@DrWendyWalsh is talking Doug Emhoff's previous affair (08/04) Hour 1

as couples? Let's talk about it. If you're new to my show, I have a PhD in clinical psychology, I'm a psychology professor, not a therapist, and I've written three books on relationships because I'm obsessed with the science of love. Little role call here, Raoul. How you doing tonight?

about those Brits and those investigative tabloids? They published a story and his quote says, during my marriage, Kirsten and I went through some tough times on account of my actions, I took responsibility and in the years since we worked through things as a family and have come out stronger on the other side. Now, before I give you more

details about what the tabloid said happened. Let me say this, his ex wife is a hugely successful film producer, and what she is doing right now for Doug and Kamala and even her kids is I mean, she should run for president. She has the best diplomatic skills out there. She is saying, Hey, you know, Kamala is a stepmother to my kids. We are a blended family. We are happy, and she's supporting everybody. And she has good reason to

be a little tift off at her ex husband. Supposedly, this affair he had was with one of his young daughter's teachers, and it was the discovery of this affair that resulted in the end of his first marriage. Now here's the other rumor that this woman got pregnant and did not have the baby. This woman is not answering the phone. The media are handling her, so we don't

know anything about her. Now, before you think I am sitting here high on my horse judging, I will tell you that I have had affairs in the past when I was young. In relationships, in fact, evolutionary psychologists would say that extra pair bonding is a very common thing couplehood in some ways is a social construct. We need couplehood in order to have a well running society. But in many ways we have a system of perceived monogamy. Now hang on there before you do your talk back

and send me all your rage about you've been monogamous. Great, good for you. Probably about fifty percent of people are able to stay monogamous in their relationships for however many decades it may be. But lots of other people have extra pair bonds along the way. Now, why does it hurt? It hurts because evolutionary psychologists would say, we have an inherited trait called sexual jealousy. And why do we have

this inherited trait because it protects our reproductive Four. If your partner cheats with somebody else, you could end up raising their spawn, right, and so we have sealed fertility. Women can bring home another guy's sperm. Guy doesn't even know, and all of a sudden he's giving his time, talents, and treasure to another guy's genes. So sexual jealousy is

particularly pronounced in men with women. Historically, evolutionary psychologists would say they worry about men stepping out because they worry about resources leaving the household, right, so I know a lot of you hear a lot about polyamory, and yeah, that New York Times bestseller Sex at Don We had the author on our show this idea that we're bonabos, banabos or bonobos. How do I say it? Kayla banobos, banabos, bonobos, banobos, banobosos,

Uh not Champagne. So this writer basically thinks that we're like bonobos and we have all kinds of polyamorous relationships, and we're not like chimpanzees who have aggression and all that kind of stuff. We're actually we share the same amount of DNA as both primate species, and we have the widest range of sexual behavior of any primate out there. And here's the other thing about human behavior. We can change our behavior because we have thoughts and we have

a brain. For instance, did you know what two things are most likely to influence whether a man is going to be monogamous or not? Kyle'd you know what those two things are?

way too expensive. And the other is religiosity. You think of God as a big cop in this guy, then you know you're gonna mind your p's and q's and follow the rules, right, so I want Even though there's a lot of talk in our culture about all this consensual non monogamy that is a learned behavior, what is inherited is sexual jealousy. And that's why when we hear about the VP husband who had an affair not on her, on his previous wife, were like, ugh, shocked the pain.

I'm sure his wife went through a lot of pain if she had small kids and it was with the kids. Teacher, ouch ouch ouch.

have this idea and movies have enforced the idea. We have enforced that you're going to find your soul mate, that it's all about finding this one person that will complete you and then life will be easy and you will live happily ever after.

This is how humans relate across the lifespan. Now do I believe that we should just throw in the towel anytime things get hard, expel a mate and get a new one. We have to, just like when we take in a new mate, look at our pros and cons, look at the benefits, do a cost benefit analysis of staying or leaving, and we do that on a regular basis. Now, even though humans are not necessarily wired to be monogamous, not all humans, about fifty percent of us are actually

pretty monogamous. Doesn't mean for life. This is the important thing. What's most normal for humans is kind of serial monogamy. But a good fifty percent also may have multiple pair bonds, and they may be open about that, saying I have an open relationship or I'm polyamorous. Okay, fine, good luck finding the people who participate with you and if they will and if they're doing it for the right reasons. Godspeed, enjoy.

But you know, one of the reasons why I am not a big fan of the normalizing of open relationships and polyamories because too many people who have trauma in their early lives and don't have clear boundaries get pulled into it by a partner who wants multiple partners, and I don't like that. I always want to protect people's hearts and protect their eggs and their bloodstream. However, our society has organized us around monogamy, around couplehood, and I'm

not gonna lie. It's a real thing. You probably know I've been a single mother. Yeah, I guess still a single mother until next weekend. Oh my god, I'm getting married next weekend, okay. And what I noticed as a single mother is that I was excluded from a lot of social events and social invitations. I had a village of other single moms, or even other moms whose husbands worked a lot, but I felt so lonely on Sundays because everybody would go back to their guys and I

wouldn't get invited to anything. Right, And so I know that since I've had my boyfriend now for four years, that we get different imitations. I feel how we also bring in both of our social worlds together, so immediately our contact base is huger. So let's talk about other benefits of society organizing itself around couplehood. Well, the biggest one I think for many people is just economic stability and the ability to grow economically. Let's face it, two

incomes is better than one. It literally doubles your household financial income, and you're purchasing power. Couples share their resources, so everything is half. If you only have to have one living room, one bedroom, one bathroom, it's half, right, And there's so much research to show that long term committed couples actually accumulate more wealth. So economic is a big one, But right behind it, or maybe side by side, is the social and emotional support. That's the kind of

stuff I was talking about. Well, partners provide each other emotional support and that reduces stress, and that's one of the reasons why if your relationship is healthy, people in long term committed relationships have overall better mental health. And I mentioned earlier social life. Being in a couple creates social integration. You see, two people have a much wider and stronger social network than just one person. Right, So this is good for society because it contributes to cohesion

in the community and it gives lots of support systems. Also, the other benefit to having couples in society is that you end up getting healthier kids. So until we have free childcare in every workplace, if we had kibbutz free day care and everything else, but until then, couplehood and marriage is still the best nest that we have for kids. The research is astounding. I mean, I'm a single parent

and I'm telling you I lived it. I understand the stress of having to be a provider, protector, nurturer and everything, and so worse mental health with single parents, more high risk behavior of their kids. So providing that stable environment where two people allocate all their resources into raising those kids builds a healthy support structure. I didn't even mention physical health. There's so much research to show that long term married people have lower rates of all chronic diseases.

I don't remember, but a few years ago we had a cardiologist on and he was saying that he's literally never ever known anybody to have a heart attack if they were in love. And that's sweet. You felt the hormones the neuro hormones associated with love or very protective on your heart. But yeah, better physical health also just things like you know, you got a wife around checking him for moles and you're keeping each other in check. I should say health habits are highly contagious within couples.

So if you do marry somebody with poor health habits, you know, couch potato, eating too much ice cream, before you know it, you're going to gain weight because it's really hard to eat differently and move differently living in the same house with somebody. Also, there's research to show that couples are more involved in the community, more civic engagement.

They volunteer more, they contribute their time and resources to the schools and the teams, coaching softball, etc. Also, what couples do for a society is pass on the morals, pass on the values, right, so they serve as role models for the community. And that's why we get upset when we hear like a Doug em Hoff once had an affair, because we're like, no, no, no, you might be our first husband. You have to be perfect. We like to put people give you all these purity tests.

When we're all human. Everything is just human experience right. But I think the biggest benefit, and I don't know if this is for society or for the individual, The biggest benefit of couplehood is collaborative thinking. Having two brains to solve problems, life just gets easier. I have to say.

You know, as I mentioned, I was a single mom for like eighteen years, and when I met my sweet Julio, the fact that he could finish my sentences when I wasn't lost for a word because I was forgetting the name of that actor in the movie, or come up with ways to solve problems, so well for me. Turn around and stuff is done, and I'm like, wait, I was gonna he goes ah, I saw it needed to be done and did it right. That is one hundred

percent the biggest benefit, this collaborative thinking. So we know couplehood is good for our mental health, it's good for our physical health, it's certainly good for our bank account. It's really good for our kids. But we have to be careful not to judge, because we're all still human beings, and when needs aren't being met, you know, people will say, well, I don't know, I don't know how I had that affair. It just happened. You know what, things don't just happen

if they remain if your needs remain unconscious. And that's why I'm a big proponent of course of psychotherapy, so that we can become aware of our needs and find healthy ways to get our needs met. Okay, when we come back, the internet is a twitter about Simone Bile's marriage. I'm gonna give you a timeline, break it down, tell you what the Internet is saying, tell you how she's responding. When we come back, you are listening to the Doctor

Wendy Walsh Show on KFI AM six forty. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.

in women's vault final on Saturday. This is the third gold medal she took home for the twenty twenty four Paris Olympics. Ah, She's already now has a total of ten Olympic medals, seven of them are goals now. Reminder, in twenty twenty one, during the Tokyo Olympics, no audience, no family allowed there, she suffered a case of the Twisty's, meaning she lost connection between her body and her mind and where she was going and ended up dropping out

of those Olympics. She was attacked terribly. She has overcome so much trauma in her life. She'd not only been in foster care as a small child, but also was a victim of sexual assault by team doctor Larry Nasser, who's now serving time in But while she took time off, she got married. Now, I don't want to tell you she married only her second boyfriend. Her first boyfriend was

her trainer and this is only her second one. So here's how the story goes, according to you can google it all they both say it on podcasts, etc. Is that she was right after breaking up with her boyfriend, she was swiping on a dating app called Raya. I call it the Pretty People Dating App Raya, and she sees Jonathan Owens. He's a football player. He was doing some kind of training camp or whatever in Texas. She

was in Texas. She matched with him, but then he you know, a million women probably match with high testosterone, good looking NFL players, So he didn't get back to her right away. He just went and took a shower or whatever. Meanwhile, she did her girlfriend to girlfriend research. She went online and found his Instagram, so she just sent him a DM on Instagram. All right, now, do

you know how many rules she's broken? Right now? I'm just going to say, and the story you're going to hear is what I call anecdotal evidence, meaning one example of it working doesn't mean it's going to work for.

then he was living under rock. Okay. So they got together in March of twenty twenty, right before shut down with the pandemic, so they had all the time totally. This is like Julio and I right. I mean, well, not much later, but sometimes during the pandemic. So point being, they had time where they weren't working and they could really really bond. Right. By the way, who is he? His name is Jonathan Owens. He is now a safety for the Chicago Bears. I don't know anything about football, Rowl,

do you know about football? I've ever heard of that sport? Of course, troller you there? Okay, So what is a safety is like a security guard? They keep safety for the team.

Biles finally got a contract. Anyway, he h on. Here's the big thing you should know is that they got married in April of twenty twenty three in a very small legal ceremony happens all the time, and then they did this big go on Instagram. You won't believe the beautiful pictures on his instagram. Jonathan Owens on Simon's so in Bay of twenty twenty three, they had it to die for wedding. And I just want to say, there's so I'm getting married in a little bit this weekend,

right soon, I'm getting married. And I looked at her wedding and the first thing I said to myself is, oh my goodness, she must have spent a million dollars on flowers. I've never seen so many flowers because I know how expensive it is. And then I saw her on a herder on a podcast where someone said, what was the most expensive thing in your wedding? And she said the flowers. I'm like, yeah, I could see I could see that, So go online and look at the pictures.

Are just just beautiful. So they get married in May. Now, in December, Jonathan Owens goes on a podcast it's called the Pivot Podcast I don't know's I think, where guys talk about sports whatever, and this is where he starts his little story about how he didn't know her before, he didn't know anything about gymnastics. They just met on a dating app, and then he basically suggested that she chased him and he was the catch. In fact, the interviewer even says, so are you saying you're the catch?

And he says, I always say men are the catch. Now I want to pause here for a moment. We women hold the eggs. You chase eggs. Sperm chases eggs, not the reverse. However, Owens may have this impression because he happens to be a high testosterone, high status mate, a dude with sexual prowess, with good looking genes, and also a good paycheck supposedly with the NFL. I'm sure

our paycheck's much bigger now though. Anyway, so he's but maybe because he makes less than his wife he's trying to make himself feel better, or maybe he's come up in a world where he's been a spoiled athlete and the girls have been chasing him all the time, and

he does feel like the catch, you know what. He also said on another podcast that when he met her, he'd only been in the NFL three years and he wasn't really you know, like stable there yet, and so he wasn't ready for marriage, saying that after you got married, it's like saying, you know, I might get more famous and get a better mate. I shouldn't settle anyway. The internet is so mad at him, and now they're super mad at him because after she won her Olympic gold yesterday,

there's a picture on his Instagram. Go look it up of him and her. She's hugging him and he's wearing her gold medal around his neck. People are saying he's stealing the spotlight from his wife. In fact, well, he did write something nice, okay. The post under it says, witnessing history every time you step on the mat. Congrats baby on becoming the most decorated American gymnast and Olympic history.

the air and landed without stumbling? No? All right, so Simone is not liking this, okay, even if she did chase him down, even if she does make more money. Women know a man has to feel like a king. It's just a female mating strategy. Make him feel like a star, make him feel like big man on campus. That's what we do. I mean, smart women don't compete with Smart women love their person and in fact, no matter what gender you are, we want our mate to

feel that they are valuable. So of course she's not liking that. Everybody's saying this. She want. If you want a king, ladies, then you better act like a queen. That's what I say, so she punched back. Simone posted this in a comment to a fans TikTok video. She said, crazy thing is I put my metal on every single one of my family members and took pictures. So don't

ever make assumptions like you all are. So she used the F word before the word miserable like a way to describe miserable in a particularly miserable way, and then she wrote leave us alone. So she also said on one tweet that she is going to or maybe it was on Instagram post she has just start blocking anybody who says anything bad about her marriage. Who So what

about power women and masculine men and gender roles. I think that we are in a time of life, a time in history with lots of change, and yes, some of these high testosterone men are going to learn that their job is to hold their wife's coat sometimes right, that we are there to support each other no matter what your gender. So what the Internet is saying is that he's trying to put her down publicly so that he can feel better about himself. I don't know. I

think these are two. In order to be an athlete and in order to compete at both their levels, you have to have a little bit of narcissism. I mean, did you see Noahlliles. I watched the whole What is this series on Netflix? Kayla? Did you see the one about the sprinters? Is it on Netflix? It's called Sprint? Oh well, I watched this whole series in leading up to Paris that showed the backgrounds of all the fastest runners, and that no, alliles. He really likes himself. He's really

into himself. He thinks he's the coolest thing since sliced bread. But you know, today he proved it. And what did he say right to the camera as soon as he won? I told you, he said, I told you check this out. Yeah, you know, you got to see it. But he does the tongue out thing, which what what is that? Why hang your tongue out at the camera?

impact your intimate relationships? So the question is do they take their public personality I'm talking about Simone now and Jonathan Owens into the private parts or do they have real intimacy. I love that he said congrats baby and becoming the most decorated baby we call each other baby, because an intimate relationship is I'll take care of you, you take care of me. Right. Anyway, if you want to find I think we should all lay off these two.

They're a young couple. She's twenty seven, he's twenty nine. She should bask in her glory. And if her a glory includes an NFL player on her arm, and she created that, go for it.

We can't see really who they are because we want them to be that perfect person. Of course, if you can just wait, you know. My third book was called The Thirty Day Love Detox, and the title was based on one study I found that showed that if you have sex within thirty days of meeting somebody, you got like a ninety two percent chance of being broken up within one year. If you wait as long as ninety days. No, it's a long but you can do it. Then you have a one and four chance you'll be together a

year later. Why because during those ninety days, you're building emotional intimacy, and emotional intimacy is the glue. Right. So when you're first starting to date somebody, I mean the internet is full of this. Well, red flags don't go further or green flags looks like this is a good chance. But now people are talking about yellow flags. Yellow flags don't mean dump the person, and they don't mean go

forward fast. Yellow bluff flags, it does means slow down a little bit, right, Okay, the first I'm going to talk about four yellow flags. The first one is this one verges on red flags to me. When someone describes their exes as all crazy or nightmares, Now, they could be somebody who's just unlucky in love, or maybe they have a weird attachment style that they're attracted to crazy people. You got to ask yourself, so why are you attracted to me, dude or ma'am? So somebody who has a

healthy outlook. We all have bad relationships in our past. When we describe those bad relationships, we might describe them in ways like, you know, he or she, you know, had trouble with conflict and we would get in these fights and it seemed like nothing ever got resolved. And I tried and we went to therapy. And you know, that's a description, right, instead of my ex was christ Right. It's like, oh, you're just going to put them in

a category and that's that. So if they say that, ask them more questions, Like a simple question is what do you think your piece in this was? See how they react if they get too defensive. You know, here's another big yellow flag. Your own inner circle doesn't approve. All right, your own inner circle doesn't approve. That yellow flag is kind of like slow down. You want to get to the point where you can see what they see. You want to understand where they're coming from. You want

to really spend time assessing and evaluating. Remember, waiting to have sex is not manipulating somebody. It's about giving you the space that you need to evaluate and assess. Here's another big yellow flag. You're the one asking all the questions. Oh my gosh, that's so weird. They're not even inquiring about your life and who you are. You're the one interviewing them. But they're not reciprocating it in any way.

You got to ask why. And the biggest yellow flag, which I think really morphs into a red flag if the behavior continues, is that your date is inconsistent, inconsistent with their phone calls, inconsistent with their texts, inconsistent with you know, they make a plan and then they don't follow through or they cancel it the last minute. That shows they're not able to make you a priority. Now, with all these yellow flags that I've mentioned, there's room

to talk. You might say something with the inconsistent one is I feel a little anxious when you don't text me in a consistent way. Maybe you can tell me what's the best way or best frequency or what works best for you.

know where you are. I need to sort of a locator, and he goes, oh okay, I get shoot me a text like I'm hopping on this plane, I'm going to here. And so you just tell them what your needs are and it'll be fine. But also ask your friends why they don't approve, what's really going on? What are they seeing? They can help you assess because they don't have those rose colored glasses on. Hey, when we come back, I'm

going to social media. I'm going to take your emails and your social media questions and answer some of your relationship questions. And we have some good ones tonight. You've been listening to Doctor Wendy Wallace. 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