This is Doctor Wendy Walsh and you're listening to KFI AM six forty, The Doctor Wendy Wall Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app, Doctor Doctor, Kimmy the News. I gotta loving you KFI AM six forty. You have Doctor Wendy Walsh with you. This is the Doctor Wendywall Show. I gotta tell you, guys a secret. One time I got on an airplane American Airlines flight and the flight attendants we're all female. You're not surprised by that, but the pilot and the co pilot we're also female. I felt so safe.
Guess what you should feel safe right now because the entire crew of KFI is female. Hey, Robin, how you doing? Robin on the soundboard. Good to see you, Ashley Johnson. Welcome to the Dr Wendywall Show. Such a treat. Of course, we've got producer Kayla running around somewhere. She'll be back in the studio in a minute. So if you think that things are going well in radio, it's because you got four women at the controls. Okay, you're going to be fine. Sit back, because
we are going to talk about your love life. How much does age really matter? In a relationship. I get calls all the time and emails about the age gap thing. What about the opinions of others? You know, I've always said that relationships are a bridge between tribes. So if your friends or family aren't getting behind your new person, what do you do? Also, we hear a lot about red flags, red flags, red flags in relationship, don't go further. I saw a red flag. What about green
flags? When you meet somebody new, how do you recognize that this is a place you should keep moving forward? But before we get going, I want to talk a little bit about what happened to me this week. I did something rare for me. I scheduled some fun. I'm not joking. I scheduled some fun. Here's the thing, as we get to a certain age, everything in our life is either serving others, caregiving kids, family, working, surviving, paying bills, sitting on LA freeways. But when
you know, when you're young, you're running out to clubs. I as I go to sleep at ten o'clock at night, I jokingly but not so, say to Julio, do you remember the days we would go to a club that opened at midnight like it just started. The door's opened at midnight, and he's like, I couldn't imagine that. I couldn't imagine. And so we used to have fun all the time when we were young. We didn't care if we were tired. We didn't care. No, I'm going
to tell you the craziest story that my roommate and I did. One time. We're both at separate offices working. I think I was working for HBO at the time. She was working in Century City, and somebody called me. Okay, he was an Olympic athlete and he said, hey, I'm in Vegas. You want to bring friend and kamalace party tonight? And I call he goes, I can get you a flight right out of Burbank right after work, you know. So I call my roomate up and I say,
hey, do you have a wild hair? And she goes, well, I had a pregnancy at fifteen. I guess I do. And I said, okay, okay, let's go, And so we went. We got on this plane right after work onlike a freaking Tuesday, like the boring week. We fly to Vegas. All right. We party all night with the I am and his friends, and we have a great old time and then we catch a flight the next morning. We get to our hotel room before because we get you know, we got like three three hours sleep,
maybe four hours sleep, and we look at each other. Then we had picked up the little vanity kit at the airport with the toothbrush and deorderant, the mini things we needed, and we looked at each other and we said, we forgot to bring clothes, like we have to go back to work tomorrow with the walk of shame wearing the same outfit from the day before. And we looked at each other and said, let's switch. And we just wore each other's clothes to work the next day. So there you go.
We had fun then, But now raising kids, managing household, managing business, who has time for fun? Well, let me tell you the fun that I scheduled this week. I actually went on a tour of a farm. Okay, don't laugh, it's a different life. Now. Have you ever heard of apricot lane farms? You probably see them at one of five farmers' markets. There's a great documentary called My Biggest Little Farm that you should see. In a nutshell, a female chef from Santa Monica married to a
wildlife videographer living in an apartment growing vegetables on a tiny balcony. Decided, I don't know how they did this part. They had a lot of parties with a lot of friends and begged for a lot of money, and somehow some venture capital came into their lap and they bought two hundred and thirty five dead acres up in More Park. When I say dead, I mean dead. It was like sand. It was the Sahara. And they started to
learn about soil health. The documentary is hysterical because they are stumbling, bumbling farmers, but it is a very successful enterprise today and people line up to get tickets to tour it. Yes, if you've seen the documentary, Emma the pig has passed away, but you can visit her grave. We saw cute at little lambs and chickens. I learned more about soil and how soil can save the planet. I don't have to tell you that round up is everywhere in glypha, sate, pesticide, whatever they are, we things.
They're bad, bad, bad bad, Okay, And so did you know if you keep good soil and you compost and you put your good, healthy microbe soil on your property, it actually they attack, They attack the glypha sate so they can't come and get you. Oh no, you think this is boring. This was totally fun for me. This was so exciting and fun. So it is really important that we take time to pleasure. I'm not watching the clock, Robin, Are you telling me when I stop talking?
By the way, just letting you know. Oh, there's Kayla watching the clock. Okay. I love to ramble on the radio. I've been doing radio for ten years now, and I have not learned how to talk and watch a clock. It is the craziest thing, and yet it's all about the clock. So that's why I have an army of professional women around me who hold up fingers and make rap sound. Not that finger, Kayla's so professional. No professional finger, she gives me. No, she holds
aout how many minutes left and whatever? Whatever. Okay, I want to get back to fun for a little bit. You know what. Having fun, truly experiencing pleasure and joy in life is just as important to the human experience as being productive, and there is research to support that having fun has positive biological effects. When we do something pleasurable, it releases dopamine. Dopamine leads to positivity and this counteracts all those awful feelings that we have. We
all have them. We have feelings of hopelessness. Sometimes we have feelings of stress, we have feelings of anxiety. This might be a moment for me to pause and say, you know you're supposed to have a whole rainbow of feelings, right. You know you're not supposed to be happy all the time, because if you were happy all the time, you would not recognize it. But when we have the less comfortable feelings, we should learn coping strategies.
We should learn how to manage those feelings, having enough daily buffers in so that we don't sink into the depths of despair. One of my favorite daily buffers is to have a couple friends on speed dial. We all have one or two friends this way who are just hysterical. No matter what trouble you call them with, they actually crack you up. They manage to turn it into something funny. I keep those people when I need to. But touring Apricot Lane Farms in Moore Park was my special fun this week and I
loved it. And don't laugh, Okay, A bought a bag of soil. A bought a bag of soil composted soil. So I'm going to change the plan. I'm gonna make compost t I go to put it in my gardens. All right, now, let's talk about our relationships. Well, you know, our mental health is important too. Why do we have these dating what we know about deal breakers right that list, But why do we
have dating deal makers? And why when you find that one person that you're attracted to and you're like, oh, they have this one thing, so they must be great. Why does that happen? I'm going to explain when we come back, why we have a dating deal makers. You're listening to doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI Am six forty. I don't know. I've been talking about hashtag where's Milania all of twenty twenty four because she flippin'
disappeared. Remember we reported back in November that Milania Trump had renegotiated her performance contract I mean her prenuptial agreement. Apparently her appearance, I mean her prenuptial agreement was up for renewal and she did it. We don't know what was in it. That was November. Then she was not there at New Year's and at mar a lago. He made a comment about her mom being in the hospital, and then her mom died sadly on January ninth. But then
February March April, we like never heard of her. So Saturday night she shows up at a fundraiser with him in Palm Beach. There's a picture in the New York Times. You guys have to go look at Okay, it's probably all over. They posed for a photo op in front of somebody's mansion who held this event. And I'm not a body language expert by any means, but anybody with eyeballs can look at this and go, this is not a happy couple. This is not even a couple. They are standing far
away from each other. They're not touching each other and not looking at each other. They look like a couple who've just had a big fight and had to go stand out for a It's weird, right, Kayla. I mean you say look like they are enemies. I'm definitely not a married couple. It's so interesting anyway, just throwing that out there. I watch couples. I swear I can sit in a restaurant and I can look at couples and tell you who's dating, who's bored with each other, who's about to get
divorced, who's happy. It's just so easy because I just almost have like a savant like knowledge, only because I myself was so damaged for so many years and lived in those kinds of relationships, and then, thankfully, through the help of a good therapist, I was able to heal. And I'm always asking my question about love, Why? Why this person? Really? What is love? First of all, when somebody says to me, I'm just looking for my soulmate, I want to throw up. I'm sorry.
There's no such thing as a soulmate. You can have a fantasy about a soul mate, but the truth is love is a bio biological, psycho psychological, social event. Biologically, a bunch of neurohormones hit your brain when the sites and smells. Yes, the pheromones of an attractive mate comes along. Psychologically, somebody who feels like your intellectual match or an emotional exchange of care or the right attachment style for your attachment. And then social do they live
in the right zip code, do they have the right bank account? Do they eat the right diet? Vegan paleo? Where we go in folks. Right, what's their politics? Like? Right, that's the social part. You put all those three together, you're going to find your version of love. You could also look at love through the famous psychologist Robert Sternberg's triangular theory of love. He said, love is like a triangle three different points.
One point is passion, that's the lust, the sexual attraction. The other is intimacy, meaning the emotional intimacy, and finally the third is commitment. And that's all about the brain, the brain that does a cost benefit analysis about this mate and goes, you know what, I'm gonna make a commitment to them. I know they have these flaws, but they're great in this area. La la la la la, I'll commit right. And so he says that some relationships, most relationships, actually have only two of those.
They might have lost and emotional intimacy, but commitment never happens. They might have commitment and intimacy, but they're not really sexually attracted to each other. But the marriage works only the lucky ones of us, actually ones of us. Is that it does not even list the lucky one the ones of us some of us, sure, a few of us, Yeah, Like are the lucky ones are able to find passion, intimacy, and commitment. Well, there's a new study out. It was actually a series of studies done.
Where was it printed one of those famous academic journals that I was flipping through? Oh, it's a Boston University researcher there you go. Uh. Do you ever notice when you're maybe reading somebody's dating app profile, or you've just met somebody, you get really excited if they happen to have the love of the same band that's your favorite band, or your favorite politician is their favorite politician, or that the two of you just find the same things funny.
Maybe the both of you have dark humor. By the way, I have learned through Julio, who's very light and happy my fiance, that I have dark humor that apparently the most dark things make me laugh. And I don't know where I got it from. I think being a news reporter for many years, seeing so much tragedy out there in the world, I learned to steal myself with kind of dark humor. You know where I made a mistake one time of using my dark humor. Nobody got this joke. I
was on a plane and I was flying somewhere. I think I was hosting the show extra and they were flying me to New York. So I got to sit in business. I'm a business class and there's a guy beside me. And you know how if you never sat in business, they come along and they address you by name. Oh, hello, miss Walsh, Hello, mister Johnson, whatever, and would you like, you know, champagne
or orange juice before we take off? Right? And so she gets to the guy who's sitting beside me, and he goes, oh, actually, this is my wife's seat. We switched. She's over there, and she said, I need you to take the seat that was assigned to you for takeoff. And I said, I regret saying this. I said, honey, you got to do that because that's how they could identify the bodies later now to me, because he got to know who's strapped into what seat. Not right, i'd take off on a plane, I know. No,
Oh god, I didn't read the World. Oh no, you did. I did not read that on very well. So anyway, maybe, but I learned that Julio has light humor and he does not like my dark humor at all. So that's not the thing we have in common. You know what we have in common? The New York Times. It's like a funny game with us. At any hour of the day, we're checking it all
the time. Like you guys check Tinder or Instagram, we're checking New York Times to see if they posted a new And by the way, for those who have menopause related insomnia, they post their new articles at three am. And I rushed them sometimes because it puts me back to sleep to read darkness. I don't know. But anyway, our thing in common is that we rush to want to be the first one with the news. Did you hear that? So and so? Yeah, I already read it, I say,
right. And that's our funny little thing we have together anyway. So this research out of Boston University called there's something called a similarity attraction effect, which is we basically like people who are like us. So this researcher did a whole bunch of different studies and he found that there was one critical factor that psychologists call isn't this psycho bath self essentialist reasoning? Okay, what that means is if there's something about you that you believe is essential to you,
your sense of self. Maybe it's that you're the fan of the greatest ban on earth. Maybe it's that you're a die hard fan of I don't know, Yankees baseball. Maybe it's no, we have to say, La Dodgers. We're here in La. And so you believe that in your deepest core of self lies this essence. Well, guess what if you meet somebody who likes or dislikes that exact same thing as you, you believe that they must be like you in many, many, many levels. And that's why you
imagine there's such a thing as a soulmate. The truth is, everybody, relationships are far more about skill than luck. And if you can learn, as I did in my lifespan, learn good solid relationship skills, you'll meet many, many solmtes, if you want to call them that, you'll meet many people who you can have good relationships with. So there you go. Just because they're a fan of whatever doesn't mean they're perfect in every other way. But that's when we sort of cast a whole thing. They are like
me. Love it all right? When we come back. The one question I get all the time, all the time, does age matter? I'm talking about an age gap in a relationship. Well, I've got some research for you. You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI AM six forty. If you're new to my show, I just want to remind you I have a PhD in clinical psychology, but I'm not a therapist. I'm a psychology professor, although my little hobby husband that I'm obsessed with the science
of love. So I've written three books on relationships, did a dissertation on attachment theory, and I'm just sort of a nerdy savant who loves to weigh in on people's love lives. I can't stop, okay, because I spent so many years in therapy healing my own stuff. It is just fascinating to me how human beings relate, and it's important because it is the essence of being human. We are wired to bond. We don't do well in isolation. You remember COVID quarantine. Yeah, we don't do well in isolation.
We are meant to connect with others. We are meant to exchange care. We are meant to fall in love. But things happen in our childhood that often make love a prickly path for many many people. One of the things I want to talk about today is the age difference thing, because I get an enormous amount of questions about this, and I'll start by telling you my story is that pretty much I've dated peers across the lifespan. Now. Exception would be when I was in my twenties, I lived with a guy for
four years who is in his forties now. I eventually outgrew him because I grew up right and I thought, you know, why is a guy in his forties hanging out with people in their twenties. You eventually learn when you get to be thirty, and he's still twenty mentally. So he treated me very well. It was a lovely life. Everything was great, But I outgrew him later when I found myself as a single mother, and I dipped my toe into dating many times, trying to, of course, always protect
my children from my romantic life. I tried dating younger men because they were They looked physically attractive to me, and some of them even appeared to be educated and quite smart. But it doesn't matter how many degrees you have when you get together. If there's a big age gap, the references are off and the power lies with the older one one hundred percent of the time, because the older one usually has more financial security, doesn't matter the gender.
Also, the older one just has more life experience no matter what, right, And so I just felt like a teacher, and I didn't like feeling like a teacher. I mean, I got a little patriarchy swimming inside my head too. You can't shake all of culture. And I'm like, I want a man who I can look up to you. I want a man right Ironically, I feel like I have the greatest peer relationship right now, somebody who loves strong women but knows when to be strong himself. So it's
a good, good balance between us. But just the other day, he and I had dinner with a guy that he's doing some work with, and the guy was saying that he's dating a woman who's ten years younger than him. Now, ten years isn't a big gat. Now ten years is a gap if somebody is eighteen and twenty eight, or god forbid, fifteen and twenty five, I think that's illegal, folks. But if somebody is he's like forty three and she's thirty three, Like, that's not really a ten
year that matters. But then he said she didn't had never even seen some of my favorite movies. She didn't even know some of my favorite music stars. I actually remember that. This goes back a really long time, but I remember dating a guy a little bit younger than me, and I looked at him one time when it was time to break up, and he said, why are you breaking up with me? And I said, because you
don't remember disco. You were never you were never there. I was there, Okay, now I was underage, and those clumbs when here's a funny disco story. By the way, So Julio's mom had him very young, and she's very cool. I look up to her more than anybody. She
is the coolest woman. I mean, she was a single mother of two boys in the nineteen seventies in New York City, like the ultimate feminist, right, But because she had her boys very young, as people did back then, I think she was like nineteen and twenty or twenty and twenty one or whatever. By the time Julio got to be clubbing age, he would sometimes run into his mom because I remember it begets Studio fifty four. One time one of my buddies goes, dude, your mom's here. I love
that story. I just think she's so so cool. All right, So does age really matter? Well, according to a study that was published in the Journal of Population Economics, marital satisfaction Listen closely, marital satisfaction decreases significantly in couples with a larger age difference when compared with couples of similar ages. I have always said peers are attracted to peers across the lifespan. Now here's
what the research came up with. Couples with a zero to three year age gap, so in other words, they're the same age or three years apart, showed greater satisfaction than those with a just a four to six year gap, And then couples with a four to six year gap showed greater relationship satisfaction than those with a seven plus year gap. Now the researcher scratched their head. They had to come up with a theory like why why, because everybody
always asks why, what do your results mean? What's the discussion? Section say? And they say that differently aged couples might be less resilient to the negative shocks that happen in a relationship, whether it's economic hardship or God forbid illness. Right, there might be things like a mismatch with children. I always say this, it doesn't matter about the age. It matters whether the child bearing work is over, the raising of kids is over or not.
If you've got somebody who's a dude who's divorced and he's forty eight years old and he's got kids that are like, let's go with teenagers or something, and he's back and forth with the kids the week and week off, and he meets a woman who's fabulous and she's thirty eight. He's forty eight. She's thirty eight. This is hypothetical, and she's at the end of her fertility window and she wants to have kids more than anything in the world.
It doesn't matter how tracted you are, folks. If this dude is like done with family stuff because he's already produced and raised, is not gonna happen. This is the most important question in the age gap relationship. Other questions are you know, what goals do you have for your life in general, your future goals. If somebody is heading into retirement and somebody's still charging ahead with their career, you're gonna have problems. Right If somebody wants to have
kids and somebody doesn't, you're gonna have problems. You have to have honest conversations about the big life events. And then also what are your common interests. These will become even more important as you grow older. So if you're like, Okay, I'll go out to the clubs with this young th until they like me enough and then they'll stay in with me. No, they're probably not going to stay in with you. They're too young to stay in
with you. You've got to figure out what your hobbies are like and that you're going to do things that can strengthen your connection. For instance, today Hulu and I spend an afternoon in home depot and we bought some flooring and we figured out we're going to watch YouTube videos to install the flooring in my laundry room. And he's happy to help me and my home maintenance stuff. See, we're good. And then the other big one. No matter what
your age is, do your morals and your values match up? And finally, are you resilient to other people's opinions because you're going to be criticized, especially if the age gap is like twenty years or thirty years. People are going to look down on you, look some of them work. I actually know a couple who have I think like a thirty year age difference, and they are so deeply in love. He's now older, of course, the older one experiencing some health issues, and she's there caring for him, and
it's going to be sad, but the love was strong. They raised a family. All good, All right. When we come back, we hear a lot about red flags. Oh gosh, it's a red flag, don't go forward, Oh no, don't go on another date. But what about a green flag? When do you know that you really should hit the accelerator and go forward this person, Let's talk about this when we come back.
You're listening to doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI AM six forty. I talk a lot about red flags in relationships, partly because I myself came through an era of poor boundaries, weak boundaries. My therapist used to say, you are the most tolerant person I have ever met. So as a result, my journey was about learning to go ugh, I'm out no oh, instead of oh, well, maybe they're nice, you know, maybe it's
not their fault. Where did this come from? In me? I actually had a Pollyanna positive, mom, which was great in all kinds of ways. Let's go here, kids, Oh my gosh, it's going to be so much fun. Mom. I just saw this weird man and he asked me to get into his convertible car. Now, honey, don't always think about the worst in people. That's how my mother would talk. I know. She didn't teach me to be cautious and scared. She taught me to look for the good in all people. Remember a few weeks ago, we
were talking about Resa Tisa from the internet. Starting with TikTok. Millions of people followed her story where she all the red flags were there and she missed them. And the problem is, when you are a good moral person, it is very difficult to imagine that other people can be completely immoral, completely
unethical, duplicitous liars. Right. So it's so therefore I write about red flags a lot because many of the people who follow me on social media are people with boundary issues they need to work hard on saying no, this is not right. However, it is important that I also talk about the green flags because there are another group of people out there, and these are the ones whose quote unquote boundaries are so intact that they won't let anybody get close
to them. They are so fearful that someone's going to hurt them. Be out to get them is probably lying that really good people pass through their lives and they're unable to see it. So we do have to talk about green flags. A green flag in a new relationship is basically some kind of behavior that shows that a potential partner might be trustworthy, caring and or commitment oriented. And it is so important to look for these green flags as well as,
of course don't ignore the red flags. And here's the science behind it. Our brains become so easily overwhelmed by making choices. Dating apps present too many choices. The mating marketplace, believe it or not, as crowded right now. So to reduce the cognitive overload involved in making a choice, our brain wants us to make quick judgments. Our brain wants us to swiftly eliminate a bunch of choices. Add to that the fact that our brains operate on
something called a negative bias. That's our natural tendency to dwell on the negative more than the positive. Now, it evolved in us as human beings as a protective mechanism right to keep us safe from danger. So we've got these built in reflexes to look for red flags and eliminate quickly. But that might mean that we're accidentally rejectingotentially good mates. So to override this system, we
do need to consciously look for positive traits called green flags. Now, I'm warning you if you are somebody who misses red flags regularly, don't listen. Go put your fingers in your ears right now and go la la, la, la la until the end of this. You need to focus on those red flags. But if you are the kind of person who your friends keep saying, why don't you give them a chance? You just get rid of them so fast, then you need to listen up. Okay, So here
are some green flags that you want to keep an eye out for. Number one, somebody's words are backed up by actions, promises, promises, promises. Mates who are hoping to maybe just add you to their stable, or extract sex without love, or steal your money, or who are emotionally unable to have a serious relationship. They string people along with promises. They dangle carets like potential business introductions, vacations, and just kind gestures that will appear
in your future if you just hang in there. Bright green flags, on the other hand, are welcome actions, not empty promises. When somebody you have just met backs up their words with actions, this is an indication that they can be counted on, especially when the going might get tough in the future. Right, So look for actions, not did they say it? Have they done it? Right? All right? Second green flag, It's super important how they respond to your bid for care. I quote these people
all the time. Groundbreaking work by doctors John and Julie Gotman at the Marriage Lab at the University of Washington say that the single biggest indicator of a long term happy relationship is that a partner turns toward rather than turns away when there is a bid for care. Now, that may mean physically turning toward somebody, it may mean emotionally turning towards somebody. So let's think of an example. Let's say on a date, you express that you had a bad day
at work. So your date leans in, touches your arm, looks empathetic with their face, asks to hear more. On the other end, it's a red flag if your date changes the subject makes a joke about it, dismisses it by saying like you'll be fine, you're tough. But a positive response where somebody really shows empathy means that they've got emotional intelligence, and this is really important for commitment and especially for if you're ever going to get into
parentoo with this person. All right. Third favorite green flag of mine. I think I wrote this in my book The Boyfriend Test way back. When they introduce you to close friends and family. To their close friends and family, you see people who aren't commitment oriented like to hide their little romantic trists, so there are a few loose sends to tie up after they've dispose of
the relationship. It's a really nice green flag. If the person you're dating begins to introduce you to their close friends and their family within a few months of dating, this shows that they're hopeful about integrating you into their clan for the long term. It shows that their family oriented, that they understand that
relationships are a bridge between tribes. So if you're the person who gets rid of people really easily for silly reasons like I didn't like their tie or their shoes, people do that or their car, stop and look for the green flags, the ones that show emotional maturity, the ones that show an ability
to care. All right, when we come back, There's another thing that comes up in relationships a lot, and I get these questions and new relationships, especially what if your friends and family don't approve of your new partner? H what if they don't? What do you do? How do you handle something like that? And after that, I am going to be taking your calls. I'm going to throw the phone number out here now. Producer Kayla is going to go to the phones at eight fifteen. The number is one
eight hundred five two zero one KFI. That's one eight hundred five two zero one five three four. Reminder, I'm not a therapist. I'm a psychology professor, but I've written three books on relationships, did a dissertation on attachment theory, and I'm always happy to weigh in on your love life because I've got some opinions that I'd like to share with you. That's at eight fifteen.
The numbers one eight hundred five two zero one five three four. You've been listening to doctor Wendy Walls. You can always hear us live on KFI AM six forty from seven to nine pm on Sunday and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.