This is doctor Wendy Walsh and you're listening to KF I Am six forty, the Doctor Wendy wallsh Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app, Doctor Doctor, Jimmy the Louse, I gotta mek loving you KF I Am six forty. You have Doctor Wendy Walsh with you. This is the Doctor Wendy Walls Show, and I am taking your calls. The phone number is one eight hundred five two zero one KFI. That's one eight hundred five two zero one five three four. Also, if you are on Instagram, I'm welcoming my Instagram
audience. You're welcome to go on to Instagram and search doctor Wendy Walsh. We are live in the studio. If you're watching on Instagram, you're not going to hear both sides the conversation, so you might want to consider downloading the iHeartRadio apps. You can listen to both sides. Okay, we have Elizabeth first. Hi Elizabeth, it's doctor Wendy. Hi, Doctor Wendy. Hi, which question. Hi. I've been engaged twice before and my current
fiance I love him. He's great. However, I find that I keep getting cold feet at the thought of actually going through with the marriage or with the actual wedding. And so my question is how do I get over the anxiety of actually getting married and get past whatever is holding me back? Because I love him so much, I want to marry him, but I just I'm scared to get married. I don't know, it's just there's something there
that just prevents me from going through with it. Well, Elizaeth, first of all, congratulations, I'm engaged too, and it's very normal to have cold feet, to get nervous, to worry that it's forever and ever. The fact though, that you've been engaged twice before and got cold feet and it didn't happen, and now it's the third time, tells me that you
should not do this alone. You really need a licensed therapist. Honestly, you need to be going regularly to deal with this kind of anxiety so that you have good support and understanding, because he or she, your therapist, may discover that this anxiety has nothing to do with the current wedding coming up, but some other stuff that happened in your life. Right, So please don't yeah, please don't do it alone, Elizabeth. I want you to
go to a licensed therapist. Get over your anxiety so you can walk down the aisle and be in a wonderful bride. You can do it. Thanks for calling, Elizabeth you congratulations, Doctor Wad, thank you, thank you. Who do we have next? Producer, Kayla? Are you there? Who do we have next? I'm waiting. Kim. Hi, Kim, It's doctor Wendy. Hi, Kim, It's doctor Wendy. Hi. How are you good? How are you? What's your question? Love? Well,
I'm doing an update for you. I'm kim Berly from Georgia. Huh, And I called you about six months ago, maybe seven months ago, and I was going through breast cancer and all that. I want to give you an update. Yes, yeah, well, and I was having a really hard time with it and everything. I'm scared. I'm in remission. Kimberly. I'm so happy. This is Kimberly from Georgia who called six or seven months ago with her breast cancer story. And now you're in remission.
I am so happy to hear that. This is wonderful. I hate and I'm sorry to disagree with you, but I do believe in love at first sight because my husband will make any big decisions when you're at that early stage, that's all, Kimberly. Well, Well, my husband, when we first met twenty four years ago, answered a roommate ad and I told him I didn't think it was going to work because I believe in love at first sight, and I might get scared at night and I might call on your
dead We've been together for twenty four years and married seventeen. I'm so happy, all right. I disagree with you on that, and you know what I would call you. You have it. You are called Kimberly. Anecdotal evidence. An anecdotal total evidence does not prove the statistics. What I'm really telling people is when you have that rush of neuro hormones that you had with your husband, that you try not to make big decisions in your life. You guys did and it worked for you. And I'm happy, and I'm
especially happy for that update. Thank you so much for calling Kimberly. Okay, producer, Kayla, who do we have? Now? We have Valerie with an update? Valerie, High Valerie. Another update, Okay, high Valerie, another update. Oh my gosh, Okay, So, Wendy, I called you about a year and a half ago. A year and a half ago. Oh my gosh, I hope I can remember. What did
you say a year and a half ago? It's okay. Anyway, I had brought in a homeless man and your ice was giving him up up, and then he had a way of getting into your mind and trying to keep in there. But what I want to tell you is he's a very interesting man. He actually started hitting me against cyberwomen and saying that he wasn't cheating on me because they're cyberwomen. So I'm telling you this was an interesting concept.
And then the next thing that happens is is that you write about, oh gosh, I'm in love with some guy and he doesn't really have as much money as me, and I'm thinking, like, hmm, what the heck is going on in this world? But my bottom line to you is that you have to pay attention to the person you're with. And if it's what's the word I want to say, If it's not, what are you still together? No? No? In fact, I even had to change
my phone number. So you dumped him because of the cybergirlfriends, the online life, well, soccer and drinking and uh yeah, there's yeah, it sounds like he was a very functional. Well so okay, So a year and a half ago I advised you to get rid of the homeless man you had taken in, and you said he was very psychologically manipulative, but then you found out he's drinking a lot and he as a cybergirlfriend, Valerie, I'm glad you were brave enough to get rid of him. Thank you so
much for doing that, and thanks for calling with the update. Okay, if you want to call the numbers one eight hundred five two zero one KFI. That's one eight hundred five two zero one five three four. Let me go to social media real quickly. Dear doctor Wendy says this DM a guy I met online and have been texting with, asked me on a coffee date. My friend says, he must not like me very much, because men show their feelings through their pockets. I mean, your wallets are coffee dates
too low of an effort, not in today's time. In fact, I wouldn't even call a coffee date a date. I would call it a coffee meeting, just a little meetup to decide if you want to have a first date. That is my advice. Get off the apps and messaging quickly. Get into the real world, get on the phone, go out for a little bit of a you know, a little coffee or something. But definitely
it's okay. Don't don't let that first meeting be longer than like twenty minutes or so, and then if two of you like each other, then you go on a first date. Okay, you don't like I hate this whole big pressure to spend money and look good and make it a big deal when you've only seen the person online. But thanks for the question. Okay, who do we have on the phone. We have Brad with a question. Brad, Hi, Brad, It's doctor Wendy. Hey, doctor Wendy.
How are you doing good? What's your question? Well, I just want to say I've been following you for several years now and I appreciate you taking my time. Thank you. I live in a small, uh cool beach town, New smmirt of Beach, just south of DAYTONA. Yeah, you've got a southern gentleman south of Dayton. Yeah. Absolutely, Well I'm native
from uh to Atlanta, but I've been down here fourteen years now. But uh uh the twins went off to college this fall, and uh, I just feel like I've been on a six month lease program for the past seven eight years, Dayton. I'll date around a bunch of girls for six months. I'll find a nice one I dated for six months, traded in and you know, after having three kids, you know, I don't have to get married again. But I am a companion person. I feel like I've
run through my whole small town here. I get fun. I mean, I definitely want to find my special my my my my, my special goal. But uh, I've got one more kid that's a freshman in high school. You've got three or four more years kid to launch. Yeah, so I just you know, should I hold, you know, pump the brake for getting trying to find that special gal or just enjoy the journey or you know, Okay, so rad, let me just say this. So it
sounds like you're living in this cool little beach town in Florida. Two of your kids are already launched, you got one still in the nest, you're divorced, and you've been dating most of the women in town for about six months each and you feel like you've sort of run through them all, but you're still looking for a long term companion. I would start by going back to thinking about the ones that you've dated, because maybe you didn't do it
with as much meaning at the time. And then I would also expand your net a little bit outside of the town and not too far because long distance relationships are pained in the butt. But ask yourself if you're really ready, because when you're ready, you will stick with someone. The fact that you've been turning them in every six months, that's tells me that that's what you're happy with. You know, what we do, what we want is what it is, and if you want someone long term, you'll stick to that
person. Thanks so much for calling. You're listening to doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI AM six forty. I want to go to social media because that's where people are most intimate with me. A reminder, I'm not a therapist. I'm a psychology professor, but I'm a woman of a certain age
who has a lot of life experience and a lot of wisdom. Okay, here we go, Hey, doctor Wendy, I met this guy at a bar with my friend, had so much fun, got a room, had a romp ooh, and was amazed at the whole package of the package. Yes, the package. I was so amazed. I never got his name. Really that's interesting anyway, but he did make a post in twenty eleven. Anyway, he answered me. Then he proceeded to bring me along what
found out he did this all across the country. Women were sharing their stories, but not his name. He's married, has grown kids now, but I never got his name. And the blurry picks I don't have to work in the Google lens. All I wanted to was to find out what this guy did for a living. Who has time to charm women all over the country, have sex with them and not get caught? How can I trust again? Okay, we need to stop right here and freeze up everything on
this. You want to trust somebody whose name you don't know, who you've been stalking online and finding women sharing stories about him and his picture. I guess you're using Google images or something. And you madame at a bar, had your ROMP, was amazed by the whole package, and now you want to trust. I'm sorry. Trust takes a long time to build. And if you think you know enough about somebody after meeting them at a bar and having a ROMP and them have an amazing package that was all in caps,
so I think I know what you mean. And then you want to trust. You can't trust that way. Trust is a slow burned thing. Trust you got to take your time with Trust. You got to make them sacrifice to see what happens. Trust you got to do your due diligence. Trust is not about I had a romp. I want to find him. I don't know his name. Oh he's been with lots of other women. Now he's married with kids. What do I do? How can I trust again? If you lost your mind? Sorry, I'm being real honest. Have
you lost your mind? Okay, Hi, doctor Wendy help. I have an intense crush on a coworker. We're equal, meaning I don't work directly under her or vice versa. She has a beautiful mind. I was in control of my feelings and then I had a sex dream about her, and my feelings have intensified. I think about her all the time. I'm not sure if the feeling is mutual, and I don't want to make things awkward. Should I make a movie? Okay, well, all this has to
do. Let's start about. There's a little thing that happened called the me Too movement in twenty seventeen hashtag me too, have you heard about it? Which means this is generally not a good idea to meet people at work. However, having said that, I think something like three out of five marriages say that they began at work. So I like the fact that you're on the same equal grounding what I want you to do, and you can do
it clandestinely. It doesn't need to be you in person. Is get your HR department's policy on workplace relationships, because if they have a very strict no workplace relationships policy and you've read it in the employee handbook and you do it
anyway, you can get fired. Literally. You don't want to lose your job over this, right, So my thinking is, you move very very slowly, and you make the odd little comment, not flirty, not flirty, not flirty, but something like do you want to get coffee together or whatever sometime, and if they if they pick up on it and are seem interested, open body language, hair flip, whatever, then move forward carefully.
But I'm telling you this can be a problem no PDAs at work public displays of affection because other people can complain to HR that they're in a toxic sexual environment because of that. All right, it's a real you got a pussy foot around this pun intended. You got to be really careful when you're doing workplace stuff. The best thing is you're on the same level. But how often do you have to really interact with each other at work and do
stuff? Because dating is usually not the problem for HR departments, it's the breakup. Imagine now that you've broken up with this woman and she hates you, how are you going to get your job done? Yeah? You got to think about all these questions in the future. Hi, doctor Wendy. In the very beginning stages of dating, how many hours do you think is acceptable to take to text back someone. I don't know if I'm the problem or this guy is clingy. I don't like him yet, but I may
one day. I just don't want immediate text back. All right. Let me explain the timing and duration between texts. I have not seen a study in an academic journal about it. However, if I were to speculate, I would say it is highly correlated with attachment style. Those that have slightly
more anxious attachment style and slightly lower self esteem text back quickly. In fact, one bit of research that I did read out of the Kinsey Institute on dating app messaging showed that the higher a person's mate status, the better looking they were, the more money they made, whatever it is, right, the less they text less often and fewer words. Right, So, what
does it mean that he's texting back immediately? It means he's chasing you and you're the higher status mate in the situation, and or it means that he has kind of an anxious attachment style. And the question is do you want to live with that? It sounds like you might have a little bit, you might lie a little bit on the scale of having an avoidant attachment style. Right, so you're being oh, it's too much, too soon. Look, anybody who is anxious when they get that text right back to like,
oh that's okay, they're right there. And then before they know it, too anxious people meet and they come completely immeshed. Nobody can remember whose problem is, who's There's no independent growth anymore, you know. With that. There's also research to show when an anxious person gets in a relationship with an avoidant person, their relationships last the very longest, but they're the most unhappy because somebody's always chasing and feeling they're not getting enough, and the other
person's always feeling smothered and engulfed. Isn't that crazy? All these women talking about trying to be guys. I had a dear doctor, Wendy. I have had a crush on this guy who works in my building, and all of a sudden, I see him on hinge. Should I, oh, that's cool. Should I wait for him to like me or send him alike? You need to send him alike. You need to let him know.
That's all you need to do. Just need to you know. I back in the day when I was on dating apps, I would sometimes see friends or guys that I'd previously dated, and I would match with them just to say hello. And I just say in the message, Hey, just saying hello, I want to match because I know we both saw each other. It's like being in a night club together and you both see each other and you don't talk to each other. That's weird, right, So should my
little text say, Hey, I see him on building? How are you see? If anything grows from there? You may you never know. Hey, when we come back, let's talk about conflict resolution. Six questions to ask yourself after your next argument. You're listening to doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI AM six forty Okay, Conflict resolution. I mentioned that the Golden Bachelor's probably I don't know them, it's gossip, but you never know.
Maybe they had some conflict resolution problems. Maybe they didn't learn conflict. I always say that relationships are far more about skill than luck, and probably the most important skill that we all need to learn is how to have healthy conflict. Now, in our family of origin, healthy conflict might not have been
modeled for us. Maybe you grew up in a family where your parents believe you should never fight in front of the children, and so they did whatever they had to do behind closed doors, and you might have heard some muffled raised tones in the other room, but you certainly never saw the resolution,
the repair, the ability to come back into love. Or maybe you had a family of origin who used very unhealthy conflict skills like yelling and screaming, name calling, God forbid, physical violence, throwing things, breaking things, oh no no, or worse, the silent treatment. I'm not talking to that person, right. You can be living in the same house and they're just like slamming the cupboard doors and not talking. None of these things work,
you know. There is a study that was published this year in a journal called Personal Relationships, one of my favorite, and they found something very interesting about couples who are arguing. They found that during the heat of the moment, if couples one or both can just pause, just stop for a minute and internally think about the situation, they can actually lower their own distress and they can increase their confidence and their ability to figure this out right,
to manage conflict appropriately. So the thing is, most of us know the behaviors we need to do, and hindsight, of course is twenty twenty when it comes to conflict. But what can you do in the heat of the moment? And the research suggest that there are six questions. Now, if you can remember all six when you're in the middle of a fight, I don't know how you're gonna do that. Why don't you write them down, put them on the fridge with a magnet, and next time you're in a
fight, grab that piece of paper and go through them. Okay, here they are. Number one, ask yourself, why did this happen? How did we get here? Right? What's going on? Because sometimes the thing you're fighting about isn't really the thing you're fighting about. There was something earlier, or there was some ongoing, grinding thing that was making everybody irritable.
Right, Maybe you guys were just angry. You're hungry, you're tired, you're lonely, you're feeling abandoned, and so you're going to focus on whatever thing you're fighting about at that moment. So ask yourself, why why are we here? The second thing the researchers asked these participants in the study to do is ask their own brain how should this conflict be handled? Like literally, stop and ask yourself how? Here's why I think this is beautiful.
So the how word is a very interesting word. As soon as you ask somebody how, you are taking their energy or their thought process out of their ancient brain, their fear centers of their brain, their emotional brain, and you're bringing it into the prefrontal cortex. That's the place where we solve problems. So it goes from being this emotional volcano to uh huh, how a math problem for us to solve? How problem? How questions are my favorite
questions to ask in a relationship, and especially when there's conflict. How should it be handled? Ask yourself, how should I handle this? How should I handle this? Just inside your head, how should I handle this? It's going to give you better words, it will uh. And then make it global. Ask yourself how should conflicts generally be dealt with? What's the answer? Is it to argue out? Is it to give someone the silent treatment? Is it to be right all the time so that the other person
can lose? Is it so the relationship can win every time? And sometimes that does mean compromise? Then teach yourself. Ask yourself how should people generally respond to conflicts in their relationship? And then ask yourself what kind of response makes sense here? But the big part is after the fight, make a plan for the future. Use every fight as a learning tool. Ask yourself what would be most helpful for dealing with future conflicts. So I want you
to rest assured, no matter how old you are at any time. And some people have a very short fuse. We know that's a what is it? Along? Or my geneticist friends say, along something on the serotonin receptor or anyway, Some people have a short fuse, some people have a long fuse. Some people are quick to get angry. Other people. It takes a while slow burn, or they may be very calm on the regular,
but it is possible to train your brain. It is possible to even in the heat of the moment, remind yourself that this relationship is good, this partner is a good person. You chose this partner for a reason. In that moment, I want you to stop and think, what can we do differently. It's going to take trial and error. I'm going to say,
you know, I'm in the healthiest relationship I've had in my life. But we had a few fights and we actually afterwards process well when you said this is what I felt, then really that's really surprised because that's not what I meant, right, And we took the time to untangle the argument together. Just like as analysis, we're just doing an analysis. So you know, take your time to learn, and above all, make sure you do the repair and the repair doesn't happen to happen right away. Go out for a
walk, at jog whatever. It's not a good idea to go to bed mad though, I'll oh, actually, if there's alcohol involved, go to bed mad. Okay, you don't step all night like two fighting drunks.
You're so dumb. Deal with en in the morning, but spend some time getting back together in relationship after a fight because you feel like you've been through a war zone because that's your primary attachment figure, that's the person you love so much, and that almost emotional umbilical cord has been damaged in that fight. So take the time to do repair. And repair should involve I mean, it's wonderful if it can involve apologies. It should never involve blaming or
decide keeping score, deciding who's a winner and who's a loser. It should be a reminder of why you love the person. So it might have something like, you know, I really love you because your X y Z, I'm sorry this happened between us, or I miss you. You know. One time I had a fight with a guy I was dating, and I was able to somehow in the fight or near the end, say to him, you've forgotten who I am, because that's what happens right in our mind,
it becomes this awful, evil person. I was able to say somehow, you've forgotten who I am, and that kind of made them freeze and reconsider what was going on. So remember who you're with, Okay, remember why you chose them. Remember, the relationship is mostly good if it is. Look, if you're fighting all the time, you need to be in a therapist together, for sure. But you can teach yourself how to have better conflict resolution skills. Hey, we come back. I want to talk
about self talk and six things that successful people never say to themselves. You're listening to doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI Am six forty. We were into the home stretch of the Doctor Wendy Walls Show. I promise you it, I'm going to say it again. Self talk. We got to think about the relationship that we're having with ourselves. I often say that our most important relationship is the relationship we're having with ourselves. Let me explain something to
you. Our thoughts matter. Did you know that the thoughts in our head lead to our moods. Our moods dictate our behavior, and our behavior out there in the world then confirms those thoughts because the environment will reflect back what we believe. Example, let's say you're walking into a new situation with new people you don't know, and the thought you have in your head is, ugh, they're not going to like me. I'm not as good as they are. I don't make as much money, I'm not as pretty as they
are. They're not going to like me. So there's the thought, And how does that affect your mood? You feel a little embarrassed, ashamed, you feel a little down and low. How does that affect your body? Your posture shrinks just a little bit. You don't walk up proudly to the first person you see and put out your hand and say your name and introduce yourself. You kind of become the wallflower. You look for the bar, and then after a while, because people aren't running up to talk to you,
everything is confirmed. Your first thought is confirmed. I am not likable, you think you know? It is so important that the voices in our head are positive because our brain becomes programmed by them. I often say that in many ways, life is a self fulfilling prophecy. Now I know they're bad stuff that happened, but even bad in bad times, in difficult times
and challenging times, there are some people who laugh. There are some people who manage to ride the waves of the turbulent seas and be able to get through. So which person are you? Well? I hope you're a self compassionate person. You know when you have compassion for yourself. Now again, self love is different from having a big ego and thinking you're great. Self love is understanding that you're human, knowing you can forgive yourself sometimes also feeling
really proud of yourself when you do something right. There's lots of research to show that when we practice self compassion, we actually have more energy, we feel more alive, and oh yeah, we're more optimistic. So here are a few things that successful people. When I say successful, I don't mean rich. I mean people who get through life relatively unscathed, those that can roll with the chops and the flow. What am I saying? What am
I metaphors? Those who could take the bumps and the hits and come back stronger. These are successful people. Okay, here's some of the things they never ever say to themselves. Like my example, they never say I'm not good enough. As soon as you think that phrase I'm not good enough, your anxiety is going to go up. You are going to your self esteem is going to go down. Instead, I want you to say something like what's good for me? Right? Now? Right, I'm not good enough,
but what's good for me right? Now, let's go back to that example of walking into that social situation that seems new and scary. What's good for me is to go out and make some good contacts I can use them in business. Or what's good for me right now is to be brave, go into that room and meet some new friends. This is what I need. This is what's good for me right now. Okay, here's another self defeating thought that you shouldn't have inside your head. I'll never be able to
get this. Why should I even bother? Well, first of all, I'm explain something to you. That thought is scientifically wrong. Our brain has something called neuroplasticity, and we can always change, we can always grow, we can always develop. You can change careers at fifty. You can write a novel at seventy. I saw an article the other day about a dude who ran a marathon and he never started running in his life until he was seventy two. What yes, And I think he was like eighty five when
he ran it. So there you go. You can learn to play the piano at eighty. You can learn a foreign language at forty. Look, I'm taking it lower. Foreign languages are harder. They're really good for keeping your brain young. I do want to say this. So instead of saying I'll never be able to get this, I want you to say I need more practice. I need more practice. See how positive that is. Okay, here's the third thing you shouldn't be saying inside your head. I'm a
failure. Oh really, So now you've made a little mistake or you're learning, you're on the learning curve, so it's harder for you, and you've done some small, little failures, and it has become an entire identity to you. I am a failure. Right. Something about your character, your overall perception of yourself, your global perspective of self is I'm a failure. That's your identity. You're gonna wear a shirt that says failure, a hat
that says failure. You're gonna own it, really really cause you made a mistake. How about learn to say, WHOA, I learned a lot there. Right, next time you make a mistake, practice sing I learned a lot there. Okay. Also, do not say this. I can't believe I did the I'm so stupid. I used to say that. In fact, in front of my kids. I was aware that I used to say, oh, dummy mummy. Oh what a dummy mummy. I can't believe I did this, and they would giggle and call me dummy mummy. And
at a certain point I cut that out. That is not okay, all right. Instead, just say nobody's perfect. Everyone makes mistakes. Learn to think that nobody's perfect. Everybody makes mistakes. And finally, don't compare yourself to others. Do not say things like I'm not as good as them. The comparison mistake will get you every time. If you want to bring yourself up and compare yourself to others, ask ask some of your closest friends,
family, and colleagues what they most appreciate you for. You'll be surprised at some of the things they say, and then you can learn to love yourself more and be proud of yourself. It's okay to do things well, and it's okay to fail and know that you're human. That is good emotional intelligence, and that brings the Doctor Wendy Wall's Show to a close. It is always my pleasure to be here every Sunday from seven to nine pm. You
can also follow me in my social media at doctor Wendy Walsh Everywhere. I also do this wonderful little Patreon group Wednesday nights at six thirty. A lot of KFI listeners there. You're welcome to join us. Just go to patreon dot com slash doctor Wendy Walsh. It's always a joy and an honor to be here with you on Sunday nights listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh. You can always hear us live on KFI a M six forty from seven to nine pm on Sunday and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app