This is doctor Wendy Walsh and you're listening to KFI AM six forty, the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app KFI AM six forty. You have Doctor Wendy Walsh with you. This is the Doctor Wendy Waalsh Show. On tonight's show, Let's talk about the meaning of big rituals and rites of passage psychologically, also how quest love. If you don't know who questlove is, I'll explain stays mentally healthy and why human brains make us
so darned stupid. Welcome to the show, Producer, Kayla, Nice to see you, you as well, Doctor Wendy Richiteta. How you doing. Hello, Hello, Hello, good to see you. Great you too, love hearing your show. We have a new face on the board. Whoosh, you're not new, but you're new to me. Weekend night. Well, I know, welcome to
the show, all right. I spent yesterday at the Loyola Marormount University graduation because my god daughter, not my daughter, my goddaughter graduated, so this would be the daughter of my best friend from childhood who lives in Miami, and so she came out with her Miami family and we sat there for four hours. It was the longest thing
you could imagine, and it was spitting rain. My friend was dressed in Miami clothes, which means she thought she was going to be a tropical beach resort because it's California.
You know.
I gotta say, I think Baywatch was some false advertising, sent it all around the world, and they did not advertise the May gray and the June gloom. So anyway, spitting rain, shivering, sitting in the seat, waiting, But we did it because it was a ritual. It was important to have a large gathering of people and to have this one moment that we waited for while they called it, I don't know, a thousand graduates names one by one by one. Oh God, my heart went out to the
president giving out all those diplomas. But if you've ever sat through a long graduation ceremony, maybe you were squinting into the sun instead of dodging rain drops. Maybe you were wondering why everybody was wearing Harry Potter robes. I want to remind you that all this matters. Psychologically, it matters. These ceremonies aren't just tradition. For tradition's sake. They're actually deeply wired in our psychology. You see, humans tend to
be meaning makers. We turn moments into milestones, and we do that through rituals. So, whether those rituals are birthdays, anniversaries, weddings or funerals, whether they're transfers of political power, peaceful, I hope they're still a ritual. That's how we mark life's transitions. But here's the fascinating part. Research shows that our brains actually perceive rituals as causing real change in
the world. That's why the speakers at yesterday's Loyo Lamiramount ceremony talked about going forth in the world, making change, doing things right. Even when those students went up those steps and had that awkward, probably sweaty and filled with germs, handshake with the person giving the diploma, their brain said, something big just happened to me. When I turned to my goddaughter, caught her on the big screen doing her you know, the peace sign and the tongue out on
the side. I don't know why they do that. Why did they do the tongue out on the side, Kayla, We'll never let it go. What is that? She did it too? She said the peace sign and the tongue out of the side. Yeah, what does it mean. It means it's cute. Okay, it's just cute. That's her graduation picture and it was on a big screen. But at that moment something happened, right she changed her brain was told this is important. Now we augment that by having things like fancy dinners, and we did. Oh my god.
One of my favorite restaurants in Venice is called Paloma. We ate there after the graduation ceremony. The day before, we ate a catsu yah in Brentwood. That was great too, but there might have been there was, there's music, singers, whatever it is. They're not just show their signals to our community that something sacred has happened. And psychologists like to call this rights of passage, and believe it or not, these rights of passage follow a three step structure. First
one is separation. This is where you leave behind your old identity. So this is when students are packing up their dorm room. Interesting enough, my goddaughter the day before her graduation, became obsessed with cleaning her apartment. Knowing she'd be leaving soon. There was a cleaning of her apartment. Maybe somebody heading off to the military. That's the day they get their head shaved and they change their clothes. Right, it's a clean break. You know that separation is happening.
Step two. Psychologists call it the liminal stage. It's just a fancy word for the in between stage. It's that weird, wobbly phase where you're not who you were, and yet you're not who you're becoming. So a cadet is no longer a civilian, but not quite a soldier. A bride certainly isn't single, but not a wife yet. A college senior sitting at a commencement not quite a student, not quite a graduate. And the longer we stretch out that liminal phase, that's why the four hours it is uncomfortable,
but it's necessary. The more discomfort the audience and the parents felt waiting for their kids name. I actually felt sad for the parents whose kids' names were called first, because then they still had to wait for the four hours. You couldn't get up and leave, and nobody was actually a graduate until the president conferred the degree on them in the final speech. And so you sit there in discomfort, but it's worth it because you know this is important
and then step three. Psychologists call it reincorporation. That's when society welcomes you back with your new, shiny status. And when we went to Paloma for lunch, my goddaughter wore her full robes and the what is that big scarf thing they wear around their neck, and there were other graduates there with their families, wearing their robes so that they were identified as something shiny and new a graduate. The waiter came up to the table and immediately said, congratulations.
Not sure how I knew, wink wink right. But here's where it gets really interesting. When people miss these rituals, something feels off. Remember during the pandemic, remember the drive by graduations, the drive by birthdays, Remember how it just didn't feel the same. Well, this isn't about vanity. It's really about biology. Because rituals are what hold our social
fabric together. So if you're going to graduation this month or next maybe you've got a high schooler graduating next month, whether it's your own, your kids, your neighbors, your grandkids, whatever, soak it up, be uncomfortable, and also cry out. We screamed, you know when she got up there. We were the four family members yelling for her cry at pomp and circumstance. Snap a million blurry photos. It's just a ceremony, but
it's not a ceremony. It's a psychological upgrade. You're literally witnessing human transformation in real time, and human beings need this and it's always worth celebrating.
Now.
There were a number of speakers at the event. The valedictorian, of course, was amazing. She was of Indian heritage and talked about her religion and how there was a saying in her religion to not fear or not no fear, no anger, and how to turn feelings of fear and anger into action, so that going forward message. But the commencement speaker was Questlove and he's now called doctor Love. When we come back, I'll explain why.
You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI Am six forty.
You have doctor Wendy Walsh with you. This is the Dr Wendy Waalsh show. You hear that music that is Questlove. When I was at the Loyola Marra Mount graduation all day yesterday in the spinning rain, feeling uncomfortable doing the most important work that we do as a community, which is create a ritual for a young person. I do want to give a congratulations to outgoing President Timothy law Snyder and his wife Carol Costello, who's an acquaintance of mine.
You may recall her as a longtime anchor on CNN. She has taught in their journalism department, and of course her husband's leaving end she's leaving, and they gave her an honorary doctorate, So congratulations Carol Costello. They also gave the guest speaker an honorary doctorate. His name is Questlove, and if you don't know that name, I'll tell you this. I love people who defy boxes, people who aren't just one thing. And that's why I'm kind of obsessed with Questlove.
He was born Amir Khalib Thompson. Now he's best known as a drummer and frontman for the Roots, That's that cool band on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. But if you call Questlove just a drummer, it's like calling Beyonce just a singer. Right. This man is a cultural force, a Grammy winning musician, a DJ, a professor at NYU, an Oscar winning filmmaker. Yeah, he won for Summer of Soul. That was him and a walking encyclopedia of music history. I mean, if Spotify were a person, it would probably
be Questlove. But here's what makes him really special. He doesn't just play music. He curates emotion. He understands how rhythm builds identity, how shared music rituals like a dance party or even just vibing Di Vinyl help us all feel like we belong. And he turns beats into belonging. Let's not forget he brings radical kindness and depth into everything he does. So Questlove now has an honorary doctorate
from Loyola Marramount University. And so I was a little uncomfortable when he stood up and said, Okay, so it looks like now I'm doctor Love. I felt a bit threatened at that moment, but I loved his talk, and his talk moved me so much. I'm going to ask mister Questlove. Oh I'm sorry, doctor Love, to please forgive me if I paraphrase inaccurately. But I'd like to share with my KFI audience some of the most important points
that you made in your commencement speech. Because me with a PhD in clinical psychology had my eyes opened, and I was moved by some of your words. The first thing he said, which was cute because he's performer, is that when he got the phone call to be potentially the commencement speaker in front of thousands of people, he had always lived his life being behind something, behind the drums, behind Jimmy Kimmel, behind the band, behind, behind, behind. He
was never the front man. And he said there was a reason for it. He was afraid. He had this deep fear of being out front, and so he very cutely said, so when I first got that phone call, every cell in my body was trying to say no, dog, thanks, But he decided to face his fear and come out. And so he used his stories of his life to share four things that he wants all the graduates to do every single day to have a better life. And they are things proven in science, proven in psychology. They
are a great reminder for me. But also he told it, of course in a brilliant way, because he's so articulate, and it was just amazing. And the first thing he talked about was learning to be grateful every single day, every morning, finding three things to be thankful for he said, sometimes he runs down his list and he can't find anything, so it's like, thank you for this perfect bull of
Captain Crunch peanut Butter. He also told a story that when he was growing up, his parents had enough money to either pay for his school tuition at a fancy private school or pay to keep the gas on, and they chose to send him to school. And he looked out at the audience because we're pretty cold, sit in the rain. He goes, the way you feel right now was barely one of the mornings in our house. Okay, growing up cold. But he said, at that moment, I
sure didn't feel grateful. I didn't know to feel grateful, and I look back and I do, right. So he talked about how it changes the brain, and we know this, if we can just stop thinking about, you know, what's missing in our life and instead focus on what is in our life, then we can change our mental health. So that was the first thing he said, every single morning, just think of three things you're grateful for to start your day. The second thing he said to do is breathe,
and he said something brilliant. He said, you know, the only difference between excitement and panic breath the only difference. And of course he made this entire audience do the big breath seven seconds in, hold for three five seconds out like I do with my house psychology. These duds, I'm like, dude, have you been in my class? This is great. We did our deep breathing. He said, you feel the difference. He said, at any moment when you feel fear, just dig into that breath in a deep,
deep way. The third thing he said we should do every morning is stretch and move our bodies. But he turned it into an interesting story about emotions. He told a story that when he was growing up, his parents were not cruel. They were protective, and in their protective desire, they told him not to show any emotions. If you were happy, you were being too proud. If you were showed anger, you would get in trouble for that. If
you showed fear, it was weakness. He had all these and he said one day he woke up and he could barely get out of bed because his feet and ankles were swollen so much and they were sweating. And he used the brilliant metaphor that they were crying the tears of emotions out of his whole body because he was never allowed to cry. And he said, when I change things, and I started talking about my feelings, writing
about my feelings. When I started getting up in the morning and moving my body every day and stretching, I got better. And so, by the way, I have no idea what his diagnosis would have been, but everything, many things are psychosomatic. That doesn't mean they're imagining them. It's a lesson in the fact that when any illness has emotional roots, the body cooperates with the emotions and actually become sick. Right, But that's what psychosomatic means. And finally
he said, to be kind. And you know who, he said, The most important person we need to be kind to is ourselves. He said that we have voices inside our heads who say things to us that we would never allow anybody else to say to us. That we literally and he told stories of him feeling less than an undeserving and he said, you have to learn to say I am, I am, I can and I deserve this. And he said, and once you get past that, you'll be able to say I feel this, I feel that,
and it's all okay. The way he told it was a thousand times better than the way I've told it. But it's a lesson for all of us. We all need to be thankful. There's science behind this, you know. Great example. I said to my husband Julia this morning, did you know that Kaylea sent me an article that are five things that healthy couples do every weekend? And we do four of them. Now, you know what my first thought is, and what he was supposed to say is what do we not do? But he didn't say that.
He said, really, what are the four that's so cool? And I said I was only concerned about the one we didn't do, and he goes, well, you're a glass half empty, girl, I'm a glass that fall. We're doing four the five. That's great. We need to shift our attention to the positive, and particularly we need to do it in our darkest days. We need to do it when it's hard. We need to do it to save ourselves.
And we do need to breathe. I know it seems so California woo woo to just take a few deep breaths, but I'm telling you, our breath is deeply connected to our feelings.
Kayla.
I don't know if you remember, but during COVID when we were all all of us were in deep, deep, deep deep fear, and we were doing our show from home, and I had a breath expert as a guest on the show and he had us, all us, all meaning our KFI listeners, doing deep breathing on the radio. And I got like the meanest call from my program director, going, never have a meditation on our air, Like, we're all stressed out, we're under COVID. We just need to take
some deep breaths. It's a hard time. We all think we're gonna die. There's danger in the air breathing. We all need to breathe more often. And yes, we all need to move our bodies and stretch. And finally, we need to forgive ourselves. We need to raise our shame tolerance. Stop feeling like we're being judged all the time. You're worth it. Every single person listening right now is equal. Nobody gets out of here alive. Nobody gets out of here without pain. Some people have more money or less,
their pain's not less. Trust me just has more zeros at the end of it. But we need to love ourselves, forgive ourselves, and stop letting other people judge us. That is how we have good mental health. All right, when we come back, let us begin to talk about our relationships. There's a word that I hear, especially young women, use all the time, and that word is settle. It drives me flippin' crazy when I hear it, and I'm about to go off.
When we come back, you're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI Am six forty.
You have Doctor Wendy Walsh with you. This is the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show. I have been obsessed with the science of love for quite a few decades. I was struggling to find a healthy relationship myself, went to a lot of therapy to figure things out. Eventually went to graduate school, got a master's a PhD in psychology, wrote three books on relationships, wrote a dissertation on attachment theory, and have been reporting as a journalist on the science
of love for quite a long time. So one of the things that kind of bothers, Oh, you want me to say something, don't you? Kayla? Okay, how do I make your phone go open? First of all, if you are listening and we'd like to see us here in the studio, you're welcome to log onto Instagram because we're live on Instagram right now. Hi, Instagram, How are you? I just want to let everybody know that on Thursday, May twenty ninth, I will be speaking about the science
of Love at a women's wellness event. I believe it's in West Hollywood and oh dear, I know the tickets are only thirty dollars. There's a movie screening called The m Factor. There are talks by a cardiologist, a menopause specialist, a women's health and fitness coach, and doctor Wendy Walsh talking about the science of love. It's a lot about menopause. It's got great doctors. Now where do they go? What's the website? Can you look at that QR code? Kayla?
I'll give you the website in a minute. Actually, we're going to post it on the KFI website. So if you just go to kfiam six forty dot com, Kayla's going to post the flyer on the doctor Wendy Walsh page. So there you go, May twenty ninth. That'd love for you to come out. It'll be fun, all right. Having said that, let's get into the relationship questions in a minute. I am going to put out the phone number and I'm going to have you guys call me with your
relationship questions. I'm going to say the number now, but Kayla's not going to open the lines for about ten minutes. So it's one eight hundred and five two zero one five three four. Okay. There's one word that I hear young single women say a lot, and that word is settle. Literally, they say, well, I don't I just don't want to settle. First of all, they're exhausted from dating. There is a
oversupply of successful single women in the mating marketplace. There are an undersupply of commitment oriented men, and as a result, this group of highly successful women are vying for a very small group of men. And when I hear them say I don't want to settle, I want to remind And I want to say this so carefully because people get offended when I say this. This is basic data
and basics to tis we are outliving our relationships. The purpose of a relationship fifty years ago was two almost strangers, because the average time, say in nineteen fifty, between meeting and marriage was about six months. Two almost strangers make a deal between families They were like a bridge between tribes that they would survive together and probably raise some kids.
Most of them stayed in their own lane, and they divvied up the jobs that needed to be done, whether it was financial and bring home resources or farming labor, whether it was raising kids or whatever. They split up the survival chores of life, if you will. They weren't looking for their soulmate. They weren't looking for romantic love. They weren't looking for somebody to complete them or fulfill them.
Did you know, if you got married in the year nineteen hundred and you professed, we will be together until death do us part, the average length of that marriage was twelve years. If you got married in nineteen ninety and you did the same thing till death do us part, the average length of that marriage was twelve years. Now, in nineteen hundred, people were dying from famines. They were dying from diseases. They were dying from wars and fights
and infections and all kinds of things. Long before vaccines, you know, people were dying of all kinds of stuff. They died. Women died in childbirth a lot. In nineteen ninety. Despite all the medical advances, people are now breaking up because of divorce. Relationships have become more fragile. And the reason they become more fragile is because our expectations have become so high. Now I should also his something else happened.
Modern Western capitalism needed a mobile workforce, needed people to be moving around the country all the time chasing new jobs. So people were torn away from their villages, they were torn away from their extended family, and then they expected their partner to replace the work of all those people, the emotional work. So they lost their important support structure, of which their mate was one piece of it. But
he or she wasn't the whole thing right. So as a result, we now expect our mate to be our best friend, our lover, our intellectual stimulator, everything, Yet we break up when they're not that. I'm going to make a case for the fact that you need to go back to your grandmother's time because we're outliving our relationships. You may have another chance. If you're a woman who wants to be a mother, go out and look for a good father. Don't love for a guy that's just
hot looking, who's good in bed. Look for somebody who's kind and caring and a good father. There are a lot of great, great guys out there. They're wonderful men, and you are not looking at them, ladies, because you have patriarchy swimming in your own head that says, if I make this amount of money, if I have this amount of education, I want a guy that makes more. I deserve more now. But sorry, they are actually more
women in the American workforce than men. For every two women that are are two guys that graduate college, there are three women. You're getting ahead. So you've got to open your heart to a guy who may not fit old fashioned patriarchy. That's all I'm gonna say. Hate the word settling. You're not settling. You're getting a good deal, at least for parenthood. Okay, when we come back, I am going to take your relationship questions live. Producer Kayla's
going to open the phone lines now. The number is one eight hundred five two zero one KFI. That's one eight hundred five two zero one five three four. Give me a call and I will weigh in on your love life.
You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI AM six four.
You have Dr Wendy Walsh with you. This is the Doctor Wendy Waalsh Show. And this is the time of the show where I am taking your calls. Just a reminder, I'm a psychology professor, not a therapist, but i have a lot of life experience and I've been reporting on the science of love for a few decades. The number is one eight hundred five two zero one five three four. That's one eight hundred five two zero one kfi. Okay, Producer Kaylage, we have somebody on the line. We do.
We have Aaron with a question. Aaron hi Erin is doctor Wendy.
Hi, Doctor Wendy. I've always wanted to talk to you.
Oh how nice? Have you been a listener for a long time? Erin so long? So what's your question? Is your lucky night?
Okay? So I've been seeing this guy for like two three months maybe maybe three, yes, Oh my god. And he sleeps with his dog in the bed and I can't stand it. And a dog is like and it's not like a small dog, it's like a really big dog that's like snores as well. Oh, I just don't know if it's too soon for me to say anything, because I hate it and I don't even like being over there, or sleeping over this.
This is this is a big promeno. Erin, I have to tell you a story. So back, a long time ago, I met this guy who was quite wealthy, who was good looking, nice, had a beautiful, big house. But these two giant German shepherd dogs. And I literally said to myself, well, this guy's great, the house is fine, but these dogs have got to go. I'm gonna work my way in here until those dogs are not the main thing in his life. Well, Eron, I have to tell you something.
By the time those dogs had to be put down because they had hip displasion, it was many years later. It was me and the vet there because I was more in love with those darn dogs than he was.
Oh so I'm gonna say, give it a chance, Eron, give it a n You could bring it up and say, you know, when I'm over, I don't want a dog sleeping in the bed because there's some hygiene things, right, there's the smell and the dog hair and if you're not used to it, and yeah, some.
People have dogs in the bed, some people don't. So don't be shy and just say, hey, I just have a boundary when I'm over dog sleeps on the dogbed on the floor, not in our bed. And also let them know to change the sheets before you come because you could have leftover dog hair from the night before.
Yeah, right, exactly. You never know that that dog.
Might grow on your air and you just never know. Thank you for Colin. Thanks for Colin. All right, take care by Okay, who do we have next, Kayla? We have Jeremy with the question. Jeremy, Hi, Jeremy, it's doctor Wendy.
Hi, doctor Wendy. How are you good?
What's your question?
So I'm near thirty and I have had kind of a turbulence twenties. I haven't really had a whole lot of financial or career success, and I'm just trying to put my life back together. And so I have a job, and i'm currently and I'm currently going to school to get my CDL, and I'm planning on and I'm planning on actually going back to college, not this year but next year. But here's the thing. Someone I've been talking to,
we've been talking for a while. She's much more successful and has had a very successful career from her from ever since she was nineteen to now. And we're about the same age, I have a lot of the same interests and a lot of the same values. Should I go for someone like that who has clearly been in a much more successful field for a long time versus somebody who maybe is in a similar financial situation.
So, Jeremy, thanks so much for that question. You are, You're definitely in a situation like many many young men in America today. You are just launching even though you're near thirty. You're getting your education, you've got a job. But the women you're meeting, including the one you're talking about now, to be more financially successful. I think it is less important about who you quote unquote go for and more important that you understand who you deserve and
that you're okay talking to them openly and honestly. They're all kinds of ways that you can care for a woman. Besides financial care. There are literally a million fix ites you can do in their house. There are things that you can do, you'd be emotional support. There are so many things you can do that increase your value. And if you think your value is only about your income, that's an old fashioned male way of thinking. So thank you for calling, Jeremy, and good luck to you, all right.
I also want to go to social media because I have a few questions that came in some DMS. Just now. If you want to give me a call, the number is one eight hundred and five two zero one five three four. All right, Dear doctor Wendy says a listener, I caught my wife texting someone, and she was texting some flirtatious messages. She says, it's harmless? Is it cheating? Okay? So this is the new language, right. There is this idea that somebody has to physically have sex with somebody
else for it to be considered cheating. But we now know that there are emotional betrayals. And at the very least, if the texts were flirtatious, then they are on the way to physical cheating. But at the very least they're emotional cheating. And if you're feeling confused about this, I
want to be really clear with you. This is a form of cheating, right, emotional cheating, betrayal, betraying a confidence because as soon as you have a close emotional relationship with somebody that you might be planning to have sex with, that means you might be disclosing secrets about your relationship, right, And so it's really important that we all have self boundaries. I know that we all have our own social media accounts,
we all have our own telephones. It used to be back in the day it was really hard to cheat. Could you had like one family phone in the house, et cetera. But now everybody has ways to contact each other privately, so it's really incumbent on us to have those very clear boundaries. Now I should tell you that my husband and I of course have the passwords to each other's phones and computers, and we're on each other's accounts all the time because we're not worried about cheating.
But we can help and support each other. You know, he can say, oh on my computer or your computer and I saw a text come in or whatever. Right. So anyway, I think more couples need to be open about all of this, and you shouldn't be able to have private relationships somewhere. But anyway, I'm sorry you found that, and I'm sure it's quite painful. Okay, here's another DM from a listener. Dear doctor Wendy, every time we argue,
my boyfriend threatens to break up. Is this emotional manipulation? Yeah? Of course it is. This is one way that people try to stop an argument because they don't know how to have healthy conflict. So what they basically say is, if you continue to voice your feelings, your truth about who you are, then I'm going to leave you. And if that partner knows that their partner fears abandonment more than anything else, then they'll hold it over their head.
Using breakups as a threat is not healthy ever, So I think what you need to say to him is we need to learn how to argue better so that you don't use a breakup as a threat, because it's really not fair to me. And you know, what you don't want to say is fine, break up with me. Let's see if you can do that. Nope, that's not going to work. Also, don't say you don't mean it, you wouldn't really do it well, cause he'll do it
just to show you you can. I think what you need to say is I'm trying to express my feelings and it feels like it's hard for you to hear some of the things that I'm saying, but you can't threaten me with a breakup. That's not a healthy way of arguing. And I highly recommend the two of you get into couple's therapy so that you can learn some healthy conflict resolution skills. Those are the most important thing. Okay, when we come back, I'm going to continue to go
to social media. A whole bunch of dms just came in, all you private people who don't want to be on the radio. That's okay. You are listening to the Doctor Wendy Walls Show on KFI AM six forty. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You've been listening to Doctor Wendy Waalsh. You can always hear us live on KFI AM six forty from seven to nine pm on Sunday and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.