Dr. Wendy Walsh: The Science of Love, Sex & Modern Relationships

If they want to prove a defamation suit, they have to prove A, you lied. They have to prove that you knew you lied. And they have to prove that you did it with malice. And that bar is so high, they'll never be able to prove that because you told the truth. And the truth is always the best defense. But not now. If someone has a problem with substance use disorder, please call One Call Placement. That's 888-831-1581. And if we can't help you, we'll make a referral to someone who can. One Call Placement is affiliated with Carrera Treatment Wellness and Spa and One Method Treatment Centers. Today on We're Out of Time, I'm joined by Dr. Wendy Walsh, relationship expert, author, and professor of psychology at Cal State Channel Islands. She's the host of the Dr. Wendy Walsh Show on KFI AM 640 and iHeart Radio, and one of the most trusted voices on the science of love connection and human behavior. Wendy, thrilled to have you. Thank you so much for having me here. The pleasure is all mine, believe me. So we're going to get right into it. You often say love is a science. What do you mean by that? People think it's a mystery and it's not. It's actually pretty quantifiable. And I should tell you that the reason why I became interested in this area, the science of love is because I had what I thought was such bad luck in relationships, dating so many bad boys and playboys and people that couldn't, you know, make a commitment. And my heart was constantly being broken. And then I realized there was a common denominator in every one of my relationships. You? Me. I was picking them, right? And so once I learned that love is actually partly biological, partly psychological, and partly social, and that it could be broken down into components and steps, the truth is relationships aren't about luck. They're about skill. And when you have good relationship skills, you are not only attracted to more people, you're attractive to more people. I want to go through the three. Sure. Okay. Let's start with biology. So we are wired to attract based on our genealogy. Some people call it chemistry. They don't know how to quantify it. Well, we know how to quantify it. Sometimes there are pheromones that we literally smell each other to tell if the person has a disparate, a different immune system as ours. Back in our anthropological past when we met a potential mate. Can we go back? Yeah. Okay. So that's great if you're smelling somebody. Yes. Right. But if you, you know, dating apps problem there. I don't even know how to do that. But if you look at somebody from across the room, okay, that's the visual piece. So we also have visual triggers. We know certainly that men are more visually wired than women are. Women have to be more choosy. But we also have these triggers from our past. Like I used to say, ah, you know, he's so hot. And weird thing is he has kind of a voice like my dad, or he has a certain kind of walk that kind of reminds me of my dad. I was quite self-aware that I was pulling pieces of my father, who a loving great dad was in the Navy and gone most of the time. So my internal, let's get into psychology. My internal working model for love was one mixed with longing. If I wasn't longing, it wasn't love. I didn't understand it. That is so heartbreaking. Love is not about finding happiness. It's actually about finding the familiar. And if our early life was filled with loss, that's what we think love is. Because that was our model. That was the model, right? Then we get into sociology, which is most people talk about, right? The mating marketplace right now. We're in a time where we have an oversupply of successful women in the mating marketplace. Wait, wait, wait, one more time. An oversupply of successful women in the world? Oh yeah, yeah. So the worst place for a young working woman who wants to reproduce to live would be New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, any big urban center, because she is surging ahead in her education, in her money. The men are because, and I should say, the other piece of sociology is that when you put sex out into the culture in high supply, which is happening because women can now enjoy their bodies' pleasures for their own sake. They don't need marriage to have sex. They don't need to market their vaginas as sign me up so you'll take care of me. And what happens to a culture when there's so much easy, free sex? Men lose ambition. Men sit at home in their mom's basement and play games and text into a hookup any night of the week. And so the women are upset because the men aren't achieving. But it's actually the preponderance of sex in the culture that's creating the loser guys. Loser in there. So my advice to those women all the way is stop going after your idea of a power man. Your idea of a power man might just be a guy who can power a stroller. Look at those blue collar workers, those electricians and plumbers and guys who are fixing your roads who are making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Stop being an elitist. Start thinking about what your family needs if you want to create a healthy nest for kids. That depressed me. Oh, it depressed you. That completely depressed me. Why? Because it's like I'm a love addict. I haven't transcended that. It's like I want to love. I want to love hard right I mean and most men do but these women aren't choosing them because the women are thinking I'd have to settle or he's less than so I'm trying to educate successful women that a good man doesn't have to be a hugely wealthy man you know when they settle when 35 to 39 oh yeah end of fertility window of course that's when they settle yeah okay I didn't even consider the infertility window do you know how I mean yeah that's exactly what it is right but you know what I thought it was what they've they've gone through enough of the bullshit to where they're just like I'll take anything right now you look like a good deal right and so I had like three or four girlfriends in a row that were from 35 to 39 and they're like okay this guy is okay he kind of sucks but whatever i don't think they'd be settling with you i don't think that's settling but it is reproduction is urgent for women and they may not be consciously aware but most of what we do by the way is completely unconscious right that's right so um so anyway men are enjoying all the free sex uh losing ambition along the way not knowing why i want to talk about the free sex because i'm not i'm not buying that just yet okay we are in a completely different world than when you and i were kids okay there was no only fans right okay um there was no porn hub or any of that or even slutty Instagram feeds right like regular women just putting sexy pictures up all day long did have those um those late night uh commercials where call me now right and they had these really sexy voices where the only thing they should be asking anyone was will you be using your visa or MasterCard exactly those kind of voices right so we had that we had Playboy magazine we had Right. But now the porn is what is. Well, let's talk about what the research says about chronic porn use. First of all, when you have and let's talk about big cultural ramifications. When you have an oversupply of young men in a culture, that's a dangerous thing. Crime rates go up. They're frustrated. They can't find mates. You need a war to get rid of some of them. Actually, they're pretty dispensable. So what they did in China is they created cloud girlfriends because remember, Remember they had the one child rule for so long? So they actually have an oversupply of young men right now. And so they created Cloud Girlfriends. There's one female operating system who has 700,000 boyfriends. And whether she does online porn with them or just sexy texts all day or whether she's just telling them, you're great, go for it. They're satisfied enough to calm down. Now, that's a- They're doing this to keep the crime rate low? Oh, yeah. guys who don't have girlfriends, you know, women are really good for men. Men left alone, especially when they're gathering together in groups of young men and a lot of testosterone can raise crime rates, right? So let's talk about our culture here. Something else happened. So chronic use of pornography and the average age that most boys in America begin viewing pornography is 11. Yeah. And, um, it has created a culture where they think the quite violent and misogynistic kind of sex that is portrayed in pornography is normal. So it used to be, I'm sorry to say, you had to be like our age before you got into the kinky stuff. Now there's trying it out in like their teens and they're choking and doing all this stuff. Now girls want a relationship. They want a boyfriend. So they are going along with stuff that feels completely uncomfortable to them because the guys learned it on porn. The other problem with chronic porn use within a relationship or as single men is it often causes DE, delayed ejaculation. So let me explain how male sexuality works. Oh, I know how that works. Go on. I'm not diagnosing you. I'm just saying that when a male mind is presented with a constant visual of new partners, new fantasies, new women, the idea of training their brain to look at the same woman over and over in monogamy is very, very difficult. We train our brains for anything. So the answer for men, of course, because so what ends up happening is they get in a relationship, they don't get the fresh new image at all times. And so they can become aroused, but they can't, as women say, they can't finish. And so often men will go to the bathroom with their cell phone and climax to in order to have that new fresh face. So you've got to get off that addiction. It's a visual addiction of new fresh faces. How about just wigs and lingerie? If you want to do that. But there's also other things we can do. So in long term monogamous relationships, and I love wigs and lingerie, novelty is everything. Sometimes novelty can just be a different position or a different room. because what couples tend to do in long-term committed monogamous relationships is they figure out what strings work on the guitar and they play those same two strings over and over until they're numb and they don't work anymore. Right. Whereas when you're on a first date with somebody, if you touched baby fingers, your entire body would experience something, right? So everything becomes numb But I want to say this also there a lot of unfair pressure in our highly sexualized culture to have lots of sex and this idea that frequency of sex is a determinant of how healthy that relationship is I want to remind people that mature companionate love may involve lots of affection, but not so much sex. And that's okay. The truth is that most couples have sex in America on average about once a week. What they've discovered is that if you increase the amount of sex in a relationship and you compare it with questioning couples on relationship satisfaction, you find that going up to two times a week actually increases relationship satisfaction. Any more than two times a week doesn't help. In fact, there are couples who have lots and lots and lots of sex because they're having it out of anxiety. They're afraid their partner will fool around on them. They're afraid their partner will leave them if they don't. They're rushing to try to get connected because they actually don't have the connection. So they actually have low relationship satisfaction but plenty of sex. He's satisfied. She's completely despondent. Yeah. But he might not be. He might not be. Guys are gross. Women are so wonderful. How many guys have you slept with in your life? Me? Zero. Okay. I've slept with more than 100. I think I know them really well sexually. Okay. Just saying. That's true. there's a wide range of sexual behavior. How did you know I haven't been with a guy? No, you could have said three. I could have said, if I was with a guy, I would have been with more than a hundred. I can promise you that. Okay. I was a hot model in my teens and twenties. I had lots of time to experiment. So I, yeah, I really think that there are a lot of guys out there that also feel pressured to have sex a lot because some men like you who enjoy a lot of frequency of sex was absolutely okay. spread a message that you're not man or you're not masculine if you don't want to have a lot of sex. You know, okay, so let me explain how anthropologists figured out how much monogamy or promiscuity is in a culture. They look at a species scrotum size. Stay with me. Look at the five primates. At one end of the scale, you've got chimpanzees. Chimpanzees, huge gonads in relative to body size, very promiscuous, very violent, all the testosterone. In fact, what they will do if they meet a nursing mother is kill that baby. They practice a lot of infanticide to bring on estrus in her and make her more fertile so he can rape her. Then the other end, you've got these big hulking orangutans, teeny little chestnuts, big hulking bodies, and very monogamous and very paternalistic, right? So what Homo sapiens have, which is fascinating, is the full gamut. We got the big bald boys on the playing fields, and then when women wonder why their professional athlete husband fools around on them, look at the testosterone pumping in his body, right? And then you've got the small ball great guys who probably make fabulous husbands. Maybe not great rocking and rolling for a one-night stand, but great husbands. We literally have it all. We also have the widest range of paternal investment in offspring of any primate. So in human beings, one guy's investment in his kids could just be one teaspoon of sperm, and he's done. Another guy's investment could be a baby wearing, softball throwing, carpool driving, doting dad. And we have everything in between. And I always tell women, shop for a father if you want to reproduce. Don't shop for a good looking boyfriend. That's beautiful. That's beautiful. So the bigger his balls, the more violent he is. Yeah, there's actually... And the more sexual. So I have a podcast called Mating Matters and one episode is called The Trouble with Testosterone. And I cite a lot of studies that show that higher testosterone men tend to cheat more, have less empathy and compassion, have trouble falling in love, and yeah, get in bar fights. They're the dudes, right? So here's a really cool thing. I love evolutionary psychology because it explains all of life to me. So when humans are born as a species, we have far more males than females that are born. And then what happens is that testosterone makes young guys do a lot of bonehead moves. They drive motorcycles too fast, they get in bar fights, they go to war, all that stuff, and we lose a bunch of them. By the time we hit 40, we're about equal, males and females. You're kidding. Then we get into the old age homes, and hey, it is the lucky guy with the bottle of Viagra in an assisted living care retirement home, because there's so many women, because the men are dying off from all the diseases. So it does the flip at the end of life. That's fantastic. Isn't that cool? Yeah, well, considering I'm 59. Oh yeah. It's getting good. And we have an oversupply of successful women and you like lots of sex so all good for you the most important thing is you have to be honest unfortunately the best way that men have learned to obtain a short-term relationship is to pretend they want a long-term relationship and that creates a lot of broken hearts but that's but that's not fair because that's not even close to fair because if you were going to tell a guy to be honest he'd say okay i want someone who's got the most beautiful face a face like art the body that he likes okay and funny as fuck and she cooks, she cleans nobody wants anybody that cooks we've got Uber Eats, nobody wants anybody to cook my husband loves that I cook every night he loves it, he's obsessed because his first marriage she didn't cook so now, and I'm a gourmet cook so I literally called him on the way here I'm going out to dinner tonight with girlfriends honey I'm going to stop and buy a bunch of stuff at pavilions I'm going to tell you exactly what you can put together and I'm so worried, how is he gonna get a meal without me? How about everybody's different? But anyway, about the lying thing. There are enough women out there that are happy to engage in short-term relationships that men should just be honest. So what I love about dating apps is people are more honest than you've ever seen. You see guys go, hey, I'm believe, I love the ethical non-monogamy they're into now. What does that even mean? It means I tell you the truth that I'm not monogamous. They call it ethical because they're lying on purpose. But you know what, say it. Hey, that's your way of saying it, right? That's a way of getting around that your sexual behavior might be different than some of the women you might be dating. But there are women that sign up for that. I want to be clear. Yes. There's something for everybody. We just need to be honest because the pain and the heartbreak comes when a man eats up years of a woman's fertility window. That's right. Keeps her from reproducing. That's exactly right. Yeah. Because I always say, you don't know what love is until you have a child. You think you do. Oh, I know. You think you do. It's all about reproduction. It is. And even if we're not consciously trying to reproduce, our unconscious processes pretend that we are. In other words, people still have sex past menopause. They can't have babies. So why would they, right? In their mind, they're still maybe reproducing. Also, men may not say, men may definitely say, I do not want a baby, but they will pick the most fertile looking women. And they will actually unconsciously pick women who are ovulating. Here's one of my favorite studies. So we are one of the few species that has what's called concealed ovulation. Men can't tell, not like all the other primates where her vulva blows up red. She's got the big red puffy monkey butt, right? We don't have that. So it's all internal. Guys shouldn't be able to tell when those three magical three days of a month where she can become pregnant are, but their highly evolved brains have found ways to deduce it. And one of the ways, well, one is their walk. Women walk differently. They don't even realize it. They don't say they do, but they do. They move slightly differently. But the other is voice. So one of my favorite studies was done at UCLA and they asked a bunch of women to simply record the words, hi, I'm a UCLA student. Hello, I'm a UCLA student. Hello, all kinds of women. And then they asked them, then they asked them where they were in their menstrual cycle when they recorded it. Then they played it for all these men. And all they asked the men is rate the voice on hotness or not, which is hot or not. Right. What do you think changed in their voices when they were ovulating? I think they sounded more, um, come to me. And what does that, what does that sound? Sexy, come to me. Yeah. What does sexy come to me? What, what changes in the voice, whether it's pitch tone. It lowers. It's more deliberate. You're like, you're smiling, but right. So you can feel the smile. You know what it is? What is it? It's breathy. It's Marilyn Monroe breathy. A little more breath comes when a woman's ovulating. Oh, that's so good. Isn't that great? That's Marilyn Monroe singing happy birthday, Mr. President. Remember that? Yeah. It's all breathy, right? That's what's sexy. And women don't even realize their voice changes for three days. Wow. But men have evolved to pick it up and they don't know why. This is why I love The Science of Love because I have literally revealed the entire game book to everybody. Do you know what's weird to me? The difference between men and women around honesty. Right? Do you think one gender is more honest than the other? No, I just think that guys don't really give a shit and women are hard, fast. honesty is the most important thing. Oh, from a man. Right, right. And guys are like, I don't really care. I'd rather be comfortable than, I'd rather be comfortable and lied to than told the truth and driven insane. It depends which lies. Like men definitely do not want to hear about any past sexual experiences a woman has had. Right. That is, again, back to evolutionary psychology. They don't want a woman who shared her eggs with the team because they could end up supporting another guy's baby. I'm really happy to have you here. Thank you. Okay. I've got some unorthodox takes, okay, on codependency and sex addiction. So now that I've got you here, I want to be set straight. Okay. Because the first thing is, you know, I deal with addiction all day long. Right. And I mean, all of it. and I've always thought that if there's one addiction that you have to have, sex addiction is the one to have. That's a good one. Right? Where am I missing this? Okay. So a reminder, I'm not a therapist. I'm a psychology professor, but I do teach about different diagnoses. Psychology professors are so much higher on the totem pole than a therapist. Go on. So codependency is not a diagnosis and it doesn't exist in the DSM. Okay. Neither dependent personality disorder does. Neither does sex addiction. And let me tell you why. Because we have such a wide range of sexual behavior. Psychologists want to be very careful not to pathologize any kind of sexual behavior. You know, back in the 1970s, it was considered a pathology to be gay. Right? Right. So we're very careful in our community to ever label something in the world of sexuality as being dysfunctional. Now, let's focus on the word dysfunctional. You know a lot about that because of addiction. Something is not considered dysfunctional unless it affects your ability to have relationships with other people, to support yourself, dress clean, dress yourself, feed have a job et cetera That a functional person They have social relationships they able to support themselves and they can live in a safe environment So do somebody sexual tastes go past the point where it becomes dysfunctional? As you know, if somebody is using a substance, sometimes they will steal from family members, hurting their relationships. They will end up homeless and losing their job. All these things means the addiction becomes dysfunctional, right? We also know there are functional alcoholics out there too. It's shocking. And so with sexuality, really the question is, is it dysfunctional? Is it hurting their life? Is it hurting other people's lives, et cetera? And that's what we need. If they're in a marriage, for instance, and they have professed to be monogamous and it's chronic cheating, I would say that kind of sexuality becomes dysfunctional, right? But it's really, that's the answer, not about how much sex is wrong or bad. It's what is the outcome of their sexual experiences. Okay. Good. Let's get to codependency. Yeah. Okay. Which is a pop psych term. Okay, that's fine. But everybody uses it. So I'd like to know your definitions before I talk about it. What do you think it means? Uncopendency for me is like, and I don't understand it to the degree that you will clear it up for me. I'm going to give you a new name for it in a minute, but go ahead. Good. If somebody's sad who I love, okay, and they're wrecked, I'm wrecked until they're okay. Okay. And I'm not sorry for it. It hurts. It hurts. But I'll take the pain. to do everything I can to make certain that you're okay. Always. Now this isn't for everybody. It's for my kids. You know, it's for the people who I'm, you know, my inner circle. Okay, that's all I got. So I hear two things. One is part of your description of codependency is about moving quickly in a love relationship and becoming enmeshed. You use this term, your hands came together, you're just, I'm there. And when I hear that, I hear an anxious attachment style. Fear of maybe unconscious, fear of abandonment, I must keep mommy close, I can't be close. I have all of that. Okay. You also talked about hurting, yes. There is nothing wrong with having a huge degree of empathy. And that's what you have, right? If someone, and actually in a healthy relationship, you know, they've interviewed men that cheat on their wives and men that don't cheat on their wives. And they all have different ranges. it's not about sexual appetite. It's about decisions for behavior. The men who never cheated are the most interesting ones when they interviewed them. And you know what the most common answer is? I just feel so, no, they're not content at all. I just feel so guilty because I love my partner and I know she would feel so bad if she knew about this. You're kidding. So men with higher empathy are less likely to cheat, right? Because they don't want to hurt the person. That's the most common. So the fact that you have a ton of empathy is a wonderful thing. It's a great thing. Now, combine that with an anxious attachment style though, and then a therapist might say, well, let's make sure that you have good boundaries as well. My favorite definition for boundaries are not rules that you set out, they're protections for yourself. A boundary is not a rule, it's a consequence. So therefore, you can't say, well, let's say your boundary is- Don't call me a bitch. Don't call me a bitch? Don't call me a bitch. Your boundary actually is, you know, when I hear you say the word bitch to me, it hurts my feelings, so I'm gonna get in my car and drive away and just take a bunch of deep breaths whenever I hear that. But then you have to do it. The consequence is the important thing to protect yourself. It's not about trying to get someone else to change their behavior, it's about changing your reaction to them. That's great. Yeah. That was helpful. That's a boundary. Yeah, I appreciate it. And it's gotta be a logical consequence, not like, I'm not going to talk to you for two months and I'll watch the clock. How about, you know, I'm going to walk outside and take a few deep breaths. And the person's going, whoa, I didn't realize I said it again. But again, you're not trying to change them. You're trying to protect yourself. I love that. How does, how do addiction and attachment overlap? Oh, that's a great one. Can chemistry ever be mistaken for dependency? you mean love chemistry yes yeah yeah so on the attachment scale and it's quite a scale and nobody has one attachment style with everybody right you might have a different kind of attachment style with your friends your colleagues your lovers etc but for people that have an anxious attachment style they're the underbelly of it and it's largely unconscious is a deep fear of abandonment for sure And they cannot tolerate that feeling. And that's what leads to using substances for addiction, because they are trying to use medicine as a coping strategy for the uncomfortable feelings. That's right. And so that's where the big overlap is. On the other hand, you mentioned sex. For some people, sex is a drug because of the dopamine, right? It's so, well, not just dopamine, norepinephrine, vasopressin, you know, oxytocin. It's a big bonding hormone. Guys have oxytocin too, right? It is so wonderful, those natural drugs and often the best drugs that we have. But people also have trouble withdrawing or tolerating not having those drugs available to them all times. Right. I want to get back to the OnlyFans thing and the sexual economy. Yeah. The high supply sexual economy we're in. Yeah. So you've mentioned the high supply sexual economy. I need to hear, dumb it down. Okay. You're so smart, dumb it down for the masses. You remember Eco 101 from college. When something rises in supply, the price drops. When something is harder to obtain, lower in supply, the price goes up. So right now, up until 1962, when the birth control was invented, and it really wasn't used mainstream until the late 70s, early 80s, or mid 70s, I would say. For women to engage in standalone sexual relationships was a very high risk game for them. They risked, also their bodies emit so much oxytocin during sex, they risked falling in love with a bad boy. They risked, because of our unique biology, getting an STI, and they risked contracting an 18-year case of parenthood, right? So because of condoms and the birth control pill, women were able to attain a kind of sexual freedom and also economically. They started to make more money. They didn't need to depend on men. They could enjoy sex for sex's sake. So what happened to the price of sex? Well, in 1950, the price of sex was six months of courtship. That's the average time from meeting till marriage and a date at an altar. That's what men had to do to obtain sex, six months of courtship and a date at the altar. By 1980, we had something called the three-date rule. If he paid for three expensive dates, then it was safe to have sex with him. Today, the price of sex has dropped the barrel-bottom price of one, sometimes not well-worded text, you up, right? And so women are frustrated because they want men to give more and be more committed, but the price of sex has dropped so low. And they're enjoying sex. when I hear women say, but what about my needs? I'm always like, your sexual needs are very different from a guy's. And if you adopt, adopting a male model of anything is not female freedom. So I always tell women, let's say there's a bumper crop of tomatoes one year and the tomatoes drop to two cents a head. I promise you, there is still a market for an organic artisan grown heirloom tomato that's two bucks a head. Which tomato are you? God, that's good. God, that's good. Now, what do you think about a woman on OnlyFans? This woman's making a couple hundred grand a month. How do you feel about that? I don't make any moral judgment. Just like a man who has a lot of muscles, who works a good job in construction because his body will enable him to do that. I don't judge him. I don't judge how people make their money. But I talk specifically to people who want to have long-term healthy relationships and healthy families. And there's a specific route to that. Excellent. How does the woman, the today's woman, today's younger woman who has completely made it okay in her mind to go out on OnlyFans and masturbate in front of guys or have sex for money. How do those women get the healthy long-term relationship? They quit that job. You know, you can't have it both ways, right? So you're using short-term strategies. You know, I had a woman on my radio show, bless her heart. She's a retired porn actress and she wants nothing but a family and love. And when she dates, she finds one of two reactions. Either guys are like, wow, that's so cool. Let's go home. And they love that. And they just want a short-term relationship with her or they're so turned off from a morality standpoint. Right. And I said, you are going to eventually meet that higher thinking evolved guy who may have a checkered past himself. Nobody's perfect, right? But what he can do with you is have intimacy, emotional intimacy. He can talk about the mistakes he's made. She can talk about, you know, when she went into the career, she loved it at the beginning. And then it gets old after a while. And so it's, again, it's not moral judgment. It's strategies with an end goal. And you decide what your end goal is, and I can tell you how to get there. Did you know I can make between $60,000 and $70,000 a month on OnlyFans? You probably could. Do you know I was told that by... Didn't we have that OnlyFans agent? You mean there are guys that are like the managers of all the girls? Yeah. Yeah. I don't like it when men get involved in that business. Women should be making the money on their bodies. Well, they are. Yeah. But the guys go ahead and I don't... Listen, I've never been on OnlyFans. They must get a cut. I don't understand. I don't understand it. I've never been on online dating. I don't understand it. I don't know how to buy anything on my phone. I'm a dinosaur. Oh, wow. Yeah, I don't know how to do any of that stuff. I've got to show you all the Amazon tricks I have. I don't want any of them. If I learned how to buy stuff on my phone, I'd be like my mother with the home shopping network. No, that is my addiction. I send stuff to other people all day long. I have all their addresses in there. Everybody's got something. Oh, my God. Do you know that I've bought like, I have my chief of staff, she bought me like 10 things on Amazon off of Instagram So I see them on Instagram and I like oh my God that the greatest thing ever And then we order it and none of it works And sometimes they just take your money and don't send you anything. You don't get the thing. Right. And it's like, you know, oh God. No, Amazon's really good on returns and refunds and everything. Half the time they say, just keep it. We'll give your money back. Like, it's not great. Amazon. Yeah. Yeah. That's my home. They know me well. Yeah. Instagram doesn't do that. They just take your money and leave. Speaking of which, so years ago, I worked with this woman first at Channel 13 News. She was like a desk assistant and I was a reporter anchor. Later in our TV career, I was at a show called Extra and hosting it. Extra, Extra, that one. And she came on as a reporter and they said, I'm sorry, you can't have, her name was Wendy. You cannot have the name Wendy because we have a Wendy. So she changed her name to Lauren. You probably know her today as Lauren Sanchez. Right. Married to Jeff Bezos. Right. She has supreme female mating strategy skills. I don't have them. I wish I had them, but she's got it. And I knew her from when she was a young thing, when she was 21, how she worked her way up through the male patriarchy. You know, there are two ways for women to survive during patriarchy. Either work like a dog and get 77 cents on a guy's dollar and raise the kids and exhaust yourself or extract resources from men. and I wish I had the latter, but I don't have those skills. I can't teach women how to do that. But I admire her. I don't judge her. I admire her. So let's talk about the Me Too movement. Yes. Because I heard that you were one of the first people that made that a thing. Yeah. Tell me about that. In 2017, I was named a Time Magazine Person of the Year for my contribution. When? 2017. You were the Time Person of the Year? With a group of silence breakers of the Me Too movement. Wow. And I spoke out against sexual harassment at a certain network. And I think the problem with the Me Too movement is that they didn't have a good enough, a short and simple way to explain to women, first of all, the legal differences between sexual harassment and sexual assault. And it all got commingled. And all of a sudden, people would say to me, but did he touch you? And I'm like, no, but he offered me a job. And then when I didn't go to his hotel room, that job disappeared. That's called sexual harassment. Yeah, but he didn't touch you. So they got really confused about sexual assault because it all got commingled. So when the original hashtag Me Too was invented by Tarana Burke, it was meant to highlight women who had been sexually assaulted as children or even as women. But then when white women co-opted the hashtag Me Too, they threw in sexual harassment and the whole bailiwick became confusing for America. The backlash is real. It is basically sending a message to women. When I spoke out, my attorney, Lisa Bloom, who is a dear friend of mine, said, listen, you have so little risk here. I'm like, am I going to lose my house? Am I going to lose my house? And she said, if they want to prove a defamation suit, they have to prove A, you lied. They have to prove that you knew you lied. And they have to prove that you did it with malice. and that bar is so high they'll never be able to prove that because you told the truth and the truth is always the best defense but not now now guys are just taking all women have every money they have or that they have to spend on attorneys to defend themselves they're doing frivolous defamation suits just to shut them up and that's why as somebody who spends a lot of time educating people about healthy relationships is I say you should say and do and behave in every way to stay out of court because you don't want those family attorneys taking all the money and the judges who don't have psychology degrees making decisions for your family. Amen. Amen to that. If couples want a healthier relationship, what are the three things they can do every day? Oh, this is my favorite question because it's supported by so much research. So here's the interesting thing about couples who profess to be happy, satisfied, and stay together a long time. They actually over-report their partner's value. They really think their value, their partner is cool, great, talented, whatever. Loves a delusion in general, but this is a delusion they keep up for the rest of their life. So how do you trick your brain into believing you're with a great person who's actually a human, an imperfect, perfect human being, right? Is you compliment them all the time. You show gratitude, not for them, for you, for your whole brain, right? So one of the things in my marriage is we will hear on it. Okay. So I happen to love to cook. My husband happens to love to do dishes. I used to feel guilty about this and I would try to help him, but apparently I was doing it wrong. So I sit with my glass of wine and watch him clean the kitchen. But never on any night would I ever go without saying, thank you so much for doing the dishes, honey. He would never sit down to a meal without saying, wow, thank you so much for cooking this meal. We just thank each other all the time for the little things even. Did you take out the trash? That's so sweet of you. Let me give you a kiss. We just constantly use gratitude because it reminds our brains why we're there. That is the greatest answer I've ever heard to that question. Ever. So gratitude is number one. Number two is understand whose problem is whose. Great example. When I first moved in with my then boyfriend, now husband, he has the weirdest habit. And it's always the little things that break people up. He leaves, I'm very organized, nice, minimalist like you, clean, tidy. He leaves little drawers and cupboards open. Oh, I hate that. Oh, I know, I know, I know. and so there is a mid-century from the 1950s beautiful dresser of my parents that he took over started using and the it has this beautiful curved sloping thing where the drawers have to match in order to get the slope and he would leave these things all ajar so I tried mentioning it to him a few times hey you know this piece of furniture looks so much better when everything's closed up and then one day I thought I can water the weeds or I can water the flowers I can also sit here and go, whose problem is it? This is not his problem. He's been doing this his whole life. It's never been a problem for him. It is my problem. So then I thought, how can I reframe this in my brain? What do I want in life? Well, I want to continue to love my husband and I like to get a little workout. So now when those things are all ajar, I do a deep sumo squat. I use my elbows, my knees, my ankles, and I close each drawer as a workout. And every time I close a drawer, I say, I love you, Julio. I love you, Julio. I love you, Julio. Now he's down in the kitchen going, I'm leaving one open here because he wants to hear it more often. So I just turned it into a positive for me. I reminded my brain while I'm there instead of focusing on the negative. So ask yourself whose problem is whose. And the third thing is, and this is really the most important, if you don't have good conflict resolution skills, they can be learned. Go to therapy. You know, people think that if a couple doesn't fight or argue, they must be happy and it must be healthy. Actually, the research shows they're avoidant and they're brewing inside. The truth is the happiest couples have all kinds of conflict, often the most conflict, but it's never the big war. It's the little border skirmishes all day long. Did you put your toothpaste near that? You know, it's the little border skirmishes that they're working out constantly, but they have good conflict skills. I am blown away. There are so few times that people come on here that teach me anything. And I try. I'm a teacher. Yeah. You should take my class. You're a professor. That is magnificent. Thank you. What you did for me today here and for everybody listening. Thank you. And I just want to say something else for the love of men out there, because you've mentioned a lot of male sides and males using porn or having a lot of sex or being frustrated by women who may lie. I absolutely love men. And right now, I think men are in crisis. I really do. A lot of these women are putting unfair pressure on men to be too much. They carry old patriarchy in their own heads. So they go and make all this money and get all this education and say, well, I need a guy who makes more money and does better than me because I've done this work. He should do more. When actually the economy is changing, the sexual economy is changing, gender roles are changing. We need to be more open to individuals and men need to know that they are loved and appreciated. One of the things I also tell women is men love to feel needed. Give them a job. Stop being so independent. men I wrote a book called the girlfriend test where I interviewed a hundred married men and asked them why'd you marry her and why didn't you call the rest of us back and what I've heard more often than not was I don't know she was just too independent I thought what would she need me for and we need men I love men they're fabulous all right before we wrap yeah okay it's time for the Love Lab lightning round. Uh-oh. I got to think quick. All right. Five quick questions for you. No overthinking. Just go with your gut. Okay? What's the biggest sign someone's truly in love, not just infatuated? They have a gravitational pull that they can't resist. They literally want to see that person constantly and it lasts longer than a few weeks. First date red flag. What's yours? Any guy who lets a woman pay. For sure. Or has cash. Or splits the check. Yeah. Ugh, so gross. Thank you for that. Can people really change in relationships? Yes or no? Yes, people can change across a lifespan, but they have to want to. You can't change someone else, but we can change. Exactly. What's more important, chemistry or compatibility? Compatibility. Chemistry goes away. It changes. Compatibility is everything. That's exactly right. What's one relationship myth you wish everyone would stop believing? That a lot of sex means a happy relationship and no fighting means a happy relationship. They're not true. Thank you so much for coming today. Thank you. What a blessing you are for all of us. I'm just trying to spread the education about love because it's really understandable. No, you did. Listen, my whole thing is, our whole foundation at Carrera is we're a love call. That's it. That's the foundation for everything we do and that's where we build from. So this is, I got the love doctor here. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Where can people find you? Anywhere. Dr. Wendy Walsh, all over the internet, every social media at drwendywalsh, at drwendywalsh. Outstanding. See you next Tuesday. We're out of time. Please subscribe on YouTube, click the thumbs up and leave a comment. Please subscribe on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave a rating and a review. And share the We're Out of Time podcast with others you know who will get value out of it. See you next Tuesday.