minute, So I
Speaker 1: just want to say this. So Nicole Kidman's new movie,
Speaker 1: which is called Baby Girl, I already have a problem
Speaker 1: with the title. She's grown ass woman. My love to
Speaker 1: say that on the radio. Oh no, no, how old
Speaker 1: is you?
Speaker 2: Neian to number?
Speaker 1: Okay, that's what she is? All right, that's what she is.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: The New York Times says it's a dairy indy that
Speaker 1: re establishes Kidman as one of our most fearless actresses.
Speaker 1: Oh man, oh man, When we come back the movie
Speaker 1: starts with her faking and orgasm, and then you won't
Speaker 1: believe what she does immediately afterwards. Twenty twenty four. Yep,
Speaker 1: all right, when we come back, I'll explain. You are
Speaker 1: listening to the Doctor Wendy Waalh Show on KFI AM
Speaker 1: six forty Belive everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 3: You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI
Speaker 3: AM six forty.
Speaker 1: KFI AM six forty, you have Doctor Wendy Walsh with you.
Speaker 1: This is the Doctor Wendy Walls Show. And I have
Speaker 1: just begun a rant. I haven't even seen the movie.
Speaker 1: On Nicole Kidman's new movie, Baby Girl. I read the
Speaker 1: review in the New York Times. I will see it
Speaker 1: because it's not fair to comment on something and then
Speaker 1: not see it and then later tell you if I
Speaker 1: was wrong. But here's what bothers me about it. So
Speaker 1: Baby Girl is the movie. She Nicole Kidman plays a
Speaker 1: breadwinner in her family, a hard charging CEO, and apparently
Speaker 1: the film opens with her faking and orgasm with her husband.
Speaker 1: Then Hobby falls asleep. Now, women, this is the first
Speaker 1: thing we would think to do, right. She gets up,
Speaker 1: runs to her laptop opens it up because women are
Speaker 1: so visually wired, finds the most sn M pornography she
Speaker 1: can where a woman's being beaten, abused, gagged, whatever, and
Speaker 1: has an orgasm that way, and then later in the
Speaker 1: movie there she finds a young man at the office
Speaker 1: who will do it to her. In real life, the
Speaker 1: director of the movie is quoted as saying, every woman
Speaker 1: deserves a good orgasm. Stop right there, producer, Kayla. Remember
Speaker 1: we had the anthropologist or evolutionary biologist on the show
Speaker 1: who told us that anatomically, there are percentage of women
Speaker 1: who literally cannot ever have an orgasm physiologically, that it
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with you know, this problem in
Speaker 1: their head. It just has to do with the length
Speaker 1: of the glitterists and how far it extends into the vagina.
Speaker 2: Right, Elizabeth Lloyd the Case of the Female Orgasm. There's
Speaker 2: a whole Mating Matters episode about it on your Patreon.
Speaker 2: I learned so much, And also she wrote it's the
Speaker 2: books called what Thing the Case of the Female or
Speaker 2: case even.
Speaker 1: SNL just gets on it when it came out. YEA,
Speaker 1: so fascinating to learn that a bunch of women so
Speaker 1: here in twenty twenty four is a female director coming
Speaker 1: out saying every woman does he think if you were away?
Speaker 2: That was a female director, Are you kidding me?
Speaker 1: So here's the thing. It's like, first we pressured women
Speaker 1: who didn't have an orgasm by saying there's something wrong
Speaker 1: with you or mentally you're an orgasmic. That was actually
Speaker 1: a diagnosis an orgasmic. Oh no, it's a problem. And
Speaker 1: now and we had another expert on it. I can't
Speaker 1: remember who she was. I think she was from Toronto
Speaker 1: and she said that she realized in her research that
Speaker 1: it is perfectly appropriate to not be aroused by bad sex.
Speaker 2: It's like, then, would rather be like, oh you're broken,
Speaker 2: as opposed to.
Speaker 1: I'm just not doing the job right exactly. Okay, next thing,
Speaker 1: I want to say, how many women really consume porn? Well,
Speaker 1: according to the research, it's only about fifteen percent maybe,
Speaker 1: And when they do, it's usually with their partner to
Speaker 1: enhance the monogamy. It is a rare woman who rushes
Speaker 1: to the computer and opens it. She might exist, okay,
Speaker 1: but it's rare. Well that's twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: It's the phone, Wendy, it's supposing their phone.
Speaker 1: Well, you're apparently she ran her lefto maybe because she
Speaker 1: needed glasses. Yeah, that was too small. The next thing
Speaker 1: is we also had Justin Justin the other Justin from
Speaker 1: the Kinsey Institute, not not Justin Garcia, Justin How come
Speaker 1: all these great researchers and they're not coming in my mind?
Speaker 1: But anyway, he did the study on sexual fantasies and
Speaker 1: what percentage of sexual fantasies actually get acted out? Justin
Speaker 1: lay Miller, Justin lay Miller, thank you. We've had him
Speaker 1: here in the studio. In fact, and it's a very
Speaker 1: very small percentage. And in fact, most of the people
Speaker 1: he interviewed are the thousands of people he did for
Speaker 1: his surveys, said they would never want their fantasies to
Speaker 1: actually happen in real life. And there's Nicole Kidman watching Like.
Speaker 1: The bottom line is, why are we raving about a
Speaker 1: movie about a female with power who only feels happy
Speaker 1: when she's dominated by a man? All right, I'll stop,
Speaker 1: I'll see the movie. I'll see the movie later and
Speaker 1: then I'll figure it out. On that note, though, this
Speaker 1: week I was contacted by one of the magazines I
Speaker 1: don't know, Glamour, Ask Man, whatever, Men's health. I don't.
Speaker 1: I get asked for quotes on a regular basis, and
Speaker 1: they asked the question, when is the right time to
Speaker 1: let your new partner know how much money you make? Now,
Speaker 1: now this question is specifically I think it was glamorous
Speaker 1: for women, right, Maybe it was Cosmo. I think it
Speaker 1: was Cosmo. Now I'm thinking about it. Sorry everybody, but
Speaker 1: you know, so much has changed in the last few decades.
Speaker 1: You know, the average female outpaces the American male in
Speaker 1: terms of educational attainment. Women now make up the majority
Speaker 1: of the American workforce. An economic clout is fast becoming
Speaker 1: the purview of the feminine. But with this new economic power,
Speaker 1: I believe come a few landmines in our love lives.
Speaker 1: First of all, according to evolutionary psychologists, who definitely have
Speaker 1: turned human mating strategy into a science, they believe our
Speaker 1: ancient biology rules. In other words, we're walking in cave
Speaker 1: women bodies that have not caught up with these cultural changes.
Speaker 1: For instance, the more money a woman makes, the more
Speaker 1: she wants her male partner to make too, So on
Speaker 1: an unconscious level, for some women, it doesn't feel natural.
Speaker 1: I hate that word natural. I made my fingers into
Speaker 1: quotation marks right there. It doesn't feel natural to fit
Speaker 1: in with today's standards. Newsflash, ladies, there are not enough
Speaker 1: guys to go around who make more money than you,
Speaker 1: So you're going to have to deal with that patriarchy
Speaker 1: that's floating around inside you. But there's something else. There's
Speaker 1: also a new breed of lothario who loves the new
Speaker 1: social order and is hell bent on swooning a woman
Speaker 1: to get access to her purse. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you remember. A couple of years ago I did of
Speaker 1: one of my many viral videos on TikTok. I shared
Speaker 1: a story of my own financial abuse, and literally thousands
Speaker 1: of women weighed in with their own story of men
Speaker 1: love bombing them to steal money from them. It was awful.
Speaker 1: They capitalize on women's empathy, so when they come with
Speaker 1: their sad stories of whatever, women are so quick to
Speaker 1: open their purse because they don't want to lose the relationship.
Speaker 1: So when is the right time to tell a dude
Speaker 1: how much money you make? Well, in my opinion, there's
Speaker 1: three questions you have to ask yourself, and if you
Speaker 1: can say yes to each of these questions, then I
Speaker 1: think it's okay to tell him how much money you're making.
Speaker 1: First question, will I still feel attracted to him if
Speaker 1: I learn he makes substantially less money than me? Right,
Speaker 1: because in the first few dates, you know they're being
Speaker 1: all showy, they're picking up checks. But you have to
Speaker 1: really question your own self about that. Second question, does
Speaker 1: this guy have enough self esteem to handle the fact
Speaker 1: that I might make more? Because there's research to show, sadly,
Speaker 1: that when a woman makes more money than her husband,
Speaker 1: he's more likely to cheat because apparently guys associate financial
Speaker 1: value with manhood. So you have to really spend some
Speaker 1: time getting to know if his self confidence is real
Speaker 1: or not. And finally ask yourself this, do I deeply
Speaker 1: trust him with this information? Do I really know his
Speaker 1: values and his morals? Take some time, Take some time
Speaker 1: before you divulge this information. Ladies, all right, when we
Speaker 1: come back, Couples, especially young couples, are using technology in
Speaker 1: their relationships a lot. Let's talk about the good, the bad,
Speaker 1: and the ugly of using tech in your relationships. You
Speaker 1: are listening to the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show on KFI
Speaker 1: AM six forty were 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: I am six forty. You have Doctorrndy Walsh with you.
Speaker 1: Yours pick the best music, Kaylas, I got it. I
Speaker 1: never want to come back to the microphone because I'm
Speaker 1: busy dancing. You know, producer Kayla a few weeks ago,
Speaker 1: was dancing at my wedding. Did you like that playlist?
Speaker 1: Julio did it.
Speaker 2: That was an amazing playlist. That was an amazing video
Speaker 2: we got sent a few weeks later. I can't wait
Speaker 2: for the redo of the wedding. Reata coming getting to desert.
Speaker 1: You know that a wedding was fun when I start
Speaker 1: getting calls from all the women of the wedding, meaning
Speaker 1: my closest friends and colleagues who were guests, who said,
Speaker 1: let's do a reunion in La of just the women
Speaker 1: of the wedding. It's going to be a blo all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, it's a potluck dinner, it's a dj
Speaker 1: that we're all coming. I was so surprised. Some are
Speaker 1: getting on planes and coming. Oh my god, your friends
Speaker 1: are the best. It's going to be so much fun.
Speaker 1: Who knew a wedding reunion? Two months later, just because
Speaker 1: it was so much fun. Alrighty using technology in your
Speaker 1: intimate relationships. Now, I have always said that text is
Speaker 1: dangerous in relationships, especially if you're sharing really intimate stuff
Speaker 1: that could potentially be misinterpreted, right, because a text is
Speaker 1: like listening to your favorite band without the drummer or
Speaker 1: the lead singer. You kind of got the riff going,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't really have a beat or soul. And
Speaker 1: that's what text is. It's missing vocal tone, body language,
Speaker 1: facial expression, it's missing at all, and you've got to
Speaker 1: decipher and read into those words. Well, even though I
Speaker 1: have been saying this for a very long time, I
Speaker 1: obviously it has been falling on deaf ears because young people,
Speaker 1: particularly and I have daughters who are in that space,
Speaker 1: use technology as their primary source of communication in their
Speaker 1: intimate relationships. So let's talk about the good, the bad,
Speaker 1: and the ugly. A new study just published in the journal,
Speaker 1: yes it's an academic journal called Personal Relationships interviewed one
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty one people aged eighteen through twenty five.
Speaker 1: One hundred and twenty one is not a huge number.
Speaker 1: I like studies that are thousands of people, but usually
Speaker 1: studies that involve. Thousands of people are for port Internet studies,
Speaker 1: so there's a lot of lying going on about who
Speaker 1: people are, et cetera. These were real interviews, so you
Speaker 1: get a lot more in information from that. So first
Speaker 1: of all, here's a little reality check for everybody. Ninety
Speaker 1: five percent of young adults text duh. Ninety percent use
Speaker 1: social media to stay in touch. And get this, seventy
Speaker 1: five percent of young adults use at least five different
Speaker 1: kinds of social media. I don't even know that when
Speaker 1: we forget. We got Instagram, we got TikTok, we got Snapchat,
Speaker 1: we got YouTube. What's left Facebook? Oh, but young people
Speaker 1: probably aren't using Facebook. Oh she's a little baby on Facebook?
Speaker 1: Maybe like Reddit? Does that count as some of those
Speaker 1: I love? Yeah? Twitter? Twitch? No? Oh? Twitter?
Speaker 2: Oh YouTube?
Speaker 1: Does that count? Yeah? I said YouTube? You said that?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, that Twitter. I won't even give it.
Speaker 1: It's a new name because I don't care. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't think you should. You know what happened what so
Speaker 1: I have not used that particular app, you know, the
Speaker 1: one we're talking about. It just got a new name.
Speaker 1: So I went on the other day when I was
Speaker 1: watching Oh, I think it was at the Democratic National
Speaker 1: you know, when they all got together that conference convention
Speaker 1: there whatever, and when Kamala Harris's sister got up to talk,
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, she was a dead ringer for that
Speaker 1: female comedian, Rebecca Johnson. Have you ever seen Rebecca Johnson
Speaker 1: do it? She's one that started off with that famous
Speaker 1: nail salon, a bit that she did that went totally viral. Anyway,
Speaker 1: they had the same cadence, the same mannerisms, And so
Speaker 1: I tweeted, is it still called the tweet if I
Speaker 1: ex died? I exed it. I don't get it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. I pulled up both of their accounts and
Speaker 1: I said, don't you think blah blah blah. I can't
Speaker 1: remember her sister's name now, is a dead ringer for
Speaker 1: Rebecca Johnson. Angela Johnson, not Rebecca Angela Johnson, and look
Speaker 1: her out. Make sure it is Angela Johnson. Think is
Speaker 1: Angela Johnson? Anyway, it never got shown to anybody because
Speaker 1: I used to be one of the people with the
Speaker 1: blue checkm and Elon Mosk took away the blue check mark.
Speaker 1: So now our tweets don't get they get seen by
Speaker 1: zero people unless we pay him money. Every month. Oh, Wendy,
Speaker 1: I know he were on Twitter. He did. It's a
Speaker 1: weird thing anyway, but I digress. Okay, So let's talk
Speaker 1: about the benefits of using text and other and you know,
Speaker 1: talking on Snapchat or whatever to your lever. It can
Speaker 1: be more efficient communication because it allows partners to stay
Speaker 1: connected all day no matter where you are in the
Speaker 1: world or if you're working whatever. You can shoot them
Speaker 1: little text right. Also, younger people are using a wider
Speaker 1: range of expressive language. I forgot about this part. They're
Speaker 1: using mojis, videos, photos, memes, sending TikTok videos about how
Speaker 1: they feel about the person. So technology is actually providing
Speaker 1: young people with more ways to express their feelings. Also
Speaker 1: another benefit, it's a way to initiate new relationships, right,
Speaker 1: Because people are dming each other on social media to
Speaker 1: meet each other. It can be a better way to
Speaker 1: maintain long distance relationships. And it can be much easier
Speaker 1: for young people because they're such scaredy cats to disclose
Speaker 1: personal stuff. Right. There are people who will type something
Speaker 1: before they can actually say it out loud, which is
Speaker 1: bizarre to me because everything I type, I imagine someday
Speaker 1: it might be read by a judge. I'm always like,
Speaker 1: this is forever somewhere, it could be brought up.
Speaker 2: You know, sometimes people forget that the Internet is like
Speaker 2: a place that other people can see what you're posting,
Speaker 2: and you know it's going to live there forever.
Speaker 1: I don't think people think about that. They don't think
Speaker 1: about that, So therefore I say everything with my mouth
Speaker 1: out loud to people's faces or on the radio whatever. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, there are some downsides to using technology in
Speaker 1: your intimate relationships. I mentioned texting can be very impersonal.
Speaker 1: Sometimes people are texting while they're distracted doing other things.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say this. On the way here to work today,
Speaker 1: I was on the one on one freeway and Julia
Speaker 1: was driving, so I was a passenger and I got
Speaker 1: to look at the drivers in the three cars on
Speaker 1: my right as we passed them. All three dudes were
Speaker 1: just swiping on their phone. Their phone was on the
Speaker 1: steering wheel and they were swiping. I don't know, was
Speaker 1: it Tinder, was it Instagram? They were swiping. Okay, police officers,
Speaker 1: get on out there. They're all on the one on
Speaker 1: one right now. Okay. Other downsides. Some young couples reported
Speaker 1: that because there is text available, they feel pressured to
Speaker 1: constantly communicate, and yes, they do misinterpret those texts because
Speaker 1: they're misreading it. Also, if you're using social media to
Speaker 1: let people know you like somebody by liking their pictures,
Speaker 1: that's a lot less privacy. Intimacy should grow in privacy,
Speaker 1: not in public. And also the big one meddling from outsiders.
Speaker 1: You get comments from strangers that poor gymnasts there and
Speaker 1: her husband being attacked online just because people didn't think
Speaker 1: he's good enough for her or whatever. Whatever. You get
Speaker 1: all those comments from strangers that you have to deal with.
Speaker 1: And then also there are mate poachers lurking in your
Speaker 1: dms who are quick to try to grab your mate.
Speaker 1: Well you're not looking, so that's a downside. But anyway,
Speaker 1: it's being used. So let's figure out how to do
Speaker 1: it correctly. When we come back, how to break up
Speaker 1: with somebody you're still in love with. Yeah, there could
Speaker 1: be good reason too, I'll explain. You're listening to the
Speaker 1: Doctor Wendy Walsh Show and KFI AM six forty We
Speaker 1: Live Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 3: You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI
Speaker 3: AM six forty kfi am six forty.
Speaker 1: You have Doctor Wendy Walsh with you. This is the
Speaker 1: Doctor Wendy Wells show producer Kylas.
Speaker 2: Laughing at me, okay, because I chose that song.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: They sang very like why would you want to break up?
Speaker 2: When I love you so good? Wh would you want
Speaker 2: to break up? And then you were supposed to start talking,
Speaker 2: but we were all tangled up back here, so the
Speaker 2: rap started before you because usually you start.
Speaker 1: Talking back by the time the rap hits. But it
Speaker 1: is a very good song. What had happened was I
Speaker 1: accidentally my roly chair had pulled on the cord of
Speaker 1: my headset and it had unplugged it. So that's why
Speaker 1: I was scrambling around on the floor. By the way,
Speaker 1: I am live on TikTok right now. If you want
Speaker 1: to come see this mess, you're welcome to come over
Speaker 1: to my TikTok account at Dr Wendy Walsh at doctor
Speaker 1: Wendy Walsh. After this segment, I will be taking your
Speaker 1: calls and answering your social media questions. The phone number
Speaker 1: for after this segment is one eight hundred and five
Speaker 1: two zero one five three four. That's one eight hundred
Speaker 1: and five to two zero one KFI. But anyway, okay,
Speaker 1: I can relax. Now let's talk about how to break
Speaker 1: up with somebody who you still love. Now. I know
Speaker 1: that sounds counterintuitive, doesn't it. But let's think about that
Speaker 1: for a minute. Love is like a drug, and many
Speaker 1: people don't practice what I call what do I call it?
Speaker 1: Intellectual love or rational love? You know, they sort of
Speaker 1: let the hormones take over. They're lovely hormones. Love is
Speaker 1: the best drug we have, I think. And so they
Speaker 1: will fall in love with somebody and then get deep
Speaker 1: into it and maybe even stay together for a period
Speaker 1: of time a year or two years, whatever, And then
Speaker 1: they ask the life questions, Oh do you want to
Speaker 1: have children? Oh? Where do you want to live in
Speaker 1: your life? Oh what kind of career would you like
Speaker 1: to have? Oh you don't want to work. You want
Speaker 1: to go camping for your whole life. You don't want
Speaker 1: a house? Oh, oh dear. So what happens is some
Speaker 1: people fall deep into love and still realize that if
Speaker 1: they're going to meet their life goals, they have to
Speaker 1: break up with this person. And it can be particularly hard.
Speaker 1: Now I want you to know, and just by the way,
Speaker 1: I came up with this theory all by myself, so
Speaker 1: take it for what it's worth. But I think every
Speaker 1: breakup as how many stages? About five stages. Okay, I
Speaker 1: see it happen, I've seen it, I've experienced it, I've
Speaker 1: felt it in my life. And here are the stages.
Speaker 1: The first is contemplating contemplation, I'll get it out. Contemplation.
Speaker 1: That's when you're on the verge of breaking up. You
Speaker 1: kind of undergo a little cost benefit analysis, like, well,
Speaker 1: if I stay with this person, it's going to be
Speaker 1: this is going to happen. If I don't, maybe I
Speaker 1: could find someone better, or I can meet my life
Speaker 1: goals that they can't meet. What should I do? So
Speaker 1: it's this silent contemplation. Now this stage could go on
Speaker 1: for weeks, months, or years while you're trying to figure
Speaker 1: it out. But after that comes the confirmation stage. This
Speaker 1: is when you've made a decision to break up. But
Speaker 1: now you want to make sure you've made the right decision.
Speaker 1: So what you do is you start to tell your
Speaker 1: closest friends. Now you pick friends unconsciously. It's usually unconscious
Speaker 1: who will confirm your feelings. So you're not going to
Speaker 1: go to your boyfriend's sister who's going to go, no,
Speaker 1: don't leave my brother, you'll hurt him. You're going to
Speaker 1: go to your bestie who never really liked him anyway,
Speaker 1: and you're going to say, hey, you know, I'm really
Speaker 1: thinking it's time to break up, and she's going to go,
Speaker 1: you know what, Let's do a girl's weekend, a wine weekend,
Speaker 1: and then we'll talk about it. This is great, right,
Speaker 1: So that's stage two, where you get confirmation from people
Speaker 1: who you know will confirm you. Then you got to
Speaker 1: do a little bit of testing to see if being
Speaker 1: a single person is really going to work out for you.
Speaker 1: That means, before you end the relationship, you're going to quietly,
Speaker 1: without really breaking the rules, you're going to test your
Speaker 1: value in the mating marketplace. Uh huh. And you're either
Speaker 1: going to do it by just going innocently out with
Speaker 1: single friends, whether you're a guy or girl. You're going
Speaker 1: to go out with same sex friends for a night
Speaker 1: on the tap and see if you get any reaction,
Speaker 1: just test it out, or you don't do anything. You
Speaker 1: just observe what it would be like, or you might,
Speaker 1: especially if you're a woman, post some kind of provocative
Speaker 1: picture on Instagram and see the reaction. See if you
Speaker 1: get any dms from people right, or maybe you will
Speaker 1: even reach out to one of your backup mates. And
Speaker 1: if you do not have a backup mate, let me explain.
Speaker 1: Evolutionary psychologists say that almost every human has a backup mate.
Speaker 1: These are people that we think about, like maybe it's
Speaker 1: a coworker or maybe somebody we flirt with online that
Speaker 1: we think, you know, if it didn't work out with
Speaker 1: my person, maybe maybe it could work out with that person.
Speaker 1: So maybe you reach out to that backup mate. Again,
Speaker 1: don't cross any lines, you don't break any rules. You
Speaker 1: just kind of test the waters a little bit. So
Speaker 1: if you've got confirmation from your friends, if you've tested
Speaker 1: the mating marketplace, it looks like the coast is clear.
Speaker 1: Things are going to be fine. Then comes the declaration phase,
Speaker 1: and this is where you declare your intention to end
Speaker 1: the relationship. Now, depending on the length of that relationship,
Speaker 1: your living arrangements, if there are children involved, et cetera.
Speaker 1: These conversations may involve a couple's therapists. They may involve
Speaker 1: some back and forth and breaking up and getting back together.
Speaker 1: There's that stage, right, never ever, ever getting back together.
Speaker 1: But then you do, and then stage five is the
Speaker 1: final breakup, and that's you know, some psychological strategies. There's
Speaker 1: actually research to show that if you can only think
Speaker 1: of the bad in your ex it's easier to get
Speaker 1: over them. So you spend a lot of time not
Speaker 1: looking back with rose colored glasses, but looking back with
Speaker 1: I'm so glad I'm not there, right, And you might
Speaker 1: go completely no contact because having triggers of them reminds
Speaker 1: you and it's harder to get over. Now here's the problem.
Speaker 1: If you're really still in love with somebody, all these
Speaker 1: stages of a break up become elongated, right, so, because
Speaker 1: you're really not one hundred percent sure. And the biggest
Speaker 1: mistake that people make when they're trying to break up
Speaker 1: with a partner who they're still in love with is
Speaker 1: they say they do one of two things. They Others say,
Speaker 1: let's just take a break. I just need a break.
Speaker 1: Whenever anybody writes to me and says my partner wants
Speaker 1: to take a break, what does this mean, I always
Speaker 1: say they're breaking up with you. They want to test
Speaker 1: their value on the mating marketplace, and if it doesn't
Speaker 1: go well, they want to know they can come back
Speaker 1: to you. There's no such thing as let's just take
Speaker 1: a break. The other thing people will do if they
Speaker 1: are still in love but need to break up because
Speaker 1: of long term goals is they will say, let's convert
Speaker 1: this to a friendship. I think we should just be friends.
Speaker 1: This never works out, It prolongs the breakup. You can't
Speaker 1: just flip a switch, especially if your feelings are so strong. Right, well,
Speaker 1: how do you do that? On TikTok? Did you see
Speaker 1: what happened? Oh you didn't see some of the made
Speaker 1: hands like this, but it showed up like in the
Speaker 1: whole screen. Oh that's cool. Yeah, I don't know how
Speaker 1: to do that. I need to learn. Someone's gonna have
Speaker 1: to tell me anyway, So how can The biggest question
Speaker 1: I get asked, though, is in that stage where people
Speaker 1: are in their contemplation stage. They will write to people
Speaker 1: like me in the DMS and they will say.
Speaker 3: How do you know?
Speaker 1: How do you know? You know what? You never know?
Speaker 1: But I will tell you this that there is nothing
Speaker 1: more painful in life than sitting on the fence. For
Speaker 1: any decision that you have to make, you have to
Speaker 1: jump right in and get committed to that decision. I
Speaker 1: remember reading some research. We talked about it on the
Speaker 1: show before producer Kayla. It was like these researchers they
Speaker 1: interview people who are on the verge of a breakup,
Speaker 1: and they said they randomly divided them into two groups.
Speaker 1: And one group they said, you must stay together for
Speaker 1: one more year, like you must clearly stay together for
Speaker 1: one more year. And the other group they said you
Speaker 1: must break up right away. And they caught up with
Speaker 1: them like a year later. Guess what they found out
Speaker 1: what the people The people who broke up were happier. Really,
Speaker 1: it just prolongs. If you're having thoughts of breaking up,
Speaker 1: then you know you shouldn't break up. You should break up,
Speaker 1: like just jump in if you're having If I believe
Speaker 1: change is good, I agree change is good. Not that
Speaker 1: you should throw I mean there are things to consider.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm a big proponent of staying together for
Speaker 1: the children. There's research to show that that's a good thing.
Speaker 1: It's good for kids' health. Revolving Dora of parental figures
Speaker 1: not good for kids at all. So there are other
Speaker 1: extenuated circumstances. Okay, what else did I want to say?
Speaker 1: About that, Oh, the phone number. When we come back,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be answering your relationship questions. Remember I'm
Speaker 1: not a therapist. I'm a psychology professor. But I've written
Speaker 1: three books on relationships, did a dissertation on attachment theory,
Speaker 1: and i have a lot of life wisdom. Give us
Speaker 1: a call. The numbers one eight hundred five two zero
Speaker 1: one five three four. That's one eight hundred five two
Speaker 1: zero one KFI. You're listening to the Doctor Wendy Walls
Speaker 1: Show on KFI AM six forty. Were live everywhere on
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app. You've been listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh.
Speaker 1: You can always hear us live on KFI AM six
Speaker 1: forty from seven to nine pm on Sunday and anytime
Speaker 1: on demand on the iHeartRadio app.