@DrWendyWalsh is offering her drive by makeshift relationship advice. PLUS how to have a "normal" love life.

on the iHeartRadio App. If you have not downloaded the iHeartRadio app yet, you really should because if you miss any episode of the Doctor Wendy Walt Show or part of it, or you want to send a segment to a friend, you need to get on that app because it's there permanently afterwards and you can listen to it at your leisure whenever you want. All right, I'm about to answer some of your dms that you're sending in on Instagram. My handle is at doctor Wendy Walsh at

dr Wendy Walsh. Reminder, I'm not a therapist. I'm a psychology professor. But I did write a dissertation on attachment theory, wrote three books on relationships, and been to a lot of therapy myself. So let's get into it. Dear doctor Wendy. I don't want to spend hours and hours with someone every time we hang out. I'm ok. With seeing someone for two to three hours once a week. I don't know how to communicate this without sounding awful. It's just my preference to not immerse myself in a man. Oh

this woman writing this in a man right away? Or alter my life too much? How should I tell him? I don't know you, and I don't want to diagnose you, but this shore sounds to me like the voice of somebody with an avoidant detachment style. You see, people who desire a secure relationship are not afraid of intimacy, not afraid of closeness. I will agree with you on one thing. If you're just beginning to date somebody, you don't need to spend more than two or three hours with them

on any given date. I heard recently from someone who said, oh, I met the greatest guy in our first date lasted seven hours. I want to smack her across the face. No, I wouldn't really, But has I had that thought like, oh my god, she should not? Kayla, you just looked at me like I was a mean mom. I thought you're talking about me. No, No, it would doesn't mean did you have a date? I told you how to date that last of six hours? You're like, that's way too much time. It is too much time. But I've

met someone else, so you're not alone. Other women make that same mistake. I met another woman who said she did it for seven hours and then she met him the next day for another seven hours. Too much, too much, way too much, way too much. So I like the short dates, but the frequency, this whole thing of I don't really want to alter my life for a man. I don't want to get too close. I feel awful. I don't know. You know, if you're comfortable, then I

would just say it. Just tell people, because it's not like having an avoidant attachment style is dysfunctional for you. It's working for you. But what you need to do is find another person who has an avoidant detachment style. You guys will be perfect together. You will live like polite roommates in your life. There'll be no intimacy and you'll be fine. There won't even be a lot of fighting, probably, So you just gotta be honest with those people. Honesty

is the best policy. I already talked about that, all right. Moving on, dear doctor Wendy. I dated a guy in twenty twenty. We dated for a long time, but we never became official boyfriend and girlfriend. Well that's your fault, just saying okay, so I had to throw that in. He told me he was healing himself with his therapist and didn't want a relationship until he heals. So I just want to pause and interject something here. You said we dated for a long time. Then you said he

didn't want a relationship until he healed. I have some news for you. You were having a relationship, and so was he just throwing that out there. I realized that was an excuse and moved on with my life. We are still friends. This week, he told me he loves me and he thinks about me every day. Should I give another chance? I do love him, but he never moved forward with me the last time. Oh this is a good one. I have a good answer here. Okay.

First of all, in general, the best predictor of somebody's future behavior is always their past behavior. If you go back to the same system you had before, he will behave the same way. So the answer is if you do choose to give him another chance. I actually kind of think it's a good idea, especially if he's working with a therapist, that you're gonna say, okay, but we need to do it differently, this way, this time, and

here's how I want it to be different. You might suggest, because you said we dated for a long time, you might suggest, why don't we go to couple's therapy together so we can create a different system together as we build this. Or you could say, hear the things that bothered me about last time, how it never moved forward. Or you could say, hey, if you say you love me and I have those feelings too, then from the get go, let's be boyfriend and girlfriend. Let's not I

have undefined nonsense. You already know this person. Remember you dated for a long time, so I would set up the boundaries definitely, and I might give them another chance. Do went to therapy? That's good, all right, dear doctor Wendy. My husband quit his job to become an actor. Oh god, this is heartbreaking. As soon as I read that sentence, I'm heartbroken. Quit his job to become an actor. You know what, I had a friend. I'm none even reading the rest yet until I just jump in and say this.

I had a friend. She and I had modeled together when we were young, and then she moved to Texas and she married, you know, to a typical story of a model. She married a successful guy, had three kids once they became teenagers because she married young and had them so she was still youngish. And she came out to LA and said, I don't know what it is, but I just got the bug. I got the acting bug. She's from Texas.

I'm such a mirror and reality check. And I said to her, why do you really want to become an actor? And she said, well, I just had the book. And I said, you know, acting is about having a limelight sean on you. It's about having a little entourage around you. It's about having a people applaud you. I'm wondering if you're feeling unloved in your life at home, if you're feeling ignored, if you're not getting enough attention. Look, it wasn't therapy. I was being a friend and I had

a wondering. Okay, so I said it to her anyway. She said to me, you're so deep. I think you're right. Started crying. Went back to Texas, got a therapist, patched it up with her husband, and seems, I'm just looking at her on social media, seems beautiful and happy. So there you go. All right, back to this couple. Dear doctor, Wendy, my husband quit his job to become an actor. Wait, there's another sentence, Kayla, you're gonna love. We are in our late fifties. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm

heartbroken for her, heartbreaking. And then the next sentence, he's not very good at acting. I'm sorry. If you're listening, I'm sorry, if you're listening, it's just so painful, it's so heartbreaking. Wait, next sentence, I'm gonna review. Okay, everybody, my husband quit his job to become an actor. Point number one, point number two. We are in our late fifties. You all know it's a young person's game, all right. Point number three, he's not very good at acting. That's

her opinion. We don't know the truth there. Point number four, this is stressing me out. And then the question how can I gently tell him to get his crap together? Okay, the word gentle doesn't need to be there. Okay, you need to say, dude, make yourself happy. But I'm not hanging around while you run around to a bunch of auditions and go to parties and meet starlets and whatever. Why are you doing it? What is up? Right? You guys?

Should you should demand if you want to keep the marriage, demand you go to couple's therapy and go what is up? I mean, I understand it's time to find yourself. But look, I went through a phase in my late forties where I thought, maybe I still could join the New York City Ballet. Maybe there's a chance, right, I mean, we

have these fantasies. Look, the chance of a young hot person in their twenties becoming successful and earning a living, not even famous, just earning a living in the entertainment business is very slim. In your fifties, It's even slimmer there are fewer parts. It's hard to break in. You don't have the contacts. They would rather hire an actor in their fifties who's had thirty years of experience in

the business. So I'm sorry to burst your bubble. You know what's gonna happen, Kayla, She's gonna take this segment from the iHeartRadio app. She's gonna send it to her husband with all the laughter, Wendy, he will cry. I know we can't.

going to cry. Unless I giggle. That was last segment. Okay, dear doctor Wendy, I have been with my wife since we were teenagers. Oh that's so sweet. I don't know life without her. We just aren't compatible. In our forties. We tried therapy and nothing changed. She doesn't understand that I don't feel appreciated. Is there any way to save us? I have only one thing to say. That's a question for the two of you to ask each other in a therapist's office. This might be the beginning of you

guys doing some conscious uncoupling. I know you said and you don't know life without her, but that doesn't mean that life without her might not be great. You also said, she doesn't understand that you don't feel appreciated. Your therapist is going to help you figure out whether it's about something she's doing or something that's going on internally with you, Like no one could make you feel appreciated because you

don't appreciate yourself. I don't know. I don't know the answer, but I think the two of you need to talk about whether to go forward or not together. And don't be afraid of the future. Don't be afraid of change. You've been together like twenty five years. That's a successful relationship even if it culminates, So never feel like it's a failure. But people change across a lifespan. They do. Dear doctor Wendy ah, very honest, simple listener wrote this to me, my son is gay. I never would have

guessed what are the best ways to support him? You know, I was reading the New York Times writes these things called tiny love stories, and there was one from a actually a couple of years ago. I was took a deep dive into some backstuff, back pages, and this young woman said that it was so hard for her, at the age of eighteen to tell her mom that she

was gay. She said, coincidentally, her mom had always called her her rainbow child's and she was little because she thought of rainbows as happiness and pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It had always been her nickname, and her mom's reaction was sort of nothing, not positive, not negative. She really wasn't sure how her mom took it. And one time she was away at college and for her birthday, her mom sent her a huge box of

rainbow colored goldfish crackers to snack on. Don't ask me about the dies and those things, and her mom said, did you get it rainbow crackers for my rainbow child? And she said, at that moment, I knew my mother loved me deeply, no matter what. So the answer is, your son is your son, and love is love. There's no when you say how do you support him? You support him the way you would support any other child

you have. You love them, you care about them. You don't necessarily have to be intrusive about their love lives if you don't want to know, or you can say, hey, I'm supportive, I love you. I want you to choose a partner who loves you as much as I love you, and whatever whoever you are, your mine. You do you remind your kid that they are loved unconditionally, all right? Uh, Dear doctor, Wendy. I found out that a guy I was dating went through my phone. He confronted me about

someone else I am dating. I feel this is a violation. How do I tell him never to ever do this again? Or should I just leave him? We've only been dating for four months. Well, there are a few things here I want to talk about. First of all, he's testing you, right, he's testing the control things. He violated your trust, he violated your privacy. You should be very upset about that. On the other hand, you said you were dating somebody else.

I don't know if this guy who went through your phone thought he was exclusive with you, had you had the conversation. So how much is it on you that he had this perception? Now if you say, well, we just never had the conversation. So if we don't the conversation, maybe I could be dating more people. Right. So, I think what's really important with everybody out there is that when in the early stages of dating, especially once you enter a sexual relationship, is you start to be clear.

You start to be clear about you know, what the boundaries are, what the rules are, whether you're exclusive or not, whether you're public, blah blah blah, blah blah, and if you haven't done that, So let's assume. I'm just going to assume here that the two of you never had the conversation about exclusivity, and so you assumed it's okay to date other people. He went through your phone saw that indeed you were dating other people. It's a big

mess right now, Okay. I will say that this was a test to see what you could tolerate because you've only been dating in four months, and there's obviously somebody else you can be dating. I would, this is me, me and my personal opinion in my life, I would call it a red flag and leave him because if he's go I went through your phone already, later he's going to become your stalker. Like that is such a

violation and such a betrayal. So for me, I'd be like, you know what, dude, we were not exclusive, if that's true, and so you had no right to violate my privacy. So I don't think we could see each other anymore because it's only going to get worse. Trust me. Hey, when we come back, people often ask me what's a normal love life? What is typical? Right? Let me tell you what I think A normal love life is when

we come back. You are listening to the Doctor Wendy Wall Show on KFI AM six forty with Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.

And then there are other men who are carpool driving, softball throwing, baby wearing, doting dads right, and we have everything in between. We also have men and women who are complete players, not monogamous ever, not gonna happen. And other people of all genders who are completely monogamous cross a lifespan might have you know, one or two or three stints of monogamy. By the way, do you want to know how anthropologists tell how much monogamy is in

a species. They look at the size of their scrotum. Yeah, listen to this. So at one end you've got chimpanzees. Their scrotum are particularly large relative to body size. They tend to be very promiscuous, very sexual, very violent, all that testosterone. If there's a nursing mother, they practice in fantaside and kill the baby to make her fertile again, and there's a lot of rape that goes on. Crazy.

I don't want to be around chimps. And then there's like orangutans at the other end, they're like big hulking bodies, little tiny chestnuts, kind of monogamous, very paternalistic. And you know what we have with Homo sapien. That would be us. We have everything. We have the widest range of mating behavior and parenting behavior. However, culture matters. Humans have lots

of cultural variations. For instance, capitalism and patriarchy, which are cultural inventions, really favor nuclear families in capitalism and patriarchy. We don't have a group childcare, etc. We don't have subsidized childcare in the workplace. We have Mom and dad should try to do it. It's all on you. Religion might be a cultural factor. The Abrahamic religions, Judeo Christian, Muslim favor in group mating people in the parish because

they want to keep membership in their club. Also, developmental stages matter, and our developmental growth stages of individual humans has been shifting. You know, in nineteen fifty a twenty five year old man was married, had a mortgage and two kids. Today people are launching much later. But that brings other problems in relationship because fertility matters. We might be dating and marrying later, but our biological fertility windows have not shifted. And before you stop there and go

it's a women's problem. All kinds of new research is showing that if men have babies later in life, their kids have a much higher rate of autism. Lots of push on that, lots of evidence. So we are trying to use technology to deal with the fact that our biological windows have not changed. Things like egg freezing in vitro fertilization surrogacy. I want to remind you that breakups and divorce are normal, They are not failures. So what

is a somewhat typical pattern of relationship life? After I told you there's so much variety, let's talk about what's kind of typical. Well, first of all, nowadays, dating and sexual exploration in our teenage and twenties is the norm. I should tell you. As of twenty twenty two, the median age for first time marriage in the United States listen to this is thirty and a half years for

men and twenty eight point six years for women. That means, by that age, if you're out in the mating marketplace, by the age of thirty, half the men are off the market. Half the men are off the market, and the ones that are still in the market same with the women half. All right. States with the lowest median age at first time marriage Utah, of course, twenty six for men, twenty four for women, Idaho, Arkansas, and Wyoming.

Then at a certain point, people divorce. Here's another interesting stat The average age of first time divorce is thirty and a half for men and twenty nine for women. It's about the same and the average duration of that marriage is about seven years. So look what we're saying, don't get married under the age of twenty five, because

that's when you have the highest divorce rate. But the other group where divorce rates are flying up are people over the age of fifty because we're living so much longer. Fifty is the new forty, sixty is the new fifty. People are realizing they're bored in their relationships or the purpose of the relationship is over now raising kids or building a business or whatever it may be, building a household, and so we're seeing divorce is gray divorce. We call

it gray divorce increasing faster than anything. And back to mate selection. It used to be that there were only single people in their twenties, and now there are large swaths of single people across the lifespan. I mentioned to you that when till Death to Us part was invented,

death was pretty imminent. And as a result, even if you're a complete secure attacher, if you have a healthy relationships and you're very monogamous, that you still may have two or three long stints of monogamy in your life. So we have to continue to learn and hone our relationship skills about mate acquisition, mate retention, and sometimes learning

mate expulsion. This is typical. This is normal. If you believe a myth that you meet your soulmate once early in life and you're going to stay with That is the minority. Now. I know I'm going to get some talkbacks from you guys on the app and emails from using. But I met my wife and we've been married forty five years and we stayed together. Good for you, congratulations and I'm so glad you were happy, and I'm so glad it was satisfying to everybody involved. But you're not typical.

You're the minority. What is typical is two or three stints of monogamy with some mate selection or sexual exploration in between. And I want to pull everybody off the gilt train if they think that any relationship they've had has failed and hasn't failed. You're learning, you're getting better, and I'm proud of you. And that brings our show to a close. I'm always here for you at seven pm on Sunday nights here on KFI. If you miss any part of the show, it's always put up on

the iHeartRadio app. Just search doctor Wendy Walsh and keep in touch with me, go on to Instagram and follow me at d R Wendy Walsh. I'd love to hear from you. Send me some DMS. It's great to hear from everybody. I'll see you next week. You've been listening to the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show on KFI AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You've been listening

to Doctor Wendy Walsh. 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