This is Doctor Wendy Walsh and you're listening to kf I Am six forty, the Doctor Wendy wallsh Show on demand on the iHeartRadio appf I Am six forty.
You have Doctor Wendy Walsh with you.
This is the Doctor Wendy Waalsh Show. Oh my gosh. We have so much stuff coming up tonight. As you know, I have a PhD in clinical psychology. I'm a psychology professor. I've written three books on relationships and I am obsessed with the science of love.
On tonight's show.
What to say, What to say during the next argument with your partner? There are three phrases. I made them up, but they're good ones. Okay, that can actually smooth things over. Also, can long distance relationships ever really work? And do you remember that side raw walk rule where the guy's supposed to stand on the outside near the traffic on a sidewalk when you're walking down the street. Well, it's causing some controversy online because some people think it doesn't deserve
to be around anymore. We're gonna talk about that as well. I'll be answer your social media questions. If you do have a relationship question, send me a DM on my Instagram at Dr Wendy Walsh. But I have some romance news about myself. I just got off a plane today from my honeymoon, my honeymoon in Sydney, Australia, and let me tell you, I don't understand how there are two Sundays in my life this week, because on Sunday I got up and went to the beach and it was beautiful.
And then at one point thirty in the afternoon on Sunday, I got on a plane and then I landed in la at nine am on Sunday. So this is the Sunday that just won't end for me. It is very bizarre. And if I step over my words and my tongue gets a little thick, it's.
Jet leg, that's all it is. It's jetlag.
But here's what I love spending time in any other country because you always get to compare the American model of people's relationship with their country to you know, compared to America and other places. So let's break it down what I learned in Australia in the last ten days. First of all, they have a much better relationship with their food and their food industry than we do. I did not witness much obesity. The food quality was off
the charts. I found out that there are more than a thousand chemicals in our foods here in beautiful America that are not allowed. They're full on illegal in Australia, so that's kind of cool. And mostly the foods are fruit and vegetable and protein of fish, mostly seafood because we were on the coast. Although I did try Producer Kayla, I did try some kangaroo.
Sorry, I'm sorry, but how was it? You know what it was like.
In a boolonnaise sauce, So it just tasted like beef to me. But you they said you can't not try it because it's like a delicacy there, like it's like venison or deer, and apparently kangaroo there like roadkill everywhere.
I don't know. I try it too, honestly, Yeah, I try it. It was fine.
The other thing is the people there have such a good relationship with their government because when you turn on the TV, the government has public service announcements for health care, free health care or health information, free public gyms.
They're just always telling you how to be healthy.
Right.
I also found out that the minimum wage is twenty five dollars, So there are very few people living in poverty. They could manage to get through their life.
Well, think of it this way.
Not only is the minimum wage twenty five dollars, but parents get five months off for parental leaved paid their whole salary. You get subsidized childcare for when you do go back to work. Health care is completely free, including mental health services. Very few homeless people, I should add that to very few homeless people that I did see were so neat and tidy.
There was no trash around them.
They had a neat little mattress, laid out acute little they made their beds. I mean it was Honestly, I've never seen anything like it. And I also want to let you know that more men or practice PDFs, PDFs public displays of fatherhood. The men wear the babies, the men hold the babies. They're like the penguins.
You see a lot.
Of men practicing childcare. The men that we hung out with, we have friends there, and they invited friends, tended to be more open about talking about their feelings. The gender thing is less. This is masculine, this is feminine. Well, guess what turns out new Zealand was the first country in the world to give women the vote way back in eighteen ninety three, and then Australia came next at nineteen two. More than twenty different nations gave women the vote before the US.
By the way, I just want to throw that.
In, but nearly half of all members of Parliament in Australia are women, and so the gender roles tend to be a little more egalitarian, if you can say so. You know, they got this robust social welfare system I mentioned universal health care paid parentally subsidized childcare, and that helps reinforce these more equal roles between the genders. It's also I found this really interesting compulsory to vote. If you do not go to the polls to vote, you have to pay a fine.
Could you imagine if we had that here. You should have that here, We should have that here.
Everyone should have to vote. And also no one ever ever talks about politics. It's just like that one thing you do once a year and then you go back to your social life.
The people seem very happy, oh and also fit.
They're exercising everywhere. Every time you turn around. There's groups of people. In fact, yesterday well it's really today is the Sunday that won't end. So this morning Sunday, I went to the beach because our flight was delayed and I had a few more hours. And there was a group of a and it was an exercise class led by a guy with a bullhorn. But what was interesting about it is they were doing child's play. So this
group of maybe thirty adults. One of the games was four adults each holding the corner of a beach towel with a big ball in the middle like a volleyball, had to bounce it onto other people's towels and they had to carry it all the way down the beach that way, so you're running in the sand bouncing this ball.
They had remember.
Potato sack races. They had them all the way down the beach, relay races with grown ups doing them. They had this ice bag toss thing, like these people were sweating and working so hard doing this in the sand, but they were having so much fun. It was just child's play. They were just enjoying it. And even when I went to the National Art Gallery, there below the gorgeous statues of modern art in the entrance plaza, there was a guy yelling and people doing a full on
aerobics class. I mean they exercise everywhere, everywhere you go.
Probably a lot easier to doing. Your food's not poisoning you. You probably have all the energy in the.
World and their mental health is better because of it.
Yes, ma'am.
We don't mention how important nutrition is to our mental health. Not only the chemicals we're eating here, the sugar, the high carbohydrate food. There's an area of psychology founded at Harvard called nutritional psychiatry, and researchers there at Harvard have learned that you can change people's neurochemistry as easily with
diet as you can with medication, you know. And so when you see a government who says we're not going to allow these chemicals into our people's minds, We're not going to allow these bad foods because we're going to save money on health insurance, We're going to save money on sick days, we're going to save money on prisons. Even though the country started out as one big prison, I mean a lot. We did all the historic stuff too. If you want to know things to do in Sydney,
by the way, I did. I just posted on my Instagram today ten top things to do in Sydney, and if you're thinking of going, you should know this right now.
The American dollars really really, really strong. It's like thirty percent.
I mean, we used our frequent Flyer points to fly there, so we're there for free.
And then the dollar was like thirty percent more.
And they were in the middle of their summer sales because they're heading in to fall soon, so all the summer clothes were on sale, and then I also had a strong dollar. It was just amazing. So I'm just advertisement go to Sydney, you guys. If you can get through the fourteen hour flight, okay, just have a good neck pillow. That's all you need is a good neck pillow. So maybe while you're there you're going to meet somebody
and get into a long distance relationship. In fact, I did a segment on Australia's version of The Today Show nine network because I've been doing it for on and off for a decade, and I finally got to meet everybody in person. And the woman who's like the guest hostess services who walks around, she told me she met a guy from Wisconsin who was on vacation and Sydney and they had two seven hour dates. Now I did not weigh in. I did not say, you know, if
you've been listening to me, you know what. I would have said, too much, too soon, Okay, But he was on vacation and now she's planning to meet him in Hawaii halfway and it could turn into something. And so she had questions about a long distance relationship. So a lot of people are entering long distance relationships. Can they work my wisdom on this topic when we come back. You are listening to the Doctor Wendy Walls Show on KFI AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI AM six forty one thousand miles.
Really just to see him tonight.
I don't know everybody, Doctor Wendy Walsh. Here, this is the Doctor Wendy Walls Show. We're talking about long distance relationships very common now because of dating apps.
People go on and they think, well.
The problem is city, The problem is there just aren't good mates in my town. When I'm just going to tell you the problem is your relationship skills. You're saying, you know, now there are some mating marketplaces that are a little rough, like LA and New York for educated women. Just going to throw that out there, that's just a statistical fact that there are far more single educated women in LA and New York than there are single educated men.
So there's the mating marketplace is a little bit imbalanced. But for the most part, unless you're a minority, sexual minority, or ethnic minority living in a small town with very few choices of mates that you want to date, then dating outside of your town is a setup for failure. I'm just going to say it, okay, because what happens with these fantasy long distance relationships is well they're a fantasy,
is what it is. It's really important to realize that the skills it takes to have a long distance relationship are really different than the skills that it takes to have a daily face to face relationship. And also if you try to convert one to the other, that can
be problematic. You see, what a real relationship is is about the tiny, you know, problems that happen on a regular basis, when you're overtired, when you're stressed, when you've had a miscommunication, and then you learn how you can have better communication, you can learn how to have better conflict resolution. But with long distance relationships you miss a lot of those opportunities. Now, one of the questions I get asked a lot is what about this saying that
absence makes the heart grow fonder. Now, remember I talk a lot about the science of attachment, and yes, people who have who you know, think of attachment style as a scale. So people who are more on the scale of an anxious attachment style, they are in love with longing.
They love long.
Distance relationships because for them, they're in Psychologists call it the internal working model of love. I just like to say their idea of what love should feel like should be mixed up with feelings of longing and loss right, and that goes back to their early childhood, et cetera. And so even though you hear this adage, absence makes the heart grow fonder, long sustance relationships can be particularly trying, as I mentioned, because they don't involve those day to
day negotiation of boundaries or practicing communication skills. But they also have the unique element of having a convenient time lag, and that helps people avoid conflicts. So it's not real, it's not authentic. So if there's a text or a call from your partner at a time when you're just not at your best, not in the mood, you don't have to immediately take that call. Or if you're a comfortable with a question they've asked you, you can take
time to formulate your response. And so I think long distance relationships function as kind of a string of honeymoons. There's really little opportunity to test compatibility because compatibility comes in the doldrums of daily life. Now I mentioned attachment style. I bet you that people with an anxious attachment style love long distance relationships. Also, long distance relationships tend to
attract people who have an avoidant attachment style. These kind of people are happy to meet for like small pockets of love, but growing real emotional intimacy or moving in together in one city can be terrifying. Now, they don't say this right because people who have an avoidant attachment style don't have a lot of insight. They're not even aware of their own feelings. So if you have to, if you try to say things like how do you think it would feel if we live together in one apartment,
they'd go cool, it would feel cool? Because they're not even aware of their feelings, right, but inside they they do this tender dance of bringing people close, close enough to obtain sex and pockets of admiration, and then they kind of push them away.
Right.
So what's really interesting is if long disiness relationships are attractive to people who have an anxious style and people have an avoidance style. The research shows that people have an anxious style are most sexually attracted to people who have an avoidance style because they trigger them in the way that they like.
Right.
If people who are anxious or addicted to longing, they love the idea of pining away for someone, and then the avoidant person loves to be able to go into their compartment and hide away. Now, can a long distance relationship work?
Yes?
If, okay, and there is research on this. So let's talk about what the research says can help a long disiness relationship work. The first, it is frequency of contact, whether it is text, audio, phone, call, video. It's important that you talk daily and that you're in the trenches with the day to day stuff.
Right.
So if you're only talking, you know, a couple times a week and you're talking about plans for the next honeymoon. When you get together, you're not learning about each other's day to day life, right. I mean, I'm married now and my husband and I still talk probably it depends on the day, two or three times a day, however briefly. And I know if something some news happens in his day, it's usually when we're in the car, both of us going not together, but going to different places in between
our meetings or whatever. And when he starts a phone call like this, he literally goes, I go hello, and he goes.
Get this.
It just starts with get this, and he starts into a story of something that happened. Right, Because we have emotional intimacy and we share all the emotional beats of the day. I mean, we don't talk about every single detail of the day, but anything that's emotional we do so speak at least once a day. And here's where the research gets really interesting. Couples who talk about their feelings that literally grow emotional intimacy from AFAR do better
when they convert it to an in world. If all you're talking about is when you're gonna meet, where you're gonna meet, what you're gonna do to each other, whatever, that's not the same as feelings, right, tender feelings. Moments of it really hurt me. When this happened today, you wouldn't believe what happened, right, talk about feelings and the third thing according to research, so I want to speak regularly, talk about feelings, and always have a plan on the
calendar of when you'll meet next. If you leave things hanging, it increases feelings of relationship insecurity. Right, nobody knows, like when is going to happen again, it's you're committed, Okay, We're not talking about just a dating relationship. We're talking about people who are saying we are exclusive, we're in a relationship, we are trying to grow something together here. Then you have a schedule of when you're meeting, and I do want to add one other thing. Have an
exit strategy. And what I mean by that is have a timeline on it, like we're going to move in together in the same city within a year or two years or whatever, or when you finish law school or when she finishes medical school or whatever, that's when you're going to do it.
Right, So you have.
A plan and you know that there's an ending, a light at the end of the tunnel you can both look to. But let me say this, there are some red flags when a long disiness relationship isn't working. If you are just meeting for romantic fantasy trips like dinners and sex and there's no talk of a future together, that's probably a pretty big red flag. And when you do talk of a future together, if it's just some vague idea that might happen somewhere down the line, it's another red flag.
Right.
Every long distance relationship, in my opinion, should have a culmination. That's the time when you both plan to live together in the same city. So get that on the calendar, all right, when we come back. This is for anybody who's ever been a relationship, is in a relationship, is marriy divorce, whatever, if you've ever had to interact with somebody in a romantic relationship, three things to say during a fight. I made them up, but they work in
my relationship, so I want to share them. You're listening to the Doctor Wendy Walls Show and KFI AM six forty were live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI AM six forty.
AFI am six forty. You have doctor Wendy Walsh with you. This here is the Doctor Wendy Walsh show. All right.
So I have always said that relationships are far more about skill than luck, and I am living a proof that you can learn relationship skills. I didn't go to school for this, well kind of I did. I was a patient in therapy for many, many years where I practiced these skills. But also I ended up going and get a midlife master's and PhD in psychology, and every class I would take, I would be like, everybody needs to know this, They shouldn't save this for hidden information.
And I learned that at the end of the day, a couple things we need to all learn to do with each other. First of all, learn to have emotional communication. And what that means is the first step in that is just becoming aware of your own feelings. And that's hard for a lot of people because so many people were raised by well meaning parents who said, suck it up or change your attitude or whatever, and so they weren't their feelings weren't mirrored, they weren't given language for
their feelings. And a lot of if you do go to therapy for the first time. A lot of the work that therapists do is called psycho education, where they literally give you words to describe your feeling. You'll go in and talk about this happened, and that happened, and then they'll say, and you felt embarrassed or you felt blah blah blah, and they will give you language for it. So the first step of having good, healthy communication is
just become aware of your own feelings. Second step finding the language to express it to somebody else in a non defensive way.
Here's the other thing.
When people are not accustomed to setting boundaries or expressing their feelings, they do it actually in a kind of often in an angry, defensive way because they feel uncomfortable about it. So learning how to express your feelings in a healthy, honest, calm, vulnerable way is number two. But number three is having empathy, because once you become aware of your own feelings, then you can start to see
it in others. Now we do know that genetically we all have a range in our ability to have empathy. There are some people who are you know, neurodiverse, who have very very little empathy, and they have to watch for all kinds of facial cues or body language and translate it because they just don't naturally sense things. Then there are other people like me who I can feel people with in my stomach. Like if I see someone fall down and bump their head, I feel it in my head.
I mean, I really I have a lot of empathy.
But we can all learn to have a little more empathy, even if all we learn to do is to inquire, Hey, what's going on, how are you feeling, et cetera. Now, probably the most challenging thing for people when they're learning relationship skills is learning how to have healthy conflict. Many people believe that if a relationship involves lots of fights or conflict that it's a bad relationship or you guys shouldn't be together if you're fighting all the time. Well,
I will say, if you're fighting, it's never comes to resolution. Maybe, but this shows that the healthiest couples actually have a lot of conflict. Now it is not the knockdown, drag them out big arguments. It's tiny little border skirmishes all day long where they're just reinstating their boundaries. They're renegotiating their boundaries. Right, So no matter what you should know that you can be deeply in love with somebody and they can love you back, and you will still have conflict.
Everything is not supposed to be rosy all the time. Relationships are a gymnasium for your mind, and you don't go to the gym and just watch. You have to push on the machines and have a little bit of resistance, right, And that's what happens during conflict. So I've come up with three things that I would like you to write them down.
Okay, just write them down.
The three simple phrases that if you can say when you're in the middle of an argument, it will make things easier. So the first one is I imagine that.
I imagine that.
Now, what this is you getting to explain your feelings. But using the word imagine is important because you know there's not one truth in the room, So you get to explain your feelings through a story that you have made up about the situation. For example, you know when you forgot about our dinner plans, I imagined that I was going to die alone.
And you would never come there. You would forget to come to my sickabad.
Now this can often turn into comedy, which is great if your imaginings and your fantasies are just outrageous. But the more infantile you can make them, the more deep and tender you can make them. What are you really? What are the feelings really saying that this person did something that hurt you? But it's not oh, you hurt me, it's oh, I imagined that you would hurt me forever, or you would leave me forever or whatever. All right, I imagine that?
All right?
Now, So that first one gets you in touch with your deepest feelings and helps both of you understand that all conflicts are infantile in some way. But the important and tone is really important. Right. You don't want to sound defensive or angry. You much just want to softly say, you know when you did that or you said that. I imagine that?
All right?
Number two, ask a question, and here's my favorite question when there's conflict, How should we solve this?
Now?
Listen to this how should we solve this? When someone hears the word how, it takes them out of their emotional brain, their ancient emotional brain, and takes them into their prefrontal cortex, and they go from emotions into problem solving mode and listen to this how should we solve this? All of a sudden, the word we is in there. It's not you need to do this to fix this, or it's not my fault, it's how should we solve this? So now there's collaboration, Now there's cooperation, how should we?
And it's a question that how. Now it becomes a math problem? Right, So if you can somehow take emotional defensiveness and transform it into kind of a math problem or a Rubric's que to be tinkered with, and make sure that you add we, because that makes the problem a joint problem and it implies that no one's to blame, right, that both partners can now be part of the solution.
But I do want to say, watch your body language, all right, If you're going to sit there with your arms crossed your chest or on your hips and go so, how should we solve this? It sounds very sarcastic. Okay, get gentle, Maybe touch your partner's arm and just say, hey, I understand what you're experiencing.
How should we solve this?
Right?
Looking for the resolution? All right?
The third thing that I think you should say when you're in an argument is I love the way you. And here's what this is about. Make that communication, sandwich. Start out with something loving so that it lowers somebody's defenses.
Right.
You always begin a criticism with a compliment, and that enables them to hear what you're saying. So after you spread that layer of love, then a layer of something that's a little harder to chew on, so there's the ensuing criticism, and then follow it up with another compliment, another layer of love. So it might be something like, Honey, one of the reasons I fell in love with you is I just love your ambition and how hard you work, and I really appreciate what a great provider you are.
But I noticed you're missing a lot of the kids' sports games. And we all love you and we love to show you off, and we'd love to see you there more often.
Now.
Isn't that different from saying when is the last time you drove to this practice?
Right?
Because now you're keeping score and you're counting, right, So remember that communication, sandwich, I love the way you. That's how you should begin any criticism.
Got it.
How should we solve this? That's another good one too, all right, when we come back, remember that old fashioned sidewalk rule where the man walks close to the street and the women walk on the inside. Well, apparently there's controversy about it. Let's break it down when we come back. You're listening to the Doctor Wendy Walls Show on KFI AM six forty Live Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI AM six forty.
You know, one of the things I get asked about a lot are what I call gendered courtship behaviors, things like should a guy open a car door for a woman? Should a guy pull out her seat at the restaurant? Should a guy open a door? Is it demeaning to women? Does it make women look like they are somehow? And my answer generally is about whatever's most practical makes the most sense. For instance, one time I dated a guy and he had this thing where he had to be
allowed to be the man. So when he would pull in and park, he would literally say, don't touch that door till I get there. That didn't feel good. It felt like control, not a gesture of let me help you. The other thing is car seemed to have gotten bigger and bigger and bigger, and sometimes I'm measured at once. To walk fourteen feet around an suv to get to the other side seems pretty unpractical when she could jump out anyway and be there by your side after a
few steps. So no pressure to open car doors is my feeling, except maybe when you're getting into the car. Right when you're first walking up to the car together, he might go, why does she roll your eyes? Producer, Kayla, you don't think a guy should ever open a car.
Door for well, no, I definitely do. I was thinking about some thing, but.
Oh, somebody who didn't do it for you? One time she goes right into her red flag. She's like, oh, yeah, that guy went out with last night. He had me stumbling into the car opening my own door. Yeah. Then there's the pulling out the chair. I think it's a lovely gesture.
I do.
It makes me feel special.
And then there's the standing the men stand when the woman need to get up from the table. That's a little bit formal and a little bit wild. But the one thing I've been asked about a lot lately by journalists actually, and they're talking about it like crazy on TikTok and Instagram debating going back and forth. Is something called the sidewalk rule. It's that old fashioned sidewalk rule.
It's still widely practiced today all over the world. I think it's just American, even though the conditions that invented the rule are long gone.
So here's what the sidewalk rule is.
It's basically a social expectation that when a heterosexual couple walked together on a sidewalk, the man should walk on the outside near the traffic and the woman should walk on the inside near the buildings. Right, I'm really amazed that there's so much controversy controversy about this, really, so some people are on social media are saying this is wonderful, chivalry isn't dead. And other people are saying, oh, it's sexist,
it's demeaning. We don't need protection. Right, all right, let me just break down some pieces of this sidewalk rule so we can understand it. I call it a simple gendered behavior. But there are three sides of the story. Let's begin with history. So folklore has it that the practice of men walking on the outside of the sidewalk began back in medieval times and maybe even earlier, and At that time, there were only horse drawn carriages. There
was no pavement on the streets. There were physical dangers of things like carriages careening out of control pulled by wild horses. Men were expected to be at the ready to protect a woman by putting themselves between a lady and any danger. And the second had to do with cleanliness. I mean, think about it. Picture this cobblestone streets, poor drainage, mudern animal waste, some pretty unsanitary conditions. And did you
know this, I hate to go there. Before indoor plumbing, people dumped their buckets of human waste right in the street. Oh yeah, it didn't smell lovely back then. Just saying talk about biohazards, okay.
And also picture this.
Women were wearing those long dresses and dainty little ankle boots.
Right.
Obviously, it's understandable why the sidewalk rule had to be around, very practical. So I'm going to throw in a little science behind this sidewalk rule. There's been so much research to support the idea that most men have a higher threshold for disgust. The feeling of disgust women will sense it earlier. Many men, not all, many men are more willing to do the dirty jobs in life, and many women, not all, become nauseous.
At the thought of it.
So evolutionary psychologists say that this inherited trait is related to the fact that men had to do a lot of dirty jobs hunting, cleaning, skinning, butchering animals. Not that there weren't women hunters, and not that women don't do it today, but in our hunter gatherer past, when the infant mortality rate was very, very high, women had to
protect those infants from biological pathogens germs. So women today are particularly sensitive to feelings of disgust, right, another reason why they want to stay away from those nasty streets of the past. I know you're saying, but in today's time and doesn't matter, right, So in today's times, I don't think any guy could prevent any woman from a careening suv coming out or at sixty miles an hour. Okay, so that's gone. And also supposedly we have good street
cleaning equipment. The rule just seems super unfashioned, right. But I think what's going on online, the conversations that are happening have to do with the gender role police that.
Are out there.
There is this idea that gender is one hundred percent of cultural construct. Actually it's a biopsychosocial phenomenon like every other human thing. But they think that if a guy is kind, that somehow they are insulting a woman, that somehow they're saying this woman needs protection, that this woman is needy, is vulnerable, is weak, We need to help her, she can't stand near the cars. I call those the
side woke rule folks. Right, if they're ignoring the research that shows that the vast majority of men are clearly stronger than the vast majority of women. Okay, exceptions, Selena Williams, Uh, Serena Williams, I mean pee wee herman, right? Uh? But also think about this human mating strategy involves sacrificing, sacrificing for somebody else. Relationships are an exchange of care. So there are some gestures that just send the message that
a partner is willing to offer care. So these male gendered behaviors like opening a door for a woman's sliding at her chair, I think should be interpreted not as a message that women are feeble, but that women are prized and women are valued. I think this demonstrates care and respect. And I think this is sexy. So if you're a dude and you're listening, stand on the street side. My Julio does always do you guys do that stand on the outside.
Yeah, it's a right flag. If they don't, oh, don't go.
She does not go out with them again. All right, let's go to break. You're listening to the Doctor Wendy Walls 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.