You're listening to kaf I Am six forty on demand. Kaya fi Am six forty. You have doctor Wendy Walsh with you. This is the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show. It's where I take your calls and answer your social media questions. If you would like to call in, the number is one eight hundred five two zero one kfive. That's one eight hundred five two zero one five three four. Just reminder, I'm not a therapist. This is drive by makeshift relationship advice. However, I do have a PhD in clinical psychology.
I'm a professor of psychology. I've written three books on relationships and I did my dissertation on attachment theory. Okay, producer Kayla, who do we have? First? We have Maxine with a question. Okay, Hi Maxine, it's doctor Wendy. Hi, doctor Wendy. What's your question? Love? Okay, So there's this guy. He's been in my wife for ten plus years. He treats really nice. Sim Nikis, we go on vacation. We're just friends, but he does express that he loves me and how he
feels about me, and it just hasn't been there for me. I am getting older. I do want to settle down. And I just want to know if you think, if it hasn't happened yet, will it ever happened with him? He's such a good guy. Should I just you know, take what I have available to me. Well, let me ask you this. How old are you and how old is he? I'm thirty five going on thirty six. He's thirty eight. Okay, So I want to say something about this friendship you've had for ten years with a guy who you take,
accept gifts from, go on vacations with. He expresses his love for you, but you don't have sex. Is that true? We've been incident before and I've told him before that it's just not there for me. Okay, So I need to say this really nicely magazine. You're using him? I mean, it's not. If it's been ten years and there's no chemistry for you, then you have to let him go. But more importantly, I would ask you to ask the question of what need has he been fulfilling
in you? And what has he been protecting you from? Has he been protecting you from dating and finding a real relationship? And I also do want to say that a good enough relationship is a good enough relationship. So I see that you're there. You're kind of on the fence. But if you do enter into a romantic relationship with this guy, you're going to have to be physical Otherwise he's going to be unhappy and it's not going to go well.
So if you're sure you don't want to be physical with him, then you've, I'm sorry to say, for both of your health, you've got to cut it off so you can move forward, so that you can find you have to be needy, like he's actually satisfying so many of your needs, gifts, vacations, telling you he loves you, he's adoring you, and so you need to be needy of that. And in order to be
needy of that, you've got to let him go. I think that's the right thing, and I think it's the moral thing to do, Maxine, instead of trying to force yourself into having sex with somebody who don't want to and for the rest of your life, I think you should move on. But I'm sorry, bad news, But thank you so much for telling me that. Okay, before I go to social I want to say this a couple of questions. This came in on Instagram Live and I want to make
sure that I get them. One question was what did I learn meaning me? What did you learn meaning me? What did I learn from my very first marriage? So I had a college marriage when I was twenty one, and I got married for my mother. My mother was very Catholic, and I had moved in with my college boyfriend and she stopped talking to me, and I had the crazy girl logic that, well, I'd had a relationship with this woman for twenty one years. I'd only had a relationship with this
guy for one year. I should probably go with her. So, first thing I learned is don't get married because your mother wants you to. Second thing I learned is never ever ever get married under the age of twenty five. Our prefrontal cortex is not fully formed when we are that young. Literally, it was like two kids getting married and we were became two different people very very quickly. Okay, Another question just came in live on Instagram is
how many dates do you have to have before you know there's chemistry. Well that's a little bit like Maxine's question. Ten years she had and still wasn't sure if there was chemistry. I have to say this, you don't have to have chemistry. Okay, there's this idea, and let's talk about what chemistry is. So there is this idea that you must have super hot, amazing, off the chart sex in order to have a healthy, happy relationship. Well, actually, a good sex life can be created between two people.
It involves skills and involves communication, It involves talking about your fantasies, it involves novelty and exploration. That's how you can create a great sex life. Sometimes, and for some people, their sexual attraction leads them to a car wreck every time. It's like they go back to the scene of the crime from their early childhood trauma. And often it's connected with their sexuality.
So sometimes there are people out there who, you know, when sex is hot and heavy, that's a red flag, like they know this is not going to end well. Right, So chemistry is not always necessary. But the real question is is when do you know? Well? I want to say this, nobody should have sex with anybody until they trust them. I spent the first half of the show tonight talking about the tabby tinder swindler in
New York. If you haven't seen it on TikTok, it's a guy who had two dates with a woman, had sex with her and then stole her one thousand dollars fashion shoes, and the internet got back at him and the shoes all came back. But she had sex with a guy she didn't know. She brought him to her apartment. I'm not blaming her, not sluch shaming. This is not slut shaming. This is saying that sex is a
much higher risk hobby for women than it is for men. Women, because of our unique biology, are more likely to catch and STI than men are. Women, because our bodies emit so much oxytocin, which is one of the bonding hormones, we're more likely to fall in love and it could be a loser, but we have these feelings anyway, And of course we're more likely to catch in eighteen year case a parent to it. And yes, now we have some protections, we have condoms, we have birth control pills,
et cetera. But there are women out there who wouldn't give the keys to their house for a guide to come and water their plants while they're out of town. Yet they'd expose their bloodstream and their eggs to a complete stranger. So the answer is how long until you know there's chemistry. I'll say, how long until you know there's trust? And that doesn't happen for at least a few weeks. You want to watch how people treat how would they
treat people out there in public? You want to see how consistent they are, how reliable they are, how true to their word they are. Anyway, so I think that's there's no one right answer, because you will tell me anecdotally that, oh, well, I know somebody who slept together on the very first night and they've been married now for twenty years. But the research doesn't support that. The research actually supports that slow love leads to greater
commitment, because what is commitment. It is emotional intimacy. When two people have emotional intimacy, that's when they have love and commitment and support each other. Okay, the numbers one eight hundred five two zero one five three four. That's one eight hundred five to zero, one five three four. Who do we have on the line, producer, Kayla, we have Jeremy. Jeremy, Hi, Jeremy, it's doctor Wendy Hire Good. What's your question?
So the weather it's going to be getting cold around October ish? Is there a science to show that if you haven't found some one special by now, that it will be kind of hard to or you won't be able to once October rolls around. Oh, you think summer is the only mating season for humans. It's a good question, but actually the research shows that's why
we have the term cuffing season. The research shows that people humans are most likely to hunker down and fall in love near the holidays, during the darker days of the year, during the colder times when you need each other to cuddle up. So yeah, flings happen in the summer, and committed relationships are more likely to happen in the fall. Good question, though, Jeremy, thanks for calling. All right, when we come back, I'm going to continue to take your calls. And also I want to go to social
media. I have a bunch of stuff in the DMS. The number is one eight hundred five two zero one five three four. That's one eight hundred five two zero one KFI you are listening to the Doctor Wendy Welsh Show on kf I AM six forty. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You're listening to kf I AM six forty on demand KF. I am six forty. You have doctor Wendy Walsh with you. This is the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show. I am taking your calls and answering your social media questions. Reminder,
I'm not a therapist. This isn't therapy, but I have some knowledge about the science of relationships. Okay, Producer, Kayla, who do we have? First? We have a talkback at a touchback? Okay, let's listen. Hey, doctor Wendy, it's Arnold. We're talking about that Tabby Swindler and it got me to thinking about how women are falling for these men. So I'm thinking, from what I've been seeing, why aren't they learning better discernment and self control to help keep them out of these situations and to
find better mates. Excellent question. Okay, so he Here's how evolution works. We adapt to different environmental stressors and we do slowly change keyword there, slowly. It takes many, many, many generations for these environmental pressures like a bunch of playboys to work. Now, women again have to have a lot of empathy and caring and nurturing because that's their way of creating that bond and historically to be able to stay connected and have the babies and stay connected
their babies, et cetera. So it's going to be a long time before they get better ability at discernment. I mean, some women are better than others. However, technology is starting to help women discern Thus, you know, attacking this guy and then the movie The Tinder Swindler and this the tabby Tinder guy. They're now using the most important thing that women have always used, which is girlfriend to girl friend guerrilla research. Right, So they depend
on the tribe to help them make better decisions. And that's why, you know. I used to host a show for Investigation Discovery called Happily Never After about basically bride and grooms that killed each other, but it was rarely the groom that got killed, and it was always these women. And I found like one hundred percent of the time the marriages were elopements. In other words,
they didn't have the tribe watching. So I'm a big believer in getting that guy away from his guy pack, getting him into your girl crowd. I remember dating a guy when I was young. He said, I feel I'm gonna dating you. I'm dating a panel and I'm like, yeah, we are a panel. We are all judging you, so he's going to pass a few tests. So I think that they use their girl pack because as a compensation for the fact that, again not all women, but a
big chunk of women don't have good abilities of discernment. Good talk back, Arnold, Thanks for colling. What do we get next? We ask Annie with the question Annie, Hi Annie, it's doctor Wendy. Hi doctor Wennie, thanks for taking my call. I have one sister. She got married not almost three years ago, and her husband and her have been fighting like every other area of their months or something, and I don't know if I should get involved. There's a lot of guilt tripping that he does, and
it's bordering on gas almost I think gas gas lighting. So it feels like emotional abused to you. Uh, well, basically he like tries to make her feel guilty I think for doing and may try to make him do something that he wants. Yeah, and it's all fines when they were getting when they were dating, but I didn't say anything really until and now it's just getting I don't know if every other month is kind of tiring to hear the arguing to you, and well, it sounds like they need to learn some
conflict resolution skills, for sure. I'd say the first thing and that I would suggest to your sister is that she and he go to couple's therapy so they can learn to have better And you know, you can say it in a way of like, I really care about you and I'm really worried and this kind of fighting seems like it's taking a toll on you, and I don't want it to escalate into anything dangerous, So you know, can I help you find a couple's therapist. Can you find a way to work on
this because I love you and I care about you, et cetera. That's where I would start, is try to get them into professional therapy. But the other thing is you just it's okay to give your opinion if you don't feel it's right. You're part of her tribe, you're part of her family. And I would also suggest that you elicit other family members and other friends so that she's not just thinking it's you know, you and your vendetta and
your weird opinion, but that other people are seeing it. Because we don't want her her to slide into a place where she experienced his domestic violence or chronic emotional abuse. So Annie, thanks for Karen about your sister. I appreciate that you called. Okay, let's go to social media, and I have this very interesting question. Hey, doctor, Wendy says this listener. I've been seeing a single father. When I went to his place, he
had a crib in his room. A crib. Granted, I know he has a younger child, but I feel uncomfortable sleeping in the same room that his child stays in. Is that a red flag? No, it shows he has a good attachment to his child and they want to sleep near. Now, it would be weird if he wanted you to sleep in the same room while the child is there. But it sounds like yours there during the week off, and so you have problems with a piece of furniture. I
don't know. I don't get that. It looks like he's a doting dad who has a good bed for his child near him so he can wake up at the night if the child needs anything. I would think that this is a green flag. This is a good dad. But I wonder why that bothers you so much. I know if there was a child in the bed, that would be a whole different thing. All right, one more quick question before we head to break. Why do guys feel the need, Doctor
Wendy to sleep with women before entering a relationship. Why? Okay, so not every guy wants to sleep with a woman before entering a relationship. If you meet a guy who wants to audition you as a sexual object before looking at your heart or soul, then you should run as fast as you possibly can. You are not a sex object. You don't have to pass a sex audition to become a girlfriend. Okay, So if there are guys out
there, you can't fault them for trying, right. There are plenty of guys out there looking for short term relationships, and the best way to get a short term relationship is it pretend you're looking for a long term relationship. Right, Let's just see if we have chemistry, baby, and then we'll decide if we get know you have the eggs Sperm chases egg not the reverse. So what you need to do is say, when you have passed my audition, I'll decide if I'm going to sleep with you. Uh huh,
That's what I say. All right? When we come back, are you and your partner too and meshed? I've got some details about what that means, because somebody's being too close is also a problem, and also what you can do about it. You're listening to the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show and kf I Am six forty. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You're listening to kf I AM sixty on demand AM six forty. You have Doctor Wendy
Walsh with you. This is the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show. You know, I've been talking a lot about some sort of negative sides of the science of love, and you know, I try to explain that there's no one right way to have a healthy relationship. There are many different kinds of relationships, and when you look at relationships from the outside, you might think it's totally unfair, but it feels good to the people in it. You know,
finding love isn't always about finding pleasure and happiness. It's about finding the familiar, and depending on what kind of family you had growing up, you will try to find the same relationship dynamics. Hopefully your childhood wasn't filled with trauma and abuse, and then you grow up to get into trauma bonds. But sometimes there's one certain family style that I see come in relationships all the time. It's not necessarily bad, but if you're feeling uncomfortable in it, then
there are some things you can do to change. I'm talking about enmeshment, where you're so ameshed nobody can remember whose problem is whose lack of boundaries. You see a relationship, a love relationship is like a end diagram. Those two circles beside each other, and you don't want to have they overlap, right, So there's two individual people. Those are the circles. The circles
overlap a little bit in that area in the middle is the relationship. And when I see a relationship where those two circles are beside each other, they're not even overlapping, then I think, where's the intimacy? Where's the connection? If I see circles that are almost eclipsing each other, then I say, ah, there is the enmeshment. So it's basically sometimes an unhealthy level of emotional and psychological fusion. And here are some hallmarks of having a meshed
relationship. The big one is lack of personal boundaries. Do automatically just open each other's mail and go into each other's clothing drawers and go into each other's phones. Is there no room for any autonomy at all? Is are you able to say, no, this is what I want? Is there a level of emotional dependency where you rely on each other so much for emotional support and validation? You know, our relationship is not supposed to be the basket
that we put all our emotional eggs into. Now, we shouldn't be having side relationships, emotional relationships that threaten our primary relationship. But we should have close friendships. We should have family that we can reach out to. If all you have is that other person, then may you're too emotionally dependent on them? Have you ever wondered if you're losing your individuality When a relationship is
enmeshed, individualism becomes less important. The relationship becomes everything. And so what happens is partners sometimes struggle to maintain their own interests. Now, I will say this, when you first start to date somebody, there is a cocooning phase. Okay, sometimes it lasts about a year and your friends are like, you didn't never come out anymore, You never come and do that thing
with me that we used to go do. What happened? You just got a boyfriend, you got a girlfriend, and now you're not coming out right. So there's this time of cocooning where you're going to bond, but then at a certain point you're like, WHOA, I forgot who I am here. Let me find a better balance. Let me make sure I see my friends, Let me make sure I still do my hobbies right. So you can have that balance, and that's really important. I think about my relationship
with Julio, and here's a great example. Today. It was a Sunday and we got up. He went to the gym. I didn't because I knew I was going to swim later. So I worked on my show, reading all the articles like the one on Ameshment that Kles sends to me, and so I was sort of in bed with my coffee, doing my thing, and he went to the gym. Then he came back and I made us a nice brunch. I made crapes today. I was in a frenchy mood because I'm reading this book for a book group called I'll Never Be French.
It seems like it's a creative memoir. It's very funny, and they were talking about crapes a lot. So I got up and made crapes. So we had a nice little kind of brunch thing. And then he said, I'm gonna go ride my motorcycle for a while, and I go, cool, I'm gonna go swimming. So he went and wrote his motorcycle. I went swimming, and then we came back and he said, oh, the men's tennis finals is still on, and we both enjoy tennis. So we both sat down and we started watching tennis. Of course, then I
said maybe we should play tennis again. I haven't played in years. He goes, neither of ie. And the next thing, you know, I'm like online looking for tennis rackets for us to buy and anyway, and then eventually I got up in later and made another little meal. Now you're saying gender roles Jan, why doesn't he cook? You know what he does. He cleans up everything afterwards and does all the dishes. I don't even get up and move after dinner. And we both like it that way. It
works for us. But what did you hear in that description of our day? Some relationship stuff and some individual stuff that we do separately that feels healthy and normal. Now here's another thing, and mashed couples often have a shared identity. Okay, if you have one Facebook page for the two of you, m are you really insecure that if so insecure that if they have their own separate Facebook page, that they're going to leave you or meet somebody on
Facebook or something. Oh lord, you can have your own separate stuff. Here's some other signs that you're ameshed. Maybe you're in a rescuer victim dynamic. You're always digging somebody out of a hole. They're always like, oh poor me, this bad thing happened to me. You've gonna help me. That's not a healthy relationship. Even you might be neglecting your own self care. Maybe you're not exercising, Maybe you're not eating well because you're following them
around and doing everything they want and they're being unhealthy. That's ameshed, right, And the big one is are you isolated from others? Emeshed couples tend to isolate themselves from friends and family. They tend to prioritize their romantic relationship and put it above all their other social connections. Because the underlying feeling of an ameshed relationship is fear of abandonment. Both partners fear abandonments, so they
go to any length to avoid anything that might threaten the relationship. Now, I want you to understand that there's a difference between being interdependent and ameshed. Interdependent means you take turns leaning on each other's shoulders. You like to do things together, but you do some things separately. But ameshed is you're afraid to be yourself. You're afraid to be an individual because it might threaten the
relationship. All right, if anything I've said sounds familiar to you, when we come back, let's talk about what you can do to overcome a meshment. You can make changes in your relationship. You're listening to the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show and KFI AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio appet You're listening to KFI AM sixty on demand. KFI AM six forty. You have Doctor Wendy Walsh with you. Producer Kayla, you pick the best music for these
segments. I love it. We're talking about ameshment being a little too close. I was talking about some of the hallmarks for amishment. But producer Hey Liz want to step ahead of us, and she posted a wonderful quiz that was from Psychology Today dot com that gives twenty five questions to tell if you're ameshed. It is posted on our KFI website, which is kfiam six forty dot com slash doctor Yeah, slash doctor Wendy Welsh. So what do you
do about it? Some of the things I might have said earlier might have made you go, who we got? That? I actually have some friends who they're so coupily that I can't call either one of them without them putting the speakerphone on. Drives me crazy. It's rough when your friendship hits that, Yeah, because it's like I was friends with both of them and now it's like it's just a weird blend in between. Yeah, that's too ameshed.
Okay. So obviously, the first and foremost thing that you can do if you want to be a little more of an individual, if you're afraid to have a voice in your relationship, if you feel like you don't want to leave your partner at home to go out one night and do something you want to do, is start with couples therapy. Right. It is the first intervention for all. You need a trained, licensed therapist who can help
you guys in a safe environment, discuss your feelings. And one of the things that the therapist is going to teach you to do is how to set boundaries. Now, boundary setting is about listening and acknowledging to what the other person's boundaries are. I set a boundary today. By the way, Kayla,
you know what happened, would you do? Well? When I sat down for that brunch that I made with the crapes, and I also assotate these mushrooms and onions and garlic to put in them because they were savory crapes, then we had dessert crapes later. Anyway, Julio sat down started scooping because the food was just so delicious, and my daughter Jones was there. She started scooping, and I'm still racing around trying to get the latte's out
and a few other things. And I just turned around and said, excuse me. We're going to have a rule in this house now when I cook a meal, nobody touches food until the cook sits. I love that, And he went, oh, okay, sorry, he could actually try to get up to get to help me with things that needed done in the game. Nope, just sit there and just wait. That's all that happened. I said, how would you like if you were tinkering with your motorcycle and
you weren't finished? And I came and sat on that motorcycle and said let's go for a ride. And you said, I'm not finished, right, I need to get all the things the misantla gotta get it all set out. You shouldn't eat by yourself. If egg you know, if you put it all together for everybody, you should all eat together. Yeah that's true. So anyway, that's how you set a boundary. You just say, okay, here's and if you have people who love you in your house,
they respect your boundaries. But if you're in therapy, the therapist will help you understand each other's boundaries. Now here's another thing. If your partner won't go to couples therapy, you can always go to individual counseling because you can change a relationship. Relationships are like a machine with cogs and wheels, and all you have to do is chain one little mechanism in the machine and the whole machine can change. So you can change your reaction to them. You
can change your ability to set boundaries. It's okay to go to individual counseling for couples therapy. They'll also teach you good better communication skills so you can have a voice and talk about who you are and what you want. And they'll help you explore the family of origin issues that started all this because this stuff is familiar to you because it probably started earlier in life for you.
And obviously a therapist will give you very good behavioral interventions changing your behavior because you know what. I want you to be an individual. I want you to have your hobbies. I want you to have your friends, and I want you to have a healthy relationship with your partner. And it's possible to have both. You can't be clung together because of fear of abandonment. You have to be able to grow as an individual, even within your relationship.
Oh Kayla, here we are again. Two hours went by so quickly. Always does it flies by? I learned so much. Yeah, listen. If you want to follow me on social media, the handle everywhere is at doctor Wendy Walsh. Also, I do a Patreon zoom room every Wednesday at six thirty pm. You can go to patreon dot com slash doctor Wendy Walsh to join that. But I'm always here for you every Sunday from seven to nine pm. If you miss part of the show or want to hear of
a past show, just download that iHeartRadio app. All the shows are up there, and Kayla will have this one up there very soon in just a few minutes. Plus, you can always listen live. Okay, there enough Doctor Wendy for you wherever you want it. Thanks for being with me. It is always my pleasure to weigh in on your love life and share the science of human mating. You've been listening to the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show and
KFI AM six forty. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app kf I AM sixty on demand