You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand. Welcome to the Doctor Wendy Wall Show. I'm KFI AM six forty. We live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app if you're new to my show. I have a PhD in clinical psychology. I'm not a therapist. I'm a psychology professor, and I'm obsessed with the science of love because I really believe we are all put on this planet to reproduce. And it doesn't matter how rich you become or how well lined
your cave is with furs. If you can't find a mate and keep a mate long enough to reproduce, then your genes are going to fall out of evolution's chain. That's just the cold, hard truth, all right. But also, we know that committed, long term relationships are good for our health. They're good for our mental health, they're good for our physical health.
We know that long term committed people live forever forever. No, they love never dies, they live longer, and they have better at physical and mental health along the way. Now that doesn't mean that I don't have some kind of understanding of the fact that we also have the widest range of sexual behavior of any primeate out there, and we also have the widest range of paternal investment. That means one guy's contribution to his kids might be a teaspoon of
sperm and that's about the best he can do. And at the other end of the scale, you might have a guy who's a carpool driving, softball throwing, baby wearing, doting daddy, and it's up to women to choose wisely because you know what. He may be cute on that date, but at the end of the day, do you want more than his genes then find out. And I'm not talking about his Levi's you know, I'm talking about the whole package, his contribution to your life. That's why I'm obsessed
with it. And also, if you're new to my show, you may not know that I spent you know, I'm going to say it, like twenty years dating bad boys and inappropriate people. And it was only once I got into therapy later that I learned that there was a common denominator in every one of my relationships, and it was me. I was choosing them, I was putting up with them. My therapist used to say to me, you're a very tolerant person. Tolerant that's what I am, and then I
learned to choose well. And now of course I'm in love with my Julio, and all is going well for many of you. We are heading into Thanksgiving week. Who producer, Kayla? Where are you going to be on Thanksgiving? Me and my family actually are doing our first destination Thanksgiving and we weren today Airbnb a huge house. All thirty of us are going to be cooking and spending the day together and it's going to be amazing. So you have how many siblings? Again? I am the youngest of five? Oh,
and they're all going to be there of course. Oh there are significant others and their children, and it sounds like more fun than mine. What are you doing? No? I actually go to my best friend Maria's house and her husband Scott, and they you know, she has two sisters. One hosts a big time Molly party you hear me talking about every year in December. Her other sister does Christmas. So Maria's holiday is Thanksgiving and she does it up in a big way. And this year they are supposed to
be like thirty people there. So the only family member that I have in town right now is my sweet twenty year old Jones and of course my Julio, so we will be there. My oldest daughter lives in Paris. Now, Oh, I cannot believe I have not seen my baby for almost a full calendar year. My heart. Someone once said to me, when a baby is born, it is like they take a piece of the mother's heart and they put legs on it. And I'm like, oh, what a
thought. So I'm looking forward to Christmas in Canada, where I will well, we will all come together. But Thanksgiving, what I'm gonna do is bring my grandmother's favorite root vegetable dish, which is mashed turnips, parsnips, and carrots. So it's a tricolor mash with lots of butter. Of course that's my thing. Now, you and he's all your siblings. Do you all get along? Are there any gonna be issues at this Thanksgiving table?
Of course not. We have all matching tattoos, we have each other's names, tatty. We are the best of friends. It's all love in my family. Oh, you're so lucky. Well, you're lucky. I'm lucky. Not everybody who's listening is lucky. Sometimes when it comes to family holidays, there is a level of anxiety that starts to rise. I always say, when you get to the holiday table, no matter how old you are, you all become twelve years old again, like your body remembers what it
was like. Look, I came from a relatively healthy family, and I've had some holidays where my little brother Andy has blown up and yelled at me. Some things just trigger people from their childhood. Right. So I have a few tips for you if you come from one of those families where there was perhaps some trauma or dysfunction and you want to be able to get through Thanksgiving in a rel without you know, more reinjury. I've got this to say. First of all, you control you. You control your time.
You control how much people are able to take advantage of you or not. So the first word is boundaries. Yeah, that b word, boundaries, and the boundaries can be on your time. It's okay to say, you know what, I maybe traveling to your place, but I'm not going to stay at your house. We're going to get an airbnb. And you don't to say it angrily, just say no, we prefer an airbnb. We're good, right, Keep it light. You can have boundaries on your time,
like what time's dinner. Great, we'll get there thirty minutes before and then you can leave when the dinner's over. There's no rule. No one's forcing you to be there from morning till night. You know how much you can take, and you know you also you can have boundaries on your labor if somebody expects you because you're the family member who always does it to cook absolutely everything and you're exhausted at the end of the holiday. You can start
assigning things to people now, especially a cleanup crew. And yes it's okay. I mean it's hard to get them on Thanksgiving and you pay a little more, but don't if you can afford it. You can even take up
contributions to hire someone to help you with the cleanup. It's all possible, right, But I want you to think about your own mental health going into it, and think about what you can do to reduce the chance that someone is going to trigger you on this holiday weekend, because at the end of the day, you know those people, as much as you might have a
few bad memories, are also you. They're part of your identity. They're who you are, and coming back together is a way for you to feel whole in many ways, So I encourage you to go anyway, even if you don't want to go. Put limits on your time and limits on subject matter. Like you might just say to yourself, I am not going to take the bait. If they start to talk about politics or sex or you know, gender not I'm not going to go there. So just don't just
change the subject. Learn how to smile and nod and say pass the salt. You don't have to get upset. You can control it. I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Hey, you know, it's not only Thanksgiving and holidays that can cause a little bit of problems for some people and their mental health. I don't know about you, but I've been watching the news
a lot lately, and I'm really starting it's weighing on me. I'll just say that it's weighing on me. When we come back, let's talk about what we can all do to take care of our mental health while still not big avoidant my still following the news that we need to follow, but practicing some self care. When we come back. You are listening to the Doctor Wendy Wall Show on KFI AM six forty. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand. Welcome back to
the Doctor Wendy Wall Show on KFI AM six forty. We're live everywhere on
the iHeartRadio app. You know, the other day I was driving on my teach at cal State Channel Islands, and I drive along the one oh one and I like to put on, you know, any news that I possibly can, and I listened to a news story where the reporter went down in the tunnels below a hospital and gaza, you know, found things like ammunition and guns, and found a chair and a rope, and it looked like maybe a prisoner had been tied there, and there was some women's clothes.
And I was driving home and I was feeling so stressed about this story, but you know, I was actually listening to the audio version of a television broadcast. So you know what I did. I get home and I go and turn on that channel so I can see the video and the pictures, just like double injuring myself with my stress. And you know, what's going on with Israel and the Palestinians. This war is obviously heartbreaking, stressful,
but it seems to have replaced my doom scrolling of the Ukrainian War. I mean, I was following teenagers down in bomb shelters in the Ukraine for a long time before that. I realized that so much of this was impacting my mental health, partly because I'm somebody who has a great deal of empathy, right, and I feel other people's pain easily. But then if you're like me, then you can't, like stop watching. It makes you kind of
addictive. And remember, news organizations want you to do that, right, because they gotta wrap something around those commercials, and you'll stay glued if you're feeling afraid. And it's really funny the things that trigger me. So I my mother had a big collection of silverware, for instance, and she had collected it as a young single woman with her hardworking money, and she was
a career girl in the nineteen fifties. And then when she passed away, my dad, you know, held up this chest of silverware and said this is for you. Now we pass it on, et cetera. And years and years and years later, decades later, I was actually in Poland and I was touring Auschwitz. I know, I didn't tell you this is going to be a sunshine and flower segment just got to say, and I was able. I was controlling myself, my empathy. I was doing okay.
I was getting through it. I hadn't broken down yet. I mean I was feeling stuff inside my body, but I wasn't showing it outwardly. And then we go into the room where it's all the treasures that the Nazis took from the people before they killed them, right, and there's a beautiful set of silverware in the chest, just like my mother's, and I just started sobbing. I was sobbing. I couldn't take it. So it's funny like the things that key into us are the stuff that we might might really resonate
with us because of our own life growing up. I was looking at the news the other night and there was a video of or maybe I was reading
it in the newspaper. I was still shot. I think of some Palestinian children who have been moved from the north to the south, and they were sitting in a very dirty warzone area outside and they were playing a game of cards, and one of them was laughing as he laid down the card, and all of a sudden, I was just thrown back to my childhood, when we used to play Crazy Eights over and over and over, and I was just like, what would it be like if there were war around me?
And I was a child and anyway, So then I go down that rapids hole of sorrow and maybe you do it too. I want us to stay informed. Obviously. We need to be an informed populist because we need a voice, and our voice is our vote, of course, so we need to know the issues. We need to understand what's happening internationally on all sides. Yeah. I also saw some Jewish parents whose son is one of
the hostages. They've been on Anderson Cooper a lot. I don't know if you've seen them, but all I could think is like, their son is the age of my daughter. And I was just like, ugh, I was, okay, I'm going down the rabbits all again. You see, I suffer from this. It just stays with me. So here's some advice for you that I've been trying to follow myself. Hopefully we can do it together. First of all, only pick like two reliable sources of news for
yourself. Hopefully it's not the far right or the far left. Hopefully it's something in between. KFI is a good one, but something that where you're just following two basic stories, you're not hearing the same story over and over from six different news sources, because then that repetition just drills into your head.
Also, we all need to set a time limit for ourselves. I made the mistake of listening to that whole news story during my drive home from work, and when I got home, I should have put on some light jazz, lit a candle, set of prayer and just started cooking, but no, I rushed to the TV because I wanted to see the video of it. Right, So set a time frame, like I'll, you know, read a newspaper for a few minutes in the morning, I'll watch for
thirty minutes at night. Honestly, most of these news organizations just repeat themselves over and over. You don't need a whole lot more than that. There is research to show that audio is better than pictures. I just want to say, Okay, it's not because I'm a little bit partial, but audio is better than pictures. I mean, when you see the graphic pictures at the same time, it is often too much. And two things I don't want to have happened to us I don't want us to get cold and callous
so that we actually disassociate from it. I want those pictures to have real meaning to us. And the second thing they do if you're not used to it, so they can cause more problems. And finally, pay attention to your body. What happens to your heart rate when you're watching the news, what happens to your breathing, the muscles on your neck and shoulders. If you're having a physiological reaction, then you need to do something to counter that.
For your health, that means get the stress hormone cortisol out of your body. It means go for a walk, listen to soothing music, go for a swim, get on the phone with people you love and chat and laugh. My little trick for fixing my mental health is always watching comedy. I swear there's not a comedy special on a streamer right now that I haven't seen. And the reason why I know this is because the streamers feed them to me when they're brand new, and I watch them immediately. But that
is the thing that helps me feel better. So we have to take care of our mental health. We have to stay as informed citizens. It's important. I'm not saying don't watch the news, but I'm saying you need to practice self care when you consume things. Okay, so I mentioned earlier I'm not a therapist. I'm a psychology professor. However, I've been obsessed with
the science of love for decades and decades. I've written three books on relationships, i did a dissertation on attachment theory, and I have grown up to become a very wise old aunt. We're going to do a new thing when we come back, which is I'm going to go check my social media if you like to send me a DM. The handle everywhere is at doctor Wendy Walsh's at Dr Wendy Walsh. Send me a DM with your relationship question.
I'm not going to give away your name, and I'm going to answer some of your relationship questions because, as I say to my students in class, if you've got that question, I promise somebody else has the same question and it needs to be answered. When we come back. You're listening to the Doctor Wendy Walls Show on KFI AM six forty. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand. Welcome back
to the Doctor Wendy Walls Show on KFI AM six forty. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. Okay, this is the time of the show where I answer your relationship questions. I like to call it my drive bab makeshift relationship advice. I love it when people ask me questions about their love life. They come up to me at social events. My daughter's friends ask me my students. Now, the thing about the students have to have boundaries.
You see, You're not allowed to have a dual relationship with students. So when they do come up ready to pour out their hearty eh, wait till you're not my student anymore. I've got tea and cookies in my office. You can come meet me after that. But anyway, I love it when people ask me questions because I have this knowledge, and let me explain about my knowledge. So I spent twenty years dating bad boys. Then I went to therapy on and off for eighteen years, and then I got a master's
in PhD. And my area of interest is attachment theory. And so every psychology class I would sit in, I would literally say to myself, Oh my god, they should not save this information just for therapists to dole out at one hundred and fifty dollars an hour. Two hundred dollars an hour for a fifty minute hour. That's crazy. And I was all, like, everyone should know this. I want to shout it from the rooftops. So I have made a career in the last decade of taking my journalistic skills and
taking sometimes complicated psychobabble and turning it into language everybody can understand. So I'm happy to weigh in and share all that book learning that I got. All right, let's go if you'd like to send me a direct message on any of my social media Mostly we're checking where do we check Kayla, we check TikTok, we check Instagram, check any questions on YouTube? Maybe the above all of the aboves so that the handle is at doctor Wendy Walsh at Dr
Wendy Walsh. Oh oh, We're starting out with a heartbreak first one, Dear doctor Wendy, how long does it hurt for? How can someone say you're the greatest love of their life? How can we plan our one year trip? And days later he tells me we're not compatible. Hugh knife through the heart. Well. I can't predict how long it will hurt for, but I will tell you this that feelings are messengers and during this time and
you should take some time to grieve. During this time of grieving the loss, you can spend some time thinking about, you know, what went wrong, what you could have done differently. I'm going to caution you because I used to do this a lot myself. Try not to spend too much time trying to analyze him, because I know you want the answer to the word why, Why? Why did he do this? What's wrong with me?
Why didn't he love me enough? Right? This is what we think, but I want you to think instead, Wow, I got saved from a major crash. This is the kind of dude who would leave you at the altar. This is the kind of dude who would break up with you when you're pregnant. This is the kind of dude who you know would divorce you when you have three kids. This is somebody who cannot keep their word and they're not right for you. And you were saved. You were saved from
years of pain. I also highly suggest that you go see a licensed therapist because, as my therapist used to say to me, there's fertile ground in those tears. Right when we're hurting the most is the great time to be authentic and vulnerable and working with a therapist, dig into an earlier pain, write an earlier pain in our life, in our childhood, because always there are features of that that are left over. So I'm sorry you're hurting. I will say this. If it hurts for longer than a year, you're
now into complicated grieving and you definitely need mental health services. Okay, but you know, take a few months cry, get back on that horse and ride it. Find somebody new, surround yourself by people who love you, your family, your girlfriends, your coworkers. Let your brain be reminded that you are a good person and you deserve love. But try not to fall down that rabbit hole of analyzing him, because it doesn't matter. You are
saved from him, all right. Moving along, dear doctor Wendy, in the if the first three months of dating a man are lackluster, is it likely that it will just get progressively worse thereafter? Have you experienced the opposite, where the first three months were just okay, and it got better and
better as time went on. In a word, no, if it's listen, the when you're gonna have the most rush of those neuro hormones that trick your brain into thinking that this person's perfect and you're in love and everything's great, is at the very beginning. They don't ignite suddenly later. So I won't say that after three months it's going to get progressively worse, but it's gonna stay about the same, right, So, if you're not into this guy, don't waste his time, let him go, don't be in love
with hope that he will change or the relationship will change. Move on. I want to remind every person out there who's single that there are plenty of fish in the sea. We get so caught up on this one, like I want to make this one work or I want to get this one back after they hurt me. No, no, no, it's not the last man standing. Trust me. There are plenty more. And because of dating apps, you can see there are thousands more available to you right now.
So if it's just okay, you're gonna have a conversation with this dude, you're gonna say you like him, you get along with him, you want to only be friends, or you want to move along. Okay, just be honest, I will say that. All right, here we go. Here's another one. Oh my, my, my, my, Dear Doctor Wendy, how would you feel if the man you're dating said you have fat
girl personality? Wait what? And she goes on for context. He said it because he was talking about how he thought it would be hard to date me because I'm so good looking and must have a lot of men trying to pursue me. But to his surprise, I'm nice and have fat girl personality. I was super confused, and I don't know how to feel about that comment for multiple reasons. Well, I'm gonna tell you how you should feel. I know usually not about should, but I'll tell you probably what you
are feeling when we come back. You are listening to the Doctor Wendywall Show on ki AM six forty. Were live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand. Welcome back to the Doctor Wendy Wall Show on KFI AM six forty. I am answering your social media questions my favorite thing to do. All right, So before the break, this woman wrote to me and she said, how would you feel if the man
you are dating said you have fat girl personality. Now, to put it into context, he was actually saying she was good looking because he was intimidated by her at first, and that apparently, since she had such a nice personality, it reminded him of something he calls fat girl personality. Okay, so you're confused about how to feel. I'll tell you how you should feel confused. And the reason why you should feel confused is because he was giving
you a backhanded compliment. He was basically saying, I actually think you are beautiful, smart, accessible, beautiful on the inside too, and I'm grateful for that. But at the same time, I objectify women and I judge them by their body types. That's what he's saying to you. So I think what you need to do and don't just dump them. Let's explore. Okay, take a minute to explore. You're gonna say to him, Hey, you know that comment you made that you said I have a fat girl
personality. You know it's really been staying with me because it really bothered me. I worry about a couple things. One is, do you just judge women on what they look like? And do you have prejudice against people who have extra body weight. And also, what if down the road we got married and I got pregnant and I gained a lot of maternal fat stores, how would you feel about me? I mean that was really hard to hear. Can you help me understand what you meant? And then let him go
hang himself? I mean not literally, I mean you give him enough rope, let him talk and see what you hear. Okay, if he says something stupid like well, it's just been my experience if fat girls have to try harder and be nicer, then you just hang up the phone and disappear. Never talk to him again, because you're gonna have a hard life with this guy. If he says something, you know, you're absolutely right. I stand corrected. That was a really thoughtless remark, and I feel really
bad that I said it. I'm glad you brought it up. Well, then you give him a nine chance, all right, because maybe he's learning and growing and you could have a good relationship. That's my take on it. Okay, moving right along into my dms on Instagram, the handle everywhere is at doctor Wendy Walsh at dr Wendy Walsh. Okay, dear doctor Wendy, have you ever stopped talking to someone because their expenses were high compared to what they make? H the plot thickens. A guy I'm dating doesn't make
financially sound decisions, so you're pretty sure he's going into date. He doesn't a debt, he doesn't have like a secret stash somewhere. That's really the question is to find out what's going on. Clearly, you two have different psychologies of money, and there's actually some research to show that when couples get together if they do have differing, sometimes differing psychologies of money, it can
actually be good for them. And here's why hear me out. So if you're like a saver and he's a spender, he can help pull you out of your shell more and allow you to feel less guilt about splurging a little bit once in a while. And also if he's a big spender, you can pull him back in. But the question is can you do you guys
have open communication? Are you able to influence each other? I don't know how long you've been dating him, but you need to ask him this question, Like it feels like you're spending a lot more money than you make, and I'm wondering if you're going into debt to impress me or ifs this regular, like just bring it up, like, just Kaylen, you are laughing at me. That's just a very blunt thing to say to somebody. I
think you're spending more money than you make. That's how about saying something like, you know, here's my communication sandwich right, starts out with something nice and then a little bit something hard to chew on, and then backed up with another. You start off by saying, you know, I am so enjoying all these fabulous, expensive dates, but I'm also getting a little worried.
I hope you're not overspending for my behalf because I'm very conservative with my spending because if we continue down the road, I want to make sure as a couple, we don't ever get into big debt. Something like that. Oh I would receive that so well, you would do that better? Yeah that was better. Yeah that was much better, instead of have you maxed out your credit cards? Dude? Are you broken in? Financially illiterate?
All right, let's see one more. Uh, Dear doctor Wendy never been asked to be official with this guy, However, I've been seeing him since April and he tells people I am his girl. What does my girl mean? Well, why don't you ask him? First of all, you've been dating since April. Let me count that out May, June, July, August, September, October, November. Seven months and you haven't had the what are we are we exclusive? Conversation? You are late, lady Jane.
First of all, men do not volunteer to have that conversation. It's always the women that lead into that one. You got to bring that horse to water. So you need to say to him, I think again, just ask for definition, Like, hey, first of all, do you like it or not like it? When he says that, that's the important thing. If you don't like it, say hey, why you keep calling me your girl? I'm not an object. You don't own me, Okay, you don't possess me. You could say that, or you could say,
hey, I notice you're referring to me as your girl. Does that mean we're exclusive? Or what's our definition here? You know, to find a way to ask, or you just say next time he says to people, hey, here's my girl, say yeah, and he's my guy. Just see how he responds. You know, when I wrote the book The Boyfriend Test in the ninety day probation Test, because it's about ninety days when you should ask that question or have the conversation about what the what are we
conversation? I said, the way to do it is, don't ask. Just introduce him as your boyfriend to somebody and see if he flinches, you know, just see how his reaction is, and then you'll know. Right then you'll know. Okay, when we come back, I have a very special guest, and I know he's out there in the waiting room. I caught a glimpse of him. You might want to go online and check him
out yourself. His name is Sterling Cooper. He's got a big YouTube following, and someone told me I had to have him on my show because he's a former porn actor and a high end escort for wealthy women. But wait, he also participates in cut holding. Oh oh, it's a lot to explain, and I'm gonna have to ask him all about it. But mainly his business now is he helps men become better lovers. Apparently he knows all
about women's bodies. Let's find out. When we come back and you meet Sterling Cooper, you are listening to the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show on KFI AM six forty. We live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app KFI AM six forty on demand