This is doctor Wendy Walsh and you're listening to kf I Am six forty, the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app AFI AM six forty. You have Doctor Wendy Walsh with you. This is the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show. I'd like to welcome my Instagram audience who are here in the studio with me, well, at least virtually on the iPhone. If you'd like to come into the studio as well, just go onto Instagram and go to
doctor Wendy Walsh at Dr Wendy Walsh and come on in. I also put the phone number up there because after this segment where I want to talk about signs that you're attached not actually in love, I'm going to take your calls for my drive by makeshift relationship advice. Be honor for me to weigh in. All right, before I talk about are you just attached or you actually in love? I want to do a very short review of attachment theory.
Right. John Bolby, the father of attachment theory, discovered that the roots of personality often lie in the attachment that a young person meaning baby you're talking had with their primary caregivers and that we grow up to fall into one or another category of attachment style. Now there's no right attachment style or wrong attachment style. There's just mismatches. Right, the people who sort of trigger each other in their attachment style. So people who will have a secure attachment style,
I think that's about forty percent of the population. Are people who feel comfortable with intimacy. They're warm, they're loving, they can exchange care very freely. We all want to be with them. Then they're the anxious people,
which I used to be. I was actually sort of what you call probably anxious ambivalent, where I picked guys who couldn't love me back, and then I would blame them, and then if I met a guy who actually could give me love, I'd say, oh, he's too nice, or I'd do something, you know, to break it up, or just something bad. Right, So the anxious people are often preoccupied with their relationships.
They worry about their partner's ability to love them back. Then there's the avoidant dismissive, and that's the one who needs to be independent to a flaw right because they're afraid of intimacy. Intimacy is too hard for them and then there's the fearful, avoidant or disorganized, and they tend to be they're really really afraid of being emotionally intimate, and they don't trust others. They're very, very very suspicious. Okay, Now I want you to understand that people with
an anxious attachment style get attached very easily and very quickly. They believe the anxiety they feel in their stomach is love because people say it is. They say the butter Oh did they give you butterflies when you met? Uh? Yeah, Well for many people, that's anxiety. So they end up getting into these relationships where they're quite attached, but they're not really in love because I don't have Okay. Psychologists would call it a healthy, internal working model
of love, but basically they don't know what love feels like. They don't know what healthy love feels like. I'll tell you you know, I've been very honest about my journey. I did not come to this place of knowledge and ability without learning experientially. That means the hard way. And I had an on again, off again relationship with a person with an avoidant detachment style
for ten years. I lost ten years of my fertility window with somebody who couldn't love me back in the way that I deserve to be loved now. He ended up marrying someone who I met a couple times who was as avoidant as him. So they probably have a perfectly happy life living like two roommates in their house. Nobody touches any tender areas. They just stay in the public areas. All good works for them, there's no right or wrong.
But for me, I was constantly being triggered because I just think we'd get close, we'd make love, and I think, oh, this is ed, He's gonna finally and then he'd disappear for weeks and not call me your text, and of course I would act cool like nobody could see that I was hurting, even though I was crying into my pillow at night over this. So people with an attachment style like I used to have, I know you're saying, how did you heal? I healed by therapy. I went
to therapy for years and years, and I figured it out. I also created a very secure attachment with my children. And there's research to show this that if you can practice attachment parenting where your baby's sleep, with your baby's breastfeeding for a long time. Kids never leave. They don't abandon you. Trust me, You want them to leave at a certain point, and they don't. And so I think I healed partly through that too. All Right,
do you wonder if you're just attached and not in love? Well, I think the biggest sign is that your fear of being alone overrides everything else. In other words, if you are afraid to be single, so you're staying in a bad relationship. You're attached, but you're not in love. So think about it, is the biggest thing that's keeping you there, the fact that you don't want to be single, that's a sign. Another sign
something that I had constantly. You consistently wish for more intimacy, more emotional closeness, more tender moments during sex, the befours and the afters, the four plays, in the after plays, that's where the intimacy is, right, you're wishing for it all the time. You're being in love with hope that hope it'll happen. Well, if you're always wishing for intimacy and it's not there, you're attached, you're probably not in love. How about you
depend on them for everything? You have made this person your best friend, your family member, your main human interaction person, and you're so afraid that if you lost them, you would lose your world. That's too much attachment. That's called enmeshed where nobody can remember whose problem is who's or you can't live without the person that's enmeshed. A healthy attachment, you have a wide range of social circle and friends, and your lover is one part of that.
Right. How about are you in a relationship where you're afraid to say everything that you're feeling. You're holding things back and you change your personality a bit because you're afraid they'll abandon you. Then you're attached, but you're not in love. Because when you're in love, you feel safe and secure to be yourself and say anything you need to say. And the biggest one is
you feel stagnant. You're not growing together, right, It's just like you're both there like roommates, but you're not really growing You're not talking about your feelings, your goals together, how you're changing, what you're experiencing. If you notice that some of these signs that i've gone over sound like you, then I'm going to advise you actually to break up because I learned that way, you just gotta jump jump into the single world and don't become quickly attached
to the next person that comes along. Take some time, get to know yourself, get to know people. But there are a lot of people in very unhappy relationships, and some of them for years and years and years. We love to judge relationships based on duration, right, We'll be like, well, they were together ten years as a successful relationship. No, somebody was longing the whole time and the other person was avoiding. That's not a
successful relationship. When we come back, I am going to be taking your calls, and I also want to tell you why I told you to leave. There's research on this that just leaving will make you happier, just making a decision instead of stuck in indecision. Hey, when we come back, I'm taking your call. The number is one eight hundred and five two zero one kf I. That's one eight hundred five two zero one five three four,
or you can leave a DM on Instagram. You are listening to the Doctor Anddy Wealsh Show and kf I am six forty eight live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KF. I am six forty. K F I am six forty. You have doctor Wendy Walsh with you. This is the doctor Endy Wells Show. This is my drive by makeshift relationship advice. Before I take this call, I do want to say that I told you too. If you were indecisive indecisive about whether
to leave your partner. You probably were shocked that I said just leave. But guess what. There was a study done in twenty twenty published in the Review of Economics that simply they asked a bunch of people who had to make a major life decision from leaving a job or leaving a spouse, to simply flip a coin and they promised to do whatever the coin said. Heads, you leave of your job, leave your spouse, tails you stick it out. Six months later, they caught up with all the people and guess what
they found out? Everybody who left was happier. See. It's being stuck in indecisive indecisiveness on the fence that's so hard. Psychologists call it analysis paralysis, where you're always listing pros and cons. Oh my gosh, it's a terrible place to be. So just leave. You'll be happier if you're attached and not in love. As I was saying before, Okay, you'd like to call in the numbers one eight hundred five two zero one K five.
That's one eight hundred five two zero one five three four. Okay, producer Kayla, who do we got? We have Susan with a question. Susan, Hi, Susan, It's doctor Wendy. Susan. Are you with us? Yes? I am? I am, Hi Amy, I can now what's your question? Love, M Yes, I am. Have been talking till Man for about three months. Now. What do you mean talking to for three months? Dating? Um? You know, like going out to dinner, you know, getting so seeing. When you say talking, I'm
thinking telephone and tax You're in the real world. You're dating a man for three months? Okay, good. So basically what happens is um, in the beginning, UM, he was, you know, calling on the phone, and we're communicating other than you know, going out to eat and getting to know each other. Um. Nothing physical has happened between us, UM
since that time, you know, occasional hugs or whatever. But at the same time, um, Uh, within about a month of him talking to us, talking, he told me that he was um pursuing two women. And what happened is once he started, I guess talking to me. He claims that he told them it was over, you know, like he's so two other women. He says, he's dating two other women besides you. He was, and then he told you. But don't worry. I broke
up with them when I met you. Yes, okay, yes, But then the last two or three weeks, I've noticed that the phone calls are lessened and it's basically mostly texting now. And it's crazy because you know, I told them. I told him, you know, you could call me anytime alive by myself, blah blah blah. You know, I have no attachments. He doesn't want me to see anyone else, he claims, he wants it to be just him and I. But then there's not communication.
Yeah, there's no phone calls on a regular It's now you're saying, how to get him to pursue you again? Let me tell you how. I don't even know. I don't even know is it pursuing or is he still confused or is he probably still seeing those people? All could be happening, But you know what your concern should be you and your feelings to this, not you know, he could be seeing those other women, he could be
pulling away, etc. I saw this really cute TikTok today. It was a guy who said all women are angels, but angels live in heaven. If men want a woman to be an angel, they better make heaven for her. I was like, oh, yeah, exactly. So he's not making heaven for you, Susan. So here's what you need to do. First of all, when he texts, do you text back? Sometimes I've been trying to, Yeah, not text back because I'm thinking, okay, maybe if I don't text your call. Yeah exactly. So here's the thing.
You know, he says to you, I don't want you to see other people. He has no right to control you. He has no right to say that. If he's out pursuing other women, you can let him believe that you're being chased by other men. So therefore, don't say I'm sitting here waiting for you. You just be busy when he texts. Let me tell you this little trick. So let's say he texts you and I want you to wait a few hours before you text back, and then start
to stretch out the time between the texts. If he takes four hours to text you back, you take six hours next time, because what you're doing is creating a rubber band that you're stretching out the time, and he's now seeing that you're leaving, and so he's going to pull back in right when he sees that. But I do want to say this, Just don't text that much, like just and don't tell him to call. Just wait it out and he'll eventually call, because he'd be like, where you go?
What happened? I thought she was waiting for me, and now she's not right. We all want what we have to work for. We all want what we have to work for. And Susan, you need to give him the opportunity and the privilege to earn your affection, to earn your love. Don't give it away at the beginning by saying I'm sitting here waiting for you. Why aren't you calling? You just go on with your life. You surround yourself by people who make you feel fabulous. You find other men to
go out with. Don't worry about him. He'll come back around. You don't owe him anything because you haven't had sex with him. Yet once you've had sex. And by the way, you should have the conversation about sexual exclusivity before you have sex for the first time. But you got this, Susan. You just need to raise your self esteem and not worried. Don't try to analyze him. Just ask yourself does this feel good to be? Oh? It doesn't. I'm moving on. Thanks for calling, Susan.
If you'd like to call in the numbers one eight hundred five to zero, one five three four. But I do want to go to social media because I see all these messages coming in. All right, Dear doctor Wendy, I found an engagement ring. Oh, my boyfriend bought about six months ago, so you found it six months ago. He still hasn't proposed or even given me any hints that he's planning on proposing. I ask questions like when do you want to get married? And he says, I'm focused on this
promote right now? Should I say I found the ring? Do you think he changed his mind? All right? You need to stop analyzing him and ask yourself what you want. Do you want to marry this dude? And I hope you're not living together first of all, because he has no reason to marry. If you're living together, he's getting the milk for free. So I don't think you should tell him that you found the ring. In fact, I think you should forget about the ring. I mean the ring
could be his grandmother's heirloom that he's keeping for somebody some day. I think that if you want to get married, that you need to have a conversation. That is a relationship game plan. I do not believe in ultimatums. Ultimatums are trying to get somebody to do something, But I do believe in boundaries. Boundaries are how what you will accept and what you will not accept. If the relationship is basically happy and you're not near the end of your
fertility window, then maybe you can accept waiting for longer. Fund the other hand, you're twenty nine, thirty, thirty one, thirty two, god forbid, thirty six and you're going to get this done. Then you're going to say, hey, I hope to be engaged within the next three months, and if that doesn't look like the game plan for you, then I'm going to make plans to move out, to move on, whatever it may
be. That's different from an ultimatum. This is you saying, these are my boundaries and this is going to be my reaction if you treat me that way. It's a subtle difference, but it's a big difference. You're not trying to manipulate somebody. You're trying to understand what you will tolerate and what your reaction will be. Dear Doctor Wendy, I love this one. I hate my girlfriend's cooking. How can I tell her without hurting her feelings?
I've got an answer when we come back. You are listening to the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show on KFI AM six forty. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from kf I AM sixty five AM six forty. You have Doctor Wendy Walsh with you. This is the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show. I know you guys are shy. You're not calling in because these are tender topics. You're posting them on my dms though I see them all coming in on Instagram TikTok. If you want to follow
me, the handle is at doctor Wendy Walsh. That's at dr Wendy Walsh. Okay, A listener writes, doctor Wendy, I hate my girlfriend's cooking. How can I tell her without hurting her feelings? Kayla, do you know what I'm gonna say? What are you going to say? I don't know, cook for her? Cook for you? What the heck? What the heck? All you do is get in the kitchen and do it yourself. Or you could say, honey, just for fun, lets you and I take a cooking course together. I want to get better at cooking and
see then she'll learn. You know, ke Taller, she's a bad cook. You're just gonna show her what good cookies and you're gonna feed her well. Dear doctor Wendy, my husband is doing a complete career change and I don't support it. That's a big relationship problem. He's a very successful lawyer and now he wants to look at into becoming a professional boxer. That's a big career change. I'm terrified. We have young children. How can I
compromise? Well, this would be a great opportunity for the two of you to go to couple's therapy and talk about what your fears really are, because it sounds like, on face value, your fears are mostly financial, right, it's like it sounds like a professional boxer doesn't make enough money unless like they win right a lot and they don't have any brain cells left because they
get hit in the head. I don't know, so it might be fears of him getting hurt, fears of him being able to support, etc. I think the two of you need to go to couple's therapy because this is one of those really important life decisions. On the other hand, you know what, every human being gets to find themselves and be what they want to be when they want to be. So I kind of side with him too.
If he really hates work in those long hours at the law firm and he hates reading contracts and documents all day and he's happy in the boxing ring, you know, maybe there's a way you guys together choose to downgrade your life, or maybe you ramp up your career a bit and he takes care of the sun. There's lots of flexibility, but you got to go together to couples therapy to work it out. There's no one right answer, but if your children are small, finding a way to stay together would be the
answer I would give Hi, Doctor Wendy. I took this woman I've been dating dancing, and she danced with other guys the entire night. She said she wouldn't have minded if I danced with other women. I find her actions disrespectful. Am I insecure or spot on? Well? I would say that the two of you have different attachment styles. You see, somebody who has an avoidant attachment style is afraid of closeness and intimacy and dancing can feel close
and intimate with you. So she's gonna down the milk, spread it around the room and tell you, oh, it's okay. You can dance with other women too, but you may have a little more anxiety and you want closeness and all. You're both right, but you got to talk about it. I mean, disrespectful sounds like, oh, she should just do everything I say because I'm the man and I want her to be with me. And that's not cool either. But look, if you didn't like what happened,
don't go out with her again, Like why do you put? I always say to people, like, you know, you're with this person and they do this, and I don't like it, and they do that and I don't like it, and they're basically asking me doctor Wendy, how do I get them to change? That is the wrong question. The right question is how can I learn to either accept them or leave? That's really what we should all be doing in our relationships. We should let the relationship win
in any conflict. You know that ethicist in the New York Times. I read his column and I just love it. He's a philosophy guy, and people write in relationship questions, And this week it was about a banan appeal. This woman says she's driving the car. Her husband on the passenger side, rolls down the window on the freeway throws out a banana peel unto the asphalt. She tells him that's littering, and that's bad. He says,
is biodegradable. She goes and finds a whole bunch of articles to say how dangerous it is, could hit a motorcyclist in the face, It isn't doesn't really biodegrade fast, and blah blah blah. And so she's so mad about this whole banan appeal thing. And his response was, don't you have anything better to do with your time? No. I love the answer of the ethicist. I read it out loud to Julio. We were driving the car and I read this whole thing out loud. I go, what do you
think the ethicist is going to say? And he said, well, first of all, I want to hear what doctor Wendy would say, and I'd say, the banana appeal is a metaphor for control, and they are in a power struggle in their relationship. First of all, she's driving the car. She's now hammering him with information and articles about how he should change his
behavior. I think she's trying to control him a lot during the whole marriage, and he's using his one little moment of freedom, the cracked window and the banana peel to go see, I'm my own person, right And anyway, that at this has said the same thing, like basically, yeah, it's wrong to throw the banana peel at the thing. But he's obviously making a statement for a reason. There's something deeper going on in the relationship.
So if she's dancing with other guys and you're trying to control her, I would worry. Okay, dear doctor Wendy, I have a habit of buying people gifts, but they never buy me anything in return. Oh, I feel like no one cares about me the way I care about them. How can I get through this? Well, let's analyze the gift giving. Why are you giving the gifts. I know you're gonna say, oh, because
I like them and it makes me happy when they're happy. No, it's because you're trying to get them attached to you, because you likely have an anxious attachment style. And here's the crazy thing about life. I used to be one of you. We always find the people who are more avoidant, and we try to get them to love us, get them to give us the gifts back. It's this whole thing. If we can just get them to behave, then we will love ourselves. Then we will feel lovable.
At least, you're aware enough to say, I feel like no one cares about me the way I care about them. And my answer is, why do you care for somebody who doesn't care for you? Right, we have to go slowly in our new relationships and look for something called reciprocity. You give a little, you watch they give a little back. You give a little, they give a little back. What happens with you, I'm guessing because I used to do it, is you give a lot, they give
nothing. So you give more and they still give nothing, and you give more. It's not the way it should work. It should be even Stephen reciprocity. All right, I'm going to wrap it up. Listen. If you want to get more of me, you can always listen to the Doctor Wendy Weals Show. I'm not wrapping up the whole show. I got to get to some other things. Bad relationship advice that friends give all the time. I hear it all the time and it just makes the hair grow stand
up on my spine when I hear this. But also you can follow me on social media at doctor Wendy Walsh. You can join my Patreon. We have zoom grooms on Wednesdays. You can also listen to the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show on demand anytime on the iHeartRadio app. Okay, when we come back. Bad relationship advice that friends give all the time. I know you've heard all these things if you're single, and I'm going to tell you ignore this advice. You are listening to the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show and kf I Am
six forty with Live Everywhere the iHeartRadio app. You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KF I Am sixty, KF I Am six forty. You have Doctor Wendy Walsh with you. This is the home stretch of the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show. Oh, producer, Kayla, why does it go so fast? It flies by after dark? Get on a roll and I want to go on and on and on. All right. I have to admit something. It's really difficult for me to be out in social situations and over
here people giving bad relationship advice to other people. And you know, I try as hard as I can to bite my tongue and I'm not insulted. It's not like they should defer to me or anything. But I'm always just like a maze that people believe these myths and share it with other people.
And it happened twice this week. One I was out for a dinner party with some just all girlfriends, and one girlfriend had met a new guy that she met on an app and she had I think she'd had one or two dates with him, and and she said, well, we'll find out. It's early. You know, it takes time, and there goes here comes the bad relationship with voice advice. The next woman says yeah, but you know, if you get those butterflies right at the beginning, you know,
you just know. And if you don't have that from the beginning, then you don't know. I know. And my friend had a very quick She goes, well, if he voted for you know who, then for sure I'm not going to date him the third date if I find out that there's all kinds of other stuff. Right. So then I was out with another different, completely different group, and a woman was telling me how she had
gone retrosexual my word, meaning she'd reconnected with actually a college boyfriend. And now it's many years later, they've both been through their marriages and and and I saying, like, meeting someone when you're older is so great because you can talk about your feelings. And I was sharing about out my love relationship with Julio and how open we are and authentic. And here comes the bad relationship advice. Another friend says, all that talking takes the romance away.
Isn't it better to have a little mystery? No, that's how probably how an avoidant person would talk. Okay, here's the bad relationship advice that I hear a lot. Stop being so picky. That's what married girlfriends say to single girlfriends, stop being so picky. Actually, I think having standards about how somebody treats you and values you is important. It's how you find the
right one by eliminating most. It's a game of elimination, and in order to find that needle in the haystack, you gotta move all the pieces of straw to get to that. So stay by and picky. Don't listen to that advice. All right, here's another thing they say, Well, you know, oh, this is kind of like what the friend said, you know in your heart on the first date, when you know, you just
know right, no, stop. It takes time for an attraction to grow a lot of time, and in fact, research has shown there's something called the mere exposure effect, and that means the more time you spend somebody, the more you start to like them. In fact, every arranged marriage in the world is a succumb to the exposure effect. You just get used to
them, right. You know, arranged marriages only have a four percent divorce rate and romantic marriages have a fifty percent divorce rates, So go figure that out. It takes time to grow, so forget about this. When you know you just know, along the same lines, they might say something like this, you know, if you're not feeling sparks on the first date,
that they're not the one. You know what those sparks are for people with an anxious attachment style, their anxiety we call it butterflies in our stomach. It's not it's your stomach saying red flag flag, move away, and so sparks, fireworks, butterflies. That means you're anxious. It doesn't necessarily mean you're feeling love. All right. Here's the other advice that you know, they try to tell people just to cool it, and they say, you
know it'll. Love will just happen for you when you least expect it. In fact, it's when you're not looking that you'll meet that person. I'm sorry, this is so wrong. Everything else you accomplished in your life you accomplish because you put your mind to it and you did all the things. For instance, if you're just going to work and just you know, hanging out with yourself, you're not going to meet anybody. You're going through life
with blinders on. If you're going to the gym, because you know that that gets you in shape for the mating marketplace. If you wear your little heels. Not if you're a guy, I don't know. Maybe maybe cowboy boots to the little taller I don't know. But if you're you know, got good posture and you're well roomed because you're thinking this might be the day, that's how you meet someone. Not oh well, it'll just happen. If it happens, it happens. When I hear that, if it happens,
it happened. Love doesn't happen. You make it happen. You'll be in the right situation at the right time and create that opportunity. Love does not just drop out of the sky. Okay, here's another myth. Look it, you're being so picky and you know people change. Just give them some time. Why do I put on that accent whenever I give the bad
advice? Give them some time. That's a good bad advice accent. If you are in love with Hope and I want to admit this, Okay, I was in love with Hope over and over and over, that avoidant guy for ten years. I was in love with Hope. I was in love with his potential. I was in love with who I think he could be, but not with who he was at that moment right. Sure, people can change, but when you're dating somebody, you better like what you see
right now, right now. Okay, So please don't listen to those friends. Okay, don't listen to them. That's all bad advice. You need to be proactive. You need to look your best, you need to feel your best. You need to say no to those that don't make you feel great, and you need to take your time getting to know somebody. That's how you find love. And I took my own advice and I'm not gonna lie. It worked. And that brings the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show to a
close. If you'd like to stay in touch with me all week, I'm on social media and my handle is at doctor Wendy Walsh at dr Wendy Walsh. You can also join my Patreon group. We have a live zoom room at every Wednesday at six thirty where we talk about it's kind of like a book group. We just talk about the research on love and it's a it's a great group. They're all from all over the world. It's really fun. So you just go to patreon dot com slash dot Wendy Welsh for that.
But I'm always here for you on KFI Am six forty every Sunday from seven to nine pm. I wish you love in the world. Thanks for being with me. You've been listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh. You can always hear us live on kf I Am six forty from seven to nine pm on Sunday and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.