@DrWendyWalsh is offering her Wendy wisdom with her drive by makeshift relationship advice. (09/01) Hour 2

A reminder, I'm not a therapist. I'm a psychology professor, but I've written three books on relationships and did a dissertation on attachment theory. And I'm a woman of a certain age who's had every kind of relationship possible. So I've got some life wisdom for you. Okay, let's get to it. Dear Doctor Wendy says this one. I like this question. What are the best questions to ask when trying to get to know someone on a serious level?

You know what you want to ask, questions where they get to be real, authentic, vulnerable, And my favorite set of questions you can find them online. There's even an app for it. Is called thirty six questions to fall in love. These were developed by a psychologist who tested them on couples and found that after answering these thirty six questions, and it takes about ninety minutes to get

through it a nice long first date. Couples reported feelings of love for each other and they start light and then they get a little deeper, and some of them are funny, and so look it up. Thirty six questions to fall in love so you can get to the real stuff instead of just some What movies do you like? What music do you listen to? That's not going to hold you in the long run? Okay, dear doctor Wendy, I took the advice of building a friendship with a

man before it gets romantic. He became my best friend, and then we got romantic and it didn't work out. I'm struggling to be his friend.

Can you be friends with someone you love so deeply? So when you use the words someone you love so deeply, it feels like what's happened here is unrequited love on your side, that you do love this person and he did not love you back. I would say, I'm sorry. It's going to be hard to transition that into a friendship in the short term because it's going to keep bringing up these feelings every time you see him and

talk to him. So sadly, you're going to have to go no contact for a while until you heal yourself and start seeing somebody else. Dear doctor Wendy, I fell for this man who is bipolar. I like to not give diagnoses. A full on character identity is by Paul Howbot has a diagnosis of bipolar personality. Okay, he's been a blessing and then a burden. I love when he's supportive, kind and caring, and then I want to run for

the hills when he's spiraling and manic. We were once married Woo while I was caring for my mom who was suffering from Parkinson's Woo. It was a lot and it was pulling me apart. He has refused medical help and says God will get me through my condition. I know that's positive and a good way to start, but I'm struggling. Thank you in advance for your guidance and support. Well, you don't have to, you know, I think everybody deserves love,

even those who suffer from mental illness or personality disorders. However, if the symptoms of his disorder are hurting you and hurting your relationship, and by the way, you have every right to say, listen when you are spiraling, when your manic, call me when you're out of it. And I know it can be days, it can be weeks, it could be months, but you can set up a boundary that says, I'm not going to be around when you're like this. I love you, but this is hurting me too much.

You could try that first. And the other thing is you could insist that he become medicated, get on medication that makes him more functional, because why are you hurting yourself? That's what I want to know, why have you given yourself permission to be hurt this way? That's what I say. Start with the boundaries, Dear doctor Wendy. Why do men work for years? I love it? Why do men like all men? Every single one? Generalize? Right there, I've about why do some men or one man that I met?

But let's continue. I digress. Why do men work for years to get you? But when you give them a chance, all that effort goes out the window. All right, this you can put any gender on. I want you to remember that relationships have various stages, and they should not feel like a courtship or a honeymoon for years and years and years. Of course, people of all genders are

going to try a little harder at the beginning. Now, if you've noticed that this person who you are now in a committed relationship with is really doing nothing to nurture the relationship, then this is an opportunity to have a conversation about that. Right Even Julio will say to me sometimes, are we getting into a rut? Are things getting a little boring? Do we need to add some novelty? And novelty may mean just going to do something different

together finding something else to do. Right, So, I think it's an opportunity for you guys to have a conversation about Hey, I noticed that things are getting a little boring for me, and it doesn't seem like we're going out like, be very specific about the things you want. This effort that he was making, what was in that effort? Was he dressing better? Was he showering more? Was he taking you out places? Give a laundry list of the stuff you're missing, and then say I'd like to do

more of that and see what happens. Right, Okay, I've got more for you when we come back. If you would like to send me a DM. If you've noticed I keep your identity completely confidential. All you do is send me a DM. Instagram is the place you check the most, isn't it, Kayla? Right, So you send it to at doctor Wendy Walsh. That's at Dr Wendy Walsh. Some of you go on my website and send me an email. Fine, you know, I forward it to Kayla

and she gets it on our list. I'm happy to weigh in on your love life, all right when we come back. Oh, the whole problem with nice guys and bad boys. I used to have that problem. You're listening to the Doctor Wendy Wall Show on KFI six forty with Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.

a preacher to the choir. I went through decades and decades of this as a young woman, and I was so frustrated. Evolutionary psychologists might say that we are naturally triggered to go for guys who are taller, more muscular, have deeper voices, have access to more resources, and those particular men tend to become bad boys. If you'll want frequent, short term relationships because they can because so many women

are attracted to them. And then there are these nice guys who will do anything for you, and you're not as excited by them. For me, I have to tell you it took many, many years working with a therapist. Also, the healing relationship of my healthy attachment with my children. It caused me to realize my value, to feel that

I deserved good treatment. You see, we all have this unconscious, silent attachment style, and I think I had what you would call an anxious ambivalent attachment style, meaning the bad boys if they were, you know, treating me badly or pushing away and I was chasing them, there would be that anxiety, right, I'd be anxious for them to call to get together. I'd try to please them as much as possible, and then there would be the nice guy showing up, and I'd be very ambivalent about being loved,

and I would push them away. I don't know, maybe I would say, like, after twenty years of single motherhood, and I do not wish this on you. When I met a guy who's now my husband and he was actually kind and giving and loving, I was like, oh, I deserve this. I've worked hard for this, and I got to my state of readiness to be able to take in a nice guy, so it is an inside job.

I do suggest you work with a therapist on this, because there could be a lot of things going on, and it took me a long time to get over it. And now when I see those bad boys out of the world, or the old bad boys from the past, when they come cruising by again, because they seem to keep coming around, I just laugh. I find a comical their whole game. It just doesn't doesn't turn me on anymore. All right, Moving on, Dear doctor Wendy, how long do I play hard to get? I want this guy bad,

but I don't want to lose my power in the situation. Oooo. Well, the answer is, you're not supposed to be playing hard to get as a manipulation tactic. You're supposed to be taking the time you need to assess them as a

possible mate. And if they are showing up, if they are being honest, if they are doing what they say they're going to do, their actions are matching their words, if they're opening up and becoming emotionally vulnerable, then he's probably ready for you to have a relationship and go to that next step. But if all you're doing is withholding sex from him to drive him crazy, that's not building a relationship. It's also not assessing who he really is because he's gonna be acting like the best made

in the world because he's playing that same game. So I would say, do your full assessment, don't play hard to get just see take the time that you need to analyze the relationship. All right, Dear doctor Wendy, my date has been going above and beyond. Well, that's good. He gives me calls, calls daily, dates me weekly, But he won't move forward. We've been doing this dance for three months. I speculate that he still loves the mother of his children, Da Da Da Da. He denies it

when I ask him about it. Is there another way to find out? Well, first of all, you're focusing on the wrong thing instead of saying, like, dude, are you really into her and not me? You sure look insecure. You do not look like you have won this game. I would say, be very clear about what your needs are. What are your needs? Say move forward? How How is he going to move forward? Having dinner in sex once a week is not a relationship, by the way, even if there is a text and phone call every day,

It's all about the intimacy. What are you talking about? Is he opening up? Are you opening up? Are you leading the way with vulnerability and your feelings? The quality is much more important than the frequency. So let's talk about the frequency of contact, even if it's an everyday text or call. If you guys aren't really deepening things and getting closer, I wouldn't focus on the X. I would focus on what's going on with the two of you. Oh here's a good one. Ooh, ooh ooh. Dear doctor Wendy,

my wife no longer turns me on sexually. Oh I'm sorry, it's her job to turn you on. Okay, so I digress. Dear doctor Wendy, my wife no longer turns me on sexually. It's been years since I have been sexually attracted to her. Is this normal? Will my sexual attraction ever come back? Okay? I am quoting friends of mine who are working as sex therapists. Sex isn't something that spontaneously happens. It's not like, oh, this person turns me on, because all they're doing is

standing there and that's all they need to do. Sex is an inside job and it takes place in your head. I would highly suggest that the two of you go see a license sex therapist so you can learn better sexual communication. You can learn better sex things different, a more wider variety. Sometimes just taking it to a different room, like a hotel room with a candle can change things. But you've got to do the work. Sexual attraction comes from inside your own head. It doesn't come from outside you.

Everybody of all genders listen to me on this. It's our own fantasy in our head, and we need to work that muscle. It's not some spontaneous thing that just happens, So please please, You and your wife could do so much better just going to see a license sex therapist and learning how to play the game. I have time for one more real quick because I think this comes up a lot. Dear doctor Wendy, what does I need my space really mean? It means they're trying to break

up with you. I'm sorry, that's what it means. Nobody who wants to move forward and grow closer says I need my space, right So they'd like to keep you around for sex and dinner once in a while, but no, no, no. Just if someone says I need my space, say enjoy it and then move along. That's all you need to do, all right? When we come back, where are we going after this? Producer Kayla, Oh, this is a good one

because a lot of people. Earlier I talked about happiness, but now I want to talk about taking the high road, being an optimist, being classy, not and sometimes the high road is being just gently a little bit best aggressive but not really, not really. I'll explain because I am that I always take the high road, and I'm going to tell you how to do it where you're not

sacrificing your true feelings. When we come back, you are listening to the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show on KFI AM six forty were live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.

In other words, we're cooperative thinkers. So we do have to engage with each other, whether it's in families, whether it's in workplaces, whether it's in friend groups. And every once in a while there's going to be somebody who gets under your skin, who drives you crazy, and it can be really tempting to take the bait and go down into the swamp with them. It's happened to me, And I'm pretty emotionally mature. I like to think of

myself as emotionally mature, but it's happened to me. Taking the high road is very, very difficult because on some level, you want to prove that you're right. Kayla. Have you ever had a situation where someone totally triggered you and you ended up saying or doing things that you didn't mean to?

know what they're doing. They're bumbling around the dark and human relationships and they don't know. And so I remember reading that book the Four Agreements way back when, and I think agreement number one was take nothing personally. It's

always about them, always right. And you know, when I learned in therapy school, I had a supervisor who used to say that I should often like one intervention that therapists could ask patients is who taught you that, because it immediately takes it out of a dynamic between you and the person who's insulting you, and instead goes to a third person who could be to blame. So the two of you could almost collude because let's say somebody said something insulting to me. Okay, it's happened, and it

was at a dinner table, and it was front of people. Okay, I said something that is used in common is a word, okay, and it's used in common language, but I can't say it on the radio. Well it is mohab Nope, what it's a sexual act that women perform on men.

kind of laughed. But all I thought in my head is this poor woman probably had a critical mother who really slammed her at the table, and of course I didn't want to get into therapy in front of all the other people, and so I didn't say, who taught you to admonish people at the dinner table? Was that your mom? I didn't go there. Okay, As another friend said to me the other day, why is that word a problem? It's a job? Why devalue women's work? Anyway? I let it go. I took the high road. But

what did I use to take the high road? Compassion? Compassion is the best way to take the high road. When somebody quote unquote triggers you or says something that offends you or hurts you in some way, you always need to ask yourself who taught them that? Or why are they afraid of me? Why are they intimidated by me? Because it's always ultimately about them. It's also really important that you do the work of getting rid of your

tender spots. And that's one of the reasons I'm always preaching people need to go see a licensed therapist, because when we walk around with all these vulnerable tender spots, and anybody with any slight, whether it's you know, road rage, they cut you off on the freeway or they you know breast past you at the line of Trader Joe's whatever if they If somebody feels like they're insulting you when they're just busily going about their day, you have

too many tender spots and healing needs to take place. You need to recognize they're not doing anything deliberate to you. Right, you can become more resilient in the face of triggers. My favorite metaphor for triggers is let's say you're driving along and you see the person in front of you take a lit cigarette and throw it out the window of their moving car. Well, what happens. It depends on where it lands. If it lands on a field of

dry grass, you're going to be in trouble. Right, If it lands in a puddle, you're not going to have a problem. And so when people lob their little insults at you, are you a field of dry grass or are you a soothing serene a puddle, We'll just put it out right, let it go. Okay. So, if you've got family members who are making judgmental comments, you've got co workers who seem a little rude, I want you to be concerned about their welfare. I want you to stop and think, why are they threatened by me?

I have been studying, researching, reading about writing about the science of love for about three decades now, partly to solve my own love life problems. Now that's done, I'm married. It all worked. I took my own advice that the other day I was trying to explain my quote unquote brand to somebody and he immediately said, well, I had two daughters. They're in their early thirties. They're having such

a hard time meeting guys. And I thought to myself, Oh, they don't know about the high supply sexual economy that we're in. So, in case you haven't heard me say this before, because I haven't talked about it in a while, it's all in my book, The Thirty Day Love Detoks. I want to break it down a little bit. So let's go back to when patriarchy reigned. Men held the resources women in order to survive. During patriarchy basically had two choices. The thing that was most profitable to them

was their vagina. So they could either withhold sex and get a guy to sign on the dotted line in a contract called marriage, or they could rent it by the hour and become a prostitute. It's really interesting now that we're in a high supply sexual economy, there are fewer and fewer prostitutes. There's just not a market for it because guys can just go on tender and just swipe away. I believe that they are.

women to help assess guys. Guys had to work very hard to get a woman to copulate with them, et cetera. And then when we became farmers, women were separated from their female tribe except if it was like a knitting circle or a quilting bee, and they were on one plot of land with one dude and a few tools, and they were quarantined in some ways. That gave way

to the barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen model. Right then we got the Industrial Revolution, where again women were excluded except from the lower work, working in laundry houses or whatever. A prostitution. I think the height of prostitution in Europe was in Victorian England. At that time there were an estimated one prostitute for every twelve men in

the population. I mean that it was a full time job for a lot of women, right, because you are either going to go in the convent, you were going to get married, and who knows what happened in that could happen in that marriage, he had full control to beat the heck out of you if it, or work as a prostitute. So some people say the feminists, the free women, were the prostitutes. Right, those were the choices.

Right fast forward we enter the information age. Now, in the information age, women are far more suited to extract resources from the environment. We are better typers and texters and talkers, and we're more socially sensitive. So as a result, in the last few decades, women have been surging ahead, not only in education but also economically. For every two men that graduate college, there are three women. We passed a milestone a few years ago where women actually make

up the majority of the workforce. I think we're at about twenty five percent stay at home dads now. I mean like the gender roles are changing now. Having said that, women still have inside their crazy little patriarchy heads leftover remnants of what was before, so they think sometimes in traditional gender roles. And there's actually been research to show that the more education a woman has, the more money she makes, the more she wants a dude to have

even more. She's going to be attracted to that prince in the castle who has a bigger paycheck and more education and a little bit older.

all the free sects that's available. Because when women rise in economic power, they put sex out into the economy in a high supply. They no longer need to withhold sex or stop enjoying their body in order to get a guy to marry them, or rented by the hour or what have you. So instead they just enjoy the pleasures of their body and they put it out there. Well, once it's out there, the guys at the top who can get a lot of it are happy to just

take it and not settle down. And meanwhile, you've got their peer women of around the same age, in their early to mid thirties with all their education, thinking that those are the dudes who should marry them. Meanwhile, you got the in cells at one end who can't find a date because they don't have a job and they're living in their mom's basement. And then you have a lot of hard working, good guys who would be wonderful

partners for a woman. They might not make as much money as her, they might have learned that the old fashioned gender roles were all so unfair to men, and they're happy to do some laundry and help out in childcare. I've been saying to women for a long time that your idea of a power guy might just be a guy who can power a stroller. We need to get patriarchy out of our heads. We need to recognize that biologically,

not a lot has changed. I know women are using technology, freezing their eggs, all that stuff, right, but we need to stop and say what do I value? What kind of relationship does my heart need? Not what we need on paper, etc. When I talk about the science of love, I talk about the biological realities our own attachment style, are fertility windows or not? I talk about the sociological piece. You know, what our society says is right for us? Who looks good on paper in a dating app and

psychologe what love is and what it feels like. It is complicated, and it is so fascinating to me. I will continue to talk about the science of love as long as I'm on this planet, because nothing interests me more. Is there any little bit of advice I could tell you women who are in your early to mid thirties and are chasing after all those alpha guys who aren't ready to make a commitment. Look to your right and left. There are lots of peer men. They're at your workplaces,

they're everywhere. They may not make as much money, but they are really really good guys, and they're going to enhance your life in a big way. And that that little soapbox I got up on brings the Doctor Wendy Wall Show to a close. I am here every Sunday from seven to nine pm for you. It is always my pleasure to weigh in on your love lives. You've been listening The Doctor Wendywall 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 A M six forty from seven to nine p m on Sunday and any time on demand on the iHeartRadio app.