Thursday Therapy: Making Love a Priority

Published Jul 25, 2024, 7:00 PM

Jana is learning to let love win when she talks to Dr. Wendy Walsh about how to improve a relationship!

Dr. Walsh helps us understand why affairs happen in marriages, why women fall in love through sex… and men don’t, and why getting married won’t change your relationship!
 
Plus, hear why journaling might be the best thing for your relationship.

Wind Down with Janet Kramer and I'm Heart Radio podcast.

This week's Thursday Therapy, We've got doctor Wendy Walshan. She is a relationship expert. She has a radio show on iHeartRadio, the Doctor Wendy Wall Show, which she's a leader on relationships and the authority on love, sex and romantic relationships.

Let's get her on. Hello, Hi, how are you good? Good? Good to see you? You didn't good?

Nice to see. Have I been on this podcast before you have?

I believe it was a while ago.

It looks like three times, so I mean you've been on the journey and now I'm I'm remarried.

So yeah, she's getting married August ninth.

Oh my yay.

I was a good ningle mom for eighteen years and just said, I'm going to give my kids the most expensive thing I have, which is my time, and I'll have time for dating until I get them launched. And I won the single mother lottery. My kid got into Harvard. Yeah, they're all launched now. Yesterday, my youngest one, she has all kinds of learning differences, so this is actually more exciting than my Harvard grat Yesterday, she passed the California board state license for esthetician.

Oh that's amazing.

So I'm like, now I'm like, let's get this girl into a spa and a job. I'm getting married and I'm out of here.

That's amazing, And yeah, I mean that's actually we'll just jump right into it with that first. You know, first thing is, I feel like there's so many people who reach out to me that say, you know, I just and I felt the same way, like when I got divorced, it was like, Okay, I'm going to be alone forever. No one's going to love me, no one's going to want me. And you know, just a couple of years later, I met the love of my life. And and but a lot of people when you're in that state, like you don't think it's going to happen for you. And there's people that have been you know, my mom, she was single for twenty plus years post my dad's you know, post their divorce, and you know, you then you hear you know, your story about your about to get married after eighteen years of you know, being a single mom, and it's like that I want to give that hope to the people out there because it feels so hopeless when you're in that situation, and I'm like, but it can happen tomorrow. You can meet your person tomorrow, like you just.

Well, I will say this, Do you know how you fall in love? You make it your priority. I didn't just happen to meet my guy after eighteen years. I went on bumble. I knew for a specific type. I wanted somebody around my age who was ready retirement, who had kids around the same age, and I only dated that type. And I was on a mission to find my kick ass last third of my life relationship. I also think that when you talk about this hopeless feeling, is that a lot of people have agism floating around their head, or ideas about who would love somebody who had four kids, or who would love somebody who's old. I want to remind everyone that the data doesn't support this fear that peers stay attract it to peers across the lifespan, except for a small minority who get all the media attention, a few men who date much younger women, a few women who are cougars and date much younger men. The truth is most people want to date somebody who has the same references as they do, So you know there there is. And the other thing is that we're not in the nineteen sixties or seventies, where oh, how do you find somebody? If you're in your fifties, there's there's a dating pool, a mating marketplace in every age group across the lifespan.

Right, yeah, I mean, and just like to your point, it's like, Okay, you attracted what you wanted and I have you know, a few friends where I'm like like, well, it's just so hard to meet people. And that does make sense, especially in the age of apps and everything, and if you don't want to go out, but you know you got to weed through the apps if you want to meet someone.

Yeah, now it's an insurance test. It's not like, oh, nobody in my mating marketplace. It's there's too many people and how I discern. And that's when it comes down to your own attachment style, the healing work you've done with a therapist so that you can choose a healthy relationship for yourself. Our relationships are a reflection of how we feel about ourselves, and we give people permission to treat us badly.

Yeah, I mean, that's what we also think we might deserve. Like you know kind of like, but yeah, yeah, I think we deserve one thousand percent. What is the number one question that you could ask as a relationship expert.

When to begin having sex in a new relationship. Really, I under present the most common question because we're in a time of such sexual freedom and women can own their own orgasm and go out and shop for a penis whenever they want.

And twenty percent off if they use my coat I'm getting.

And then they get upset when this man who they sent all the signals to that this is a short term relationship, then they get upset that he doesn't want long term relationship. And I want to preface what I'm about to say to you with this sexual orientation is fluid and it is a giant scale. There's no one right way to form bond and be a couple. Just want to say that. But now let me talk to heterosexual women who want to attract a heterosexual man for long term commitment. Let's just talk about that narrow group. If you have sex too quickly, it tells him that he can't trust you. You see, men don't fall in love through sex. They can have sex with the same woman every week for six months, and not like any bit better than they did on that first night. Hook Cup. Women fall in love through sex. The more often they have sex with the same guy, the more their bodies emit so much oxytocin that they end up falling in love with a loser, sometimes just because he happens to be good to bet And so men fall in love through trust. They want to know who has their back. They want to know who's going to be loyal to them. They want to know who's going to protect them. And when you have sex with them too early, they don't trust you because they immediately think she's doing that with all the guys.

Then, so what would be then the timeline that you give people.

So there isn't a timeline. The timeline is this, have sex when you have trust, and how you have trusty watch them sacrifice for you. You know, a woman called into my radio show the other day and she says she finally met a great guy. He's such a good communicator, and he's about five years younger, but she didn't want to go younger. But he's great and everything's wonderful, except there's one thing that after they have any kind of little rupture, he does the silent treatment and doesn't talk to her for a few days, which is a big problem. I mean, according to the preacher of the Got Means up at the Marriage Lab at the University of Washington, the silent treatment is the worst thing you can do in a relationship. But anyway, I said to her, well, what's this current thing? And she said, well, I was feeling under the weather. But we've been invited to a barbecue at a friends in his house and we've only been dating three months, so I wanted to meet his friends and put on a good show. I said him on the way in, can we have a code word if I'm not feeling well and I need to leave? And he said, why don't you just text me? Text me like they're not staying together? Okay, so she said. She managed to say for three hours, and then she said him a text saying I'm ready to go, and he texted back at a party, how about forty five more minutes? And I said to her, you have your answer. This guy doesn't care about your needs. He's not going to take care of you when you're on your deathbed and you're sick. Is he going to be there for you? Is it going to be out golfing like Lally, she gave it her all. Three hours is a long time when you're not feeling well to go and entertain with his friends. Use that time to see if they sacrifice to see and there by the way, they're investigating us too. When a guy goes on a first date, all he's thinking in the back of his head is am I going to meet my wife tonight? Or am I going to get laid? And if he gets laid, you're off wify material. So he is investigating to see if you're going to be a good mate for him. But women spend too much time trying to get him to like them instead of investigating whether he's worth sacrificing form No.

One thousand percent.

I mean it's yeah, it's just so hard because you think that that's what the guy wants, but really it's.

Oh he wants it, Yeah, he wants it. He will put full core press to obtain sex because he's biologically wired that way. But he loves and respects and falls in love with the woman who takes her time and says I love it, and you can even say things, you can do it in a sexy, non prudish way, honey, I love sex, and I can't wait until we're close enough that we have a bond build that I can just you know, ride you. It's going to be fun. You can say whatever you want, whatever you want. And by the way, when they start to call you a cock t's which they love to do in high school and college, you just say no, no, no, I just respect my body and I take him to time. Right. You can sit with confidence and they respect that.

Yeah, gosh, I wish I could go back to like my twenties and not you know, do that's like, Oh, I hope I can teach my daughter when she's older, you know that to to just I think I just didn't respect myself enough, you know, and I just wanted to please the man so much.

Yeah, I want to do that.

To just show up with estrogen and eggs. You're worthy, Your value is there. You don't need to do anything. You just need to let him see how he sacrifices.

For so a lot of couples on that listen to the show have been you know, we this podcast was you know about you know, affairs and trying to rebuild a marriage. Do you think rebuilding a marriage is like how do people get that trust back? Because it's so hard for me to answer that because I'm like, well, it didn't end well for us, Like I have my answers to how you know, I think if someone keeps showing up and doing what they say say, that is how trust is built. But I know now that if something were to ever happen in my you know, new marriage, like I personally can't walk through that level of dishonesty and distrust again, like because I know what it does tip to myself, you know, So I guess you know, what do you say to couples that have been through or that are going through levels of betrayal in their relationship That.

It's going to take a long time, that feelings of anger will wax and wane, and that I think we should reframe this idea of rebuilding a marriage and instead say the marriage has been destroyed. We can create a new marriage with the same partner. Now, it won't work if the partner doesn't want to do the work, if they are the one who remember, affairs tend to be a symptom of a problem in the relationship. Now, this isn't to say let's blame the woman here, because he cheated. It is basically saying the relationship itself had an unfulfilled need for one of the partners, whether it was emotional, sexual, just the attention. There's been research on cheating men and most of them said, well, my wife didn't listen to me anymore, and this woman listened to me talk. It wasn't even about the sex. But building a new marriage with a familiar partner means going to regular therapy and maybe individual therapy separately and couples therapy. It may be redefining certain things and understanding your needs, and it will take time, but it is possible. An affair does not have to be the end. However, I do want to say that for many couples who are quote unquote afraid to break up, they have an affair as a way to do it. That's how guys. I was actually on a set the other day and it was an all male crew and we were doing some relationship videos and I did one on how men break up, and I said to the crew, how do you guys break up? And they all go, you just start dating someone else, like you don't need to even tell them. It's too stressful.

My god, what's been a relationship topic that or question that has kind of not stumpty because obviously you're so knowledgeable, but that you kind of go back and forth.

On polyamory interesting.

I actually know a family who are polyamorous and appear on every level to be very healthy, and I'm always confused about what they do with their sexual jealousy. So I am back and forth. I know that there are a lot of people who enter into conscious non monogamy or ethical non monogamy because they're so afraid of losing their partner when their partner brings it up, and so they get into it and they don't really want it, but they go along with it because they don't want to lose their partner, especially if their partner is the big financial provider and there are kids involved, etc. So I want to protect people, most often women, from these kinds of situations. I feel also that there is a lot of confusion out there about polyamory. Polyamory is a love relationship amongst more than two people, and everybody's loved and they're committed to each other. It's not like swingers and open doors and back and forth. It's one family with more partners than two but I did a podcast episode once called Pollywanacracker on polyamory, and a woman called in and she said, well, I met a guy who said he was polyamorous. So we had a short term relationship, but then he kind of ghosted me. And I said, well, how did you know he was polyamorous? Well, he told me he had a wife, and he told me his wife said it was okay. Then I said, did you ever meet the wife? No?

No.

He showed me a picture though of his family, and I'm like, just because they're openly cheating doesn't mean it's polyamory.

You know, that's just how it makes their themselves feel better about what they're doing.

Yeah, and who knows if the wife even he could use that as a line.

Yeah, I mean ahoaism. I would say, you know, whatever people want to do, but that's just something I personally could never do.

I myself am blessed to have a lot of sexual jealousy, and so that means I value my partner. I value him so much and he values me, and so as a result, I wouldn't want to suppress that some people are able to you know, people who specialize in polyamory call it manage it. I actually met a therapist recently at a party who specializes in taking closed relationships and helping them open it up emotionally. And I say that kind of sarcastically because I'm just like, how do you do that?

Where? I don't know?

But it works for some and as long as people were happy, and I'm like great. I always love asking this question, especially sometimes when I'm in therapy. I'm like, all right, it's nice to know that my therapist has her stuff too, right, And so I always think like those that can't teach, and so I'm like, I'm curious, what is something that inside your relationship that is your biggest struggle or that you can, you know, sometimes have to you know, repair, or your hardest thing that you have to walk through own a relationship personally or well.

As I've grown across my lifespan, my issues have changed.

Of course.

When I began in therapy and researching relationships and writing books about relationships, it was all about me discovering my anxious, ambivalent attachment style. I loved avoidant playboys, whether they were athletes or actors. They were always tall and good looking and had many women chasing them and My whole goal was to get one of those to love me, get one of those to stay around. But if I ever met a guy who was actually a kind, secure, attached guy, I'd be like, Eh, he's too nice, you know. So I was the come forward, go away girl. And so when I met my guy, I remember, and you know, dating on the way to meeting him, always saying to myself in the back of my head, well, what would doctor Wendy do? What would doctor Wendy say? So it's like I had this alter ego in my head that taught me to calm down my anxiety and be attracted to somebody who.

Was kind and nice and giving.

And so that is for sure the journey that took me eighteen years to overcome. And I could we could do a whole other podcast about how to overcome attachment injuries. But now that I'm in a healthy, secure relationship for the past four years and we're getting married, I think, like any couple, there's going to be conflict every once in a while, and how we make repair after the conflict is my new journey. Because of course I want to just talk it out right away. I don't want him to abandon me. And go into the other room for even a number of hours. Men feel threatened by that sometimes, so, but you also shouldn't. Like the two of us, our instinct is to wipe it under the the rug and not bring it up again for a long time because we don't want to revisit it. But to bring up the prickly topics, even this small stuff. You know, it might be something as simple as you know, we're we're financial peers, we're age peers. Something as simple as, hey, dude, i think I've been picking up too many dinner checks. Some things your turn, right, Like just no one wants to say that because your love and everything's it all comes out the laundry and then he pays for other things that are big, right, So, but that's a prickly conversation. Yeah, having or him, you know, bringing up there. He's too sweet and he really respects women and their sexuality, so him communicating his sexual needs is a quickly conversation for him. So we finding ways to bring up the unspoken stuff that's uncomfortable.

Yeah, I think it's so interesting.

Like you said, you know, your things have been different, and I look, you know, just thinking about my past and like Okay, how I've every relationship, you know, I've gone you know, healthier, I've learned more, I've healed more, and and you know, with this one, it's I just there's so much more respect in our relationship, and that respect is so valued that you know, I think for me, I still need to kind of I'm so much slower to speak because when I would be super fast to speak, i'd be you know, probably a little bit more snarkier and a little bit more.

Cunning with my words.

And where it's like, wait a minute, like I respect this man in front of me, Like let me gather my emotions and chill out before the either the anger or the whatever. And it's like we haven't had I mean, this is so polar opposite of any relationship I have.

We haven't had like those a big blow ups or anything.

It's more just kind of annoyances or frustrations.

Yeah. I actually have to tell you something. The healthiest couples have the most conflict, but they're never big fights. They're little border skirmishes all day long.

Oh Yeah, okay, great, there you go.

Because I'm like, you know, it's just I don't again because I think there's just that kind of like respect in that layer of like there isn't wasn't anything that needs like the big blood, which is kind of like ugh, Like we get frustrated every once in a while, but like I think it's also because I respect and I'm slow to say something and he's slow, and then and then it's like, all right, hey, you know, sorry, I was a little snippy.

I was you know, blah blah blah.

And so I think it's but I think it's also your partner, like how you're where your partner is along that journey too, you know, and like the stuff that you've learned along the way, I think is super helpful with that.

I read something recently that I thought is very very helpful, and I love this description of you taking a little time to process, both to sort out your own feelings and maybe ask yourself, well, where did it come from? In him? What's going on with him? Right? I'm just going to do a tiny little commercial for journaling. We always hear about journaling being so good for us, but the main thing it does is it puts our feelings somewhere else, and then we go back because everybody does and rereads them. And when we read them. We've now created a gap. We are now the audience watching someone else's story, and it takes away the sting from it all. So you do it in your head, the processing. I'm be quick with my words. I'm going to sit and watch this.

I'm just very reactive, and so I've learned that my reactive tone is not a lovely tone, and I need to like it. I need to be reactive in my brain and not outwardly. And then once I'm reactive in my brain, I'm like, oh, that's actually not that big of a deal at all, and then I can express it better.

That's the work of taking emotions out of our ancient brain and filtering prefrontal cortex. But I read something recently that said, when there's conflict, when you're with your partner, the question that you should be asking them, and or at least asking yourself inside your head, is why why this now? What What is going on for you? What is it? Is there something in your childhood that might have triggered this?

What is?

Because it's never about what's happening now, It's always about a re injury of something that happened in the past, and this is a new a new trigger.

Never about the lamp shade. That's therapist.

That was just like that about the lamp shade that you guys are writing about, it's about something else. I've never forgotten that many many years ago, I was told that, So your show that you have what is like, what's what's kind of coming next? You have another book coming out, because I know you had a book out of what a couple of years ago.

This, So I want to tell you my little life transition story. I've been on iHeartRadio for ten years year and I teach at California State University Channel Islands for ten years now. And during the pandemic, we all went to Zoom and it was really fun, and I took an eight state road trip with two teenatures to visit friends I had not seen in years and years because I was so cloistered during the pandemic that literally it was masks and gloves and a cooler full of sandwiches. We didn't even know if we had bathrooms. We bought baby wipes like it was crazy. And on the way back, I stopped in Oregon and bought a farm where I am sitting right now. During the last three years, I have been developing the property and creating airbnbs, and it's right in the middle of a beautiful valley called the Applegate Valley full of vineyards. So I'm trying to figure out how to put my two lives together. And I recently got the rights back to my third book, The Thirty Day Love Detalks from the publisher, and I said, I'm going to rewrite that book and I'm going to put it out. I'm changing the whole name. Is the reason why I didn't do so well because the title did not match the book and they thought up the title. But my new title is blue Chip Sex, Finding Love in a high supply sexual Economy, and it's about, you know, mendo fall in love through sex. But it's also how to manage the high competition that women feel through Instagram, porn, their slutty girlfriends, et cetera. Because it raises their anxiety, like they how can they hold back and wait and see if he's the one if all these other women are giving him sex right, and this is the thing that's created. So it's about how to have great sex with the right person at the right time to build a long term commitment. And then I.

Thought that's definitely a grabbing title.

So blue chip sex. And then I thought, I'm going to organize women's retreats.

Love that.

That's what I was like hoping you were about to say too, because I just, oh, I love a good retreat.

Because it's all done, and we can do recovering from divorce retreats, we can do single women retreats. We put them all together and talk about all the issues of relationships.

So stay tuned for that. I love that.

And what is your since you're about to be a married woman again, what is your best piece of advice for newliods that you'll take on as your own too?

And this is really important because I've noticed it happening already. The only difference between being married and not is what the public thinks of that, what your friends and family and colleagues think of that. In other words, your relationship is not a different relationship. The morning you wake up married, everybody treats you differently because in our culture we tend to organize ourselves around couplehood. I know, as eighteen years as a single mom, I felt very left out and I didn't get invited to a lot of things because it was a couple's learn and I didn't get invited, right, And so I was happy in the last four years to be back in the couple's world. But you will see that there are people in your life who unconsciously are going to be rattled by this new organization. Whether they are your adult children and we have four, whether it is your best ye friend who starts calling less or getting snippy with you because they're feeling unconsciously a loss or a bit of abandonment.

Right.

You don't know how people are going to react to this marriage. It's not all happy and joy for everybody else. Some of them feel they're losing a piece of you, right, And so just be prepared for some weird and wacky reactions from friends and family where you're like, you're supposed to be happy for me, what's going on here? Right?

Interesting? I would never even thought of that.

Yeah, you're reorganizing your social world and your family world because relationships are a bridge between tribes, and you're creating this new bridge, and it impacts everybody's ecosystem emotional ecosystem for sure.

Well, Wendy, have an amazing wedding. I'm so excited for you and I cannot wait to have you on again.

Thank you, it's always a pleasure to see you. And congratulations you knew we went.

Thank you appreciate it. Bye girl nice

Whine Down with Jana Kramer

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