August 12, 2024 • 32 mins
Dr. Wendy is offering her Wendy wisdom with her drive by makeshift relationship advice. PLUS we are talking to Dr. Dana McNeil about grey divorce. It's all on KFIAM-640!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is doctor Wendy Walsh and you're listening to KFI
AM six forty, the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show on demand
on the iHeartRadio app. Welcome back to the Doctor Wendy
Walls Show on k I AM six forty. We're live
everywhere on the iHeartRadio App. I am now going to
my social media because I love to answer your questions
on relationships.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Reminder, I'm not a therapist.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
I'm a psychology professor, but I've written three books on
relationships and I like to.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Say I did the work.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
I'm a survivor of eighteen years of therapy on and
off over the course of twenty.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Eight years, and.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
I have a lot of wisdom. I'm a woman of
a certain age and I've got some wisdom for you.
So let's go and look at the dms. Remember I
will always keep your identity anonymous. You can DM me
on any of my social media platforms. The handle is
at doctor Wendy Walsh. Okay, Hi, Doctor Wendy says this listener.
I just started seeing my ex of five years again,
(00:59):
so that I mean you were together five years you
were broke up five years ago. I'm guessing we were
broken up for a year and a half. Oh no,
so they were together for five years, then you were
broken up for a year and a half. Got it
While we were broken up. I was bi curious, it's fair,
So on one drunken night on vacation, I ended up
having a three way with a couple who are somewhat
(01:21):
in our friend group. I see them maybe every couple months.
All three of us knows it was purely physical because
the girl was also by curious, and yes, I did
things with the guy too. I'm wondering if I should
tell my boyfriend because he knows them, and I feel
weird about keeping him in the dark. But another part
tells me that it would give him unnecessary anxiety about it,
(01:45):
because to me, it was completely just an experimental thing
of the past. Well, this is an interesting conundrum, and
this is an excellent question. I want to start by
talking about the by curious thing. First of all, if
you believe the work of Kinsey and some of the
more recent work of evolutionary psychologists, they would say that
we are all kind of wired to be bisexual. Calm down, you,
(02:08):
people who are homophobic and freaking out. Kinsey was one
of the first sex researchers to look at not only
people's behavior, but they're fantasies. Because he did his work
in the nineteen forties, fifties, sixties, and he asked people
about their sexual behavior, what they did with who frequency,
but he also asked them what they fantasized about. And
(02:29):
he found he had a scale one to six right
Kinsey scale, one being one hundred percent heterosexual in behavior
and fantasy and one being one hundred percent homosexual in
behavior and fantasy, and he found that most humans are
actually around a three folks.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
So there you go.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
It's a big, long scale and a gray area. Not
that you may act on it, but you may have
fantasy material. There's nothing wrong with being curious now, whether
it's a couple or an individual. When you enter a relationship,
if you are socializing with somebody that you've had sex
with before, you might feel this urge to be completely
(03:07):
come clean and be intimate. My answer is for you
to assess what it would mean to you a current relationship,
because your real struggle is I want to have one
hundred percent authenticity and honesty about everything in my relationship,
but you also want to not hurt your partner. Or
(03:29):
give them unnecessary anxiety. Now, the other piece is you
have two potential loose cannons out there, the other people
who may talk. They may have another drunken night and
mention something. It's not fair to swear them to secrecy
because their experience is their experience, and they own it,
and everybody owns their own experience. My feeling is this,
(03:51):
if it doesn't come up and there's no reason to
bring it up, there's no reason to tell every single
detail of your sexual background, especially because you're telling them
to a heterosexual man. Now, there's research to show that
men are more squeamish about hearing about female sexual history
(04:12):
than we are women about hearing about a man's sexual history.
That is also evolutionary programmed into us. It's not just
about the sexual double standard. It is the fact that
in our anthropological past, if men risked hooking up with
a woman who liked to share her eggs with the team,
then he might have ended up raising another guy's eggs.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
So therefore.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
He's sort of naturally not going to want to hear
about even you know, as open minded as my fiance is,
he doesn't want to hear. He doesn't want to hear.
So my personal advice is to not bring it up
unless you find it's necessary. Unless it's being brought up.
If you start, you know, socializing with this couple more often,
if they start flirting with you, if they make an
(04:57):
allusion to what happened, you're going to have to come clean.
If you and your partner might be having a conversation
someday about past sexual experiences and he's sharing things with
about him, okay, then it makes sense. But to bring
it up for no reason, just to cause anxiety in him.
I don't think you need to. Don't think you need to.
If you guys disagree with me, please send me a
(05:19):
DM because I know you know that I'm always about open,
honest and authenticity, But this time I disagree.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
You disagree, you should tell him.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
I think that there's nothing more embarrassing than being in
a couple with somebody, and then you're on the outside
of an inside, an insider that everybody's aware of except
for yourself.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
They're not close, she said, they might see them only
every couple.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
They're in the same friend group, so they will see
each other. And then this man knows that he slept
with my girl, and I have no idea. I just
want to know, you know, I just want to be aware,
so there's no inside kiki or like you know, behind
my back.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
I don't like that.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
I also want to wait till their relationship becomes more solid,
because she said she just started, says for facts of
five years, why don't we wait till they grow some intimacy?
Speaker 3 (05:59):
Then you had me around this man and you didn't
tell me till two years after that you had sex
with him because you wanted to wait to feel more secure.
Now I don't trust you. That's how That's just how
I operate. I don't know if I'm right, but that's
just how I feel.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
I'm gonna say, pick your time, Okay, yes, but pick
your time fair.
Speaker 5 (06:16):
That's fair.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
I think that's fair. All right?
Speaker 1 (06:18):
That was That was a prickly one, wasn't it. There's
lots of opinions on that. Okay, here's another one. Hey, doctor, Wendy,
have you been through a situation where you miss a
guy the person who had a situationship with Oh, you're
making a big assumption that I had a lot of situationships. Okay,
I did, but we didn't call them situationships. Then we
just called them friends with benefits, or we call them hookups,
(06:40):
we call them booty calls. Actually in my day anyway,
that you miss him so much that when he's back
in the picture, you feel nothing but anger and resentment
when you speak to him. Am I crazy? This is
a weird thing. Okay, my darling. Here's what I want
to say to you. I want you to call a therapist,
(07:02):
especially a therapist who specializes in attachment, because it sounds
to me like your attachment style maybe on the anxious side.
And I have had that exact situation happened to me
before that, even though it was a hook up, a
booty call, a situationship of friends with benefit I became
(07:25):
kind of attached. And then when they didn't reciprocate or
they didn't provide the emotional intimacy that I craved, I
was angry and I was often passive aggressive with them,
even you know, when I was in a sexual relationship,
doing weird game, playing weird games with them, because I
was actually unaware of how angry I was that the
(07:50):
relationship wasn't meeting all of my needs. And it was
only through therapy that I learned that my reaction was
related to my own attachment style.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
And I will say that it is very.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Very common for women to not be able to adapt
to a hookup culture or situationships because women's biology is
unique and women are often their bodies get attached through
hormones and oxytocin, and it's very difficult for them to
have just a part time, one foot in relationship. So
please reach out to a therapist because I want you
(08:26):
to work through this the way I did. All right,
when we come back, I got more from your social
media if you'd like to send from my social media.
If you'd like to send me a DM, the handle
is at doctor Wendy Walsh. All right, you've been listening
to the Dr Wendy Walls Show on KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 4 (08:44):
You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI
AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Welcome back to the Doctor Wendy Walls Show on KFI
AM six forty. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Going into my dms on Instagram if you'd like to
send me one, It is at doctor Wendy Walsh at
d R Wendy Walsh. Okay, dear doctor Wendy. This man
asked me out on a date and told me I
can choose the restaurant. I chose a pricey place because
(09:12):
that's where I eat. When I sent him the restaurant,
he told me he was thinking more tacos and beer,
not philet mignon. I told him we could change the place,
but he stopped responding. I feel like he thinks I'm
a gold digger or something. Should I pop up with
tacos for him?
Speaker 2 (09:28):
No? So here's what you learned. You guys are not
a good match. You see, this is how you learn.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
The beginning of any new relationship is all about eliminating
those that are inappropriate. If you want to have a
lifetime of tacos and beer, then yeah, chase him down.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
That's going to be it.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
If you're a philet mignon girl, it's not that he
thinks you're a gold digger. He thinks you're.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Out of his league, and that's okay. You can move.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Along unless you're ready to be tacos and beer and
fast food and get a little billy maybe some hips,
all the fattening food.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
No, you know, if you make more money now.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
I also I want to sort of clarify something here
that we right now in the mating marketplace have an
oversupply of successful women. So you're gonna find ladies that
there are a lot of women making way more money
than men. So the words to the whys here is
probably don't suggest the super expensive restaurants right away and
(10:27):
just see where it goes. Because your idea of a
power man might be a guy who can power a stroller.
Right So maybe you learned don't do Philly Migno right away.
He's not getting back to you, which tells me that
he's lost interest, not because he thinks you're a gold digger,
but because he thinks you're out of his league. Now,
if you really, really, really really like him, then do
what you said pop up with Takos.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
What does that mean?
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Show up? Don't show up like at his house? That
sound stockersh like.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
Well, when you're into somebody and you want to like
prove you know, yep up, like you bring a cake
or a pie.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Or she knows she's going to see him, I guess
she knows where she's going to see him, because I
don't want to be stalkering him or anything. All right,
dear doctor Wendy, I can't stop ruminating on my latest breakup.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Oh I'm sorry about that. It's destroying me mentally.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Oh. What are some healthy hobbies I can start to
alleviate myself. Well, first of all, you need to go
see a therapist because this kind of rumination is chronic anxiety.
It could be related to attachment insecurity, something that happened
early in life.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
I'm not your therapist, but I would say you need
to see a licensed therapist to work through some of
the stuff. From my own personal experience, having recovered from
an anxious attachment style, having spent months and years decades
of my life ruminating over lost men who I couldn't
get back, I will tell you the number one thing
that helped me was exercise. Yeah, just get to the gym,
(11:52):
work out how hard, especially cardio, get those endorphins going.
You'll feel so much better. That's what worked for me.
All right, here's another one, Dear doctor Wendy, I need help. Okay, Well,
thanks for reaching out to me. I am new to
this area and my first meaning new to LA or
new to the area of dating. New to the area
(12:13):
of dating as sind a person.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
What do you think they mean?
Speaker 3 (12:15):
I would assume new to the because I'm new to La.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Okay, okay, La.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
I'm new to La and my first connection was with ooh,
a dangerous person. I want a restraining order. What are
some other ways I can find safety and community in
a new area.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Well, I have to tell you something.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
I have gone to the police a number of times
in my life to ask for restraining orders on people,
often strangers, often somebody I might have had one date
with when I was a young hot woman.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Okay, that's when the stuff happens.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
And they were very clear that it's super hard to
get a restraining order unless somebody physically assaults you, shows
up at your house regularly and you can take pictures
of them, they're et cetera. But if they're on public property,
even then it's hard. Remember in the documentary on Netflix
with the what's the name there?
Speaker 2 (13:01):
The Dutch baby, No no, No, the Duchess and.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
The Prince and Princess are up in Santa Barbara, the
real life ones Harry and Megan.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
So Megan was saying when.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
She was on suits and dating him and she was
filming in Toronto. The you know, thousands of people would
be peering through fences and doing everything she said. In
real life that would be having a stalker, but the
police could do nothing because they were standing on public land.
Speaker 4 (13:27):
Right.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
It's very hard to get a restraining order.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
I have one.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
You do have one on somebody. I do.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
My ex boyfriend. He was he was not okay, he
was dangerous, a dangerous person.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Is he in this state? No, He's in New.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Jersey, thankfully, and I don't think he can afford to
fly to this state greatly. However, getting the restraining order
was very difficult. It took a bunch of different the
order chances. He violated it every single week. I was
at the police department submitting that he violated.
Speaker 5 (13:54):
The only reason he.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Got arrested was because he assaulted another man who I
was dating. So it's hard as a woman out here.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
I hate to tell you this, my love.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
If you ask me how you can find safety and
community when you're in a new area, it may simply
mean if he knows where you live, moving, I'm sorry,
finding a new place, and you may be able to
get out of your lease if you feel threatened, But
you've got and You've got to find new friends through
your work, through the gym, through other kinds of social connections.
(14:24):
But you've got to get healthy people around you so
that you can feel safe.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
That's so scary and a protector.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
You were able to break your lease if you were
if you felt like your life was in danger, So
hopefully California is the same way.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Yeah, I broke my lease and it was no no.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
You know, I'm a landlord and one of the things
I do is criminal background checks on people because if
you know, if you put somebody in your building and
they do some violence on another, I think landlords might
even be able to get sued because the bad person
in there near there.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Yeah, it's so hard.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
It's you know, one of the most vulnerab groups in
our society, our young females, and we need to rally
around them and help keep them safe. And guys, you
need to do that. Walk them to their cars, be
nice to them, be the good guy. You are listening
to the Doctor Wendy wall Show on KFI AM six
forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 4 (15:17):
You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI
AM six forty Welcome back to.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
The Doctor Wendy Wall Show on KFI AM six forty,
Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 4 (15:29):
Well.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
I mentioned at the beginning of the show that I've
got married this weekend and it's very exciting. It's different
depending on what your age is, the kind of partner
you would choose. You know, I've always said a relationship
is an exchange of care. That care can take so
many different forms. It can be emotional support care. It
(15:51):
can be intellectual stimulation care. It can be financial care,
sexual care, domestic care, childcare. It can be all those things. Right,
But as we get older, it gets real because when
till death do us part is.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Spoken, it's you know, potentially authentic.
Speaker 4 (16:09):
Right.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
So gray marriage is something that I feel, having just
gone through, it is a sacred On the other hand,
this is also a time of life for many where
long term marriages culminate. I don't like to say fail,
I don't like to say breakup. I like to say finish,
(16:30):
the work has been done. I wanted to invite a
guest who works with couples all the time, doctor Dana McNeil.
She is an expert in relationships and she really understands
that in our most intimate relationships, we all just want
to be her. She's a therapist practicing in San Diego,
Doctor McNeil, Did I get that right? You did, San Diego.
(16:54):
Thanks for being with us. So let's talk about gray divorce.
First of all, when we talk talk about gray divorce,
we're talking about divorce over the age of forty five fifty.
Speaker 6 (17:04):
The forty five fifty ish, yeah, as we're starting to well,
maybe stop coloring our hair, but we've probably all been
gray for longer than that. But yes, that's typically and
it's about thirty percent of the percentages of divorces across
the board. So it is actually the highest percentage or
of the population of divorce is people over fifty, more
(17:26):
than any other age group. We are seeing that that
is the area where we are getting more and more
divorces occurring.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
So I read a statistic once.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
I don't know if this is accurate when people banter
around that fifty percent divorce rate. It doesn't apply to
every marriage. But you only hit the fifty percent risk
when you've been married more than twenty years, right, So
if you're younger, you're actually more likely to.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Stick it out.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
But it is, so let's talk about why at this time,
what happens in people's individual development and what's happening in
the relationship.
Speaker 5 (18:01):
There's so many reasons.
Speaker 6 (18:03):
I mean. The first is often if a couple has
put all the focus on their children and now they're
empty nesters, that phrase, which is we're finally getting our
children to like get out and like move on.
Speaker 5 (18:15):
With their lives.
Speaker 6 (18:15):
Or they've gone off to college and we haven't developed
our relationship.
Speaker 5 (18:19):
We've just put all of our focus, all of our energy.
Speaker 6 (18:22):
All of our time into taking the kids to soccer practice,
going to rehearsals, getting their lives sorted.
Speaker 5 (18:29):
That's one thing that happens.
Speaker 6 (18:30):
Retirement happens if there's an age gap between you and
your partners.
Speaker 5 (18:34):
Say maybe you married somebody that's five or six.
Speaker 6 (18:36):
Years older than you and ones ready to retire. They
want to go have vacations, they want to go have fun,
and you're still in your career, or you're a business
owner and you're not ready to retire. That can create
differences in the ways that you want to spend your life.
There can also be differences in the way that you
handle sex or the way that you approach sex, or
maybe one of you has problems with sex or doesn't
(18:59):
desire sex the same way that you did anymore, And
so some couples are like, I'm sorry, I'm still in
my sexual prime and I'm not going to be with
somebody that doesn't put a focus on sex. There can
be a lot of reasons, and one of the ones
that I see a lot in my clients is that
we have grown apart right, and there's a we are
in marriages a lot longer than we used to be.
(19:20):
If you think about like back in the day when
we were pioneers, we were dying off at thirty years old.
Speaker 5 (19:25):
Now we're living well into our hundreds.
Speaker 6 (19:27):
If we do this right, and if you say, okay,
your kids are gone and they're out of the house
and you're fifty to fifty five, it's a lot of
time left with somebody that you don't have any common
interests with, that you don't enjoy spending time with. And
one of the things that I see that's the most
painful for me to see in clients is you can
be on the couch with them and still fill alone,
(19:48):
and that is devastating when you have time to think,
I maybe got thirty good years left, and is this
what I want to spend it with?
Speaker 5 (19:55):
With some that I can't even carry on a conversation with.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
So just to say that, because I've all always said
that when they invented the words till death do us part,
death was pretty imminent. And if you got married in
the year nineteen hundred, the average length of that marriage
was about twelve years. And so this idea that we're
supposed to be to find our soulmate in our twenties
and stay with them until our eighties is actually very rare,
(20:20):
isn't it.
Speaker 6 (20:21):
Yeah, And we're asking so much more of our partners
these days. We are asking our partner to be our
best friend, to be that person that wants to go
shoe shopping with us, to be the sexiest person that
I've ever met, and to still be hot and not
be hanging out in yoga pants all day, even though
we went through a pandemic together. To be funny, to
be interesting, to be intell like we ask so much.
(20:42):
We used to ask, like you have child bearing hips
and you can plow a farm, you will do We
ask so much more, and we are coming more and
more to divorce, not because of the four big a's,
which were alcohol, addiction, abandonment, abuse. Right now we're like, well,
you're not as interesting as I likes, aren't have fun
with you. So we're coming up with a lot more
(21:04):
reasons to validate our reasons for divorce as well.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
And I would also add that women's economic rise means
women are putting up with you know, their demands are higher.
They're like, I don't really need you to pay the bills,
so you've got to do all this other stuff now,
and if you're not going to do it, I can
go find somebody else.
Speaker 6 (21:23):
Yeah, they are wanting to have intellectual stimulation. They're wanting
to be partnered. They want their partners to recognize that
you know, this is and there's needs to be a
quality in our relationships. And so it's no longer okay
for a lot of my female clients to just in
their perspective, carry the burden in their relationship, especially in
(21:46):
emotional loads, for like taking care of the things that
go into making a home a home.
Speaker 5 (21:52):
They're not okay with it anymore.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
I do want to say that great divorce isn't always bad, right,
I mean, we're not looking at good and bad here.
It's just sort of a phenomenon. But the pain you
mentioned comes from probably when one person wants to keep
the relationship.
Speaker 6 (22:14):
Yeah, there's pain, or there's a lot of times couples
are I've been letting you know four years that there's
a problem and the other partner has sort of been
having an affair with their job, so the mistress has
been getting the best part of them for a long time.
And then one person will just be like, Okay, I'm
done and they're like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 5 (22:34):
I had no idea, And.
Speaker 6 (22:35):
It's like, well, you kind of were in denial or
maybe you didn't know what to do with it so
you didn't address it.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
And I hate to put a gender on it, but
it's more often that men are blindsided by divorce.
Speaker 5 (22:45):
Right, Yeah, that'd be right. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Now, is there a way to have a healthy, good
gray divorce.
Speaker 6 (22:56):
Sure, I mean, if you still intend to try to
have some sort of friendship and remember that, especially if
you still have children together, you still do have a
common value and you are modeling for your children what
healthy couples ending looks like. Right, It doesn't have to
be something horrific. You can do it with care and
with kindness and with love and hopefully still retain your friendship.
(23:18):
This is a person that's had a lot of milestones
in their life with you, that have been with you
some really rough times. And it's not that you're saying
I don't care about you anymore. I just don't care
to continue forward with you.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
We have to go to a break. But when we
come back. You mentioned something children of adult divorce. Let's
talk about the other people who are involved in gray
divorce and they include adult children, grandchildren and also new
partners who you know, family holidays, what's happening for the future.
Let's talk about this when we come back. My guest
(23:53):
is doctor Dane McNeil in private practice in San Diego.
We are talking about Gray divorce. You're listening to the
Doctor Wendy Wall Show KFI AM six forty. We're live
everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 4 (24:03):
You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI
AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Welcome back to the Doctor Wendy Wall Show on KFI
AM six forty, Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. My
guest doctor Dana McNeil in private practice in San Diego, California,
works with a lot of couples and we're talking about
gray divorce. Hopefully it won't happen, but if it does happen,
just know it's very common, more common than one would think.
(24:31):
All right, doctor McNeil, and we talk about the impact
on adult children, whether they're in their twenties or thirties
or even forties, what the experience is like for them
when the family they've always known is now separated.
Speaker 6 (24:46):
You know, it's mixed. Some kids are like, I'm glad
you guys did this. If you were staying together for me,
you didn't need to write. I've seen you unhappy for
a long time. I've seen you disconnected for a long time.
It's time I appreciate that you stay together until I
got on my feet. Please go live your best life.
Some kids are not that way. They want you to
(25:07):
continue to be that unit because when they come home
on holidays, they want things to be exactly the way
that they always were, and they want their parents to
sort of be frozen in time so that when they
need them, they have that appliance that they can turn on,
which is going to the family home and having everything
be exactly the same.
Speaker 5 (25:23):
So there's different ways.
Speaker 6 (25:26):
That kids show up, and a lot of it is
how much you've been enabling your children to not have
to deal with anything in life. I mean, if you
haven't been modeling for them what healthy couple's communication looks like.
There's the potential that this will catch them off guard
and they don't know how.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
To respond to it right because they learn their relationship
skills from their parents. It's funny you mentioned parents frozen
in time, because we all have this fantasy that our
parents are just sitting at home waiting for us to
come back, that our bedroom will stay the same, that
the food will be the same. I had the sad
event that my mother died of breast cancer when I
was thirty and she was just sixty.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
And I went to the.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Funeral and they are all these young women and replacement
daughters there and they say, oh, I never got out
of the house unless your mother called.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
She was amazing. I loved her, And I was like,
who are all these people? She had friends, She had friends.
Speaker 5 (26:13):
Except for sidea mime.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
But so that is part of it, is that children
have to understand that their parents are humans and have
all the same human needs, all right, let's talk a
little bit about now. Not necessarily that the relationship breaks
up because of an affair, but some people very quickly
are comfortable in couples and they very quickly get into
another relationship, and that can be very confusing, especially you
(26:42):
had talked about earlier. If you spent twenty five or
thirty years together, in every single family holiday together, what
do you do now around the holidays and you have
a new partner.
Speaker 6 (26:52):
Yeah, what you mentioned is statistically more often for men.
The research shows that more often than not, men or
in another relationship, if not mere within a year, and
women are typically two, three, four five years, so there's
a lot more distance. Women tend to want to get
sorted and get their life and men are like, no,
I can't be alone. I need someone to take care
of me and plan my social events. And so I
(27:15):
think having some honest communication about when is it going
to feel like it's too soon, and maybe making an
agreement as the original couple what feels like tolerable for
men being conscious, I mean the male and the female,
which which feels best for us? What do what do
our kids want? And what's realistic for our kids?
Speaker 5 (27:35):
Right?
Speaker 6 (27:35):
And maybe having like a family conversation. How do we
want to break up holidays if it's uncomfortable? Does mom
get Christmas Eve and Dad gets Christmas Day? With new
partners being sort of creative and having some flexibility and
ask telling your kids why it would mean so much
to you if they were willing to help you do
something for yourself, not just for.
Speaker 5 (27:56):
Them all the time in a loving way.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
It's hard for kids to get around their head around
the fact that they're grown up now. I mean, I
think when we're at our parents' presence, we always seem
to be kids again. Yeah, and in that kind of
demanding All right, before we go, some tips of advice.
If you say that a good thirty percent of divorces
happen over the age of fifty, is there anything people
(28:20):
can do to prepare themselves? And by the way, I
had a financial specialist on a few years ago, and
she was saying that divorce actually takes place two to
four years psychologically, two to four years before it's actually filed.
And during that two to four years, men are hiding
money and women are getting plastic surgery.
Speaker 7 (28:42):
Okay, all right, I more see that they're contemplating what
life will look like they're oftentimes fantasizing about what it's
going to be like to live by themselves and not
have to pick up their partner.
Speaker 5 (28:55):
They've been looking at ads for apartments.
Speaker 6 (28:57):
And kind of like visualizing how much they can afford
what their lifestyle will.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
Look like with They're going to get back on friends
that aren't necessarily sure friends. Right. Yeah, I remember, like
one of my friends, I knew she was getting divorced
before she knew she was getting divorced, because I watched
her Instagram change.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
I love every picture used to be always.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
Her and her husband, and then there were a lot
of her alone and looking more sexy than a woman
in her fifties should maybe on Instagram, and then a
bunch of shots of her out with girlfriends all the time.
And I'm like, that girl's had it for divorce, and
lo and behold, it happened. But I knew it beforehand.
Speaker 6 (29:35):
Yes, a lot of mental preparation and rehearsal about what
life is going to be like without them, and maybe
also like how will I handle the holidays? They might
have already had some thoughts about it. A lot of
times when couples are coming in to separate in my office,
the partner that is we call the leaning out partner
that's already planning for the divorce, has already thought well
about how they might want to do it and have
(29:56):
some suggestions.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
So right, so let me ask you this as a
couple's therapy, when couples come for therapy because someone has
brought up divorce in your experience, is the divorce pretty
much eminent? Are they come into couple's therapy really to
try to fix the relationship.
Speaker 6 (30:13):
It depends if you're saying I want a divorce when
you're in the midst of in physiological arousal because you're
in a fight, That is not typically because you want
a divorce. And I often say to my clients, please
don't mention it when you're in the midst of being upset.
If you've gone for like several long walks on the
beach and you've contemplated and you want to come back
and have a conversation in the backyard about how you
(30:34):
can't go on, that's probably more real than I got
mad because you forgot to put gas in my car
and I want a divorce. That's just you're releasing energy
and you're not handling it in a good way versus
I've been thinking about this for a long time, so
it's usually in the context of how it's been brought up,
how responsive the other person is, like they are they
(30:55):
taking you seriously because oftentimes I've heard you say this
so many times.
Speaker 5 (30:59):
I don't even take it seriously anymore.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
Right, it shouldn't be used as a threat and a
weapon or definitely the D word shouldn't come out. Any
parting words for people who feel like their long term
marriage is on the rocks. Any advice.
Speaker 6 (31:15):
About the pros and cons. Every relationship is going to
have things that you don't like. So if these are
deal breakers and you're okay with moving into relationship with
its own set of problems, maybe this is the best
thing for you.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
And sometimes change is good. Thank you so much, doctor
Dana McNeil for joining me on the Doctor Wendy Wall Show.
You guys are in the San Diego area, you can
where can they find you? Do you have a website?
Speaker 6 (31:43):
Yeah? We also do intensives for people around the country
that want to come travel and spend a few days
with us. It's called therapy getaway. And then yes, we
can see anyone in the State of California by telehealth,
or they can come local to my office in San Diego.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Thank you, thanks for being with us, and that brings
this episode of The Doctor Wendy Wall Show to a close.
It is always my pleasure to be with you every
Sunday from seven to nine pm.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
Yeah, I'm a missus now.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
Thanks for 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.
This is doctor Wendy Walsh and you're listening to KFI
AM six forty, the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show on demand
on the iHeartRadio app. Welcome back to the Doctor Wendy
Walls Show on k I AM six forty. We're live
everywhere on the iHeartRadio App. I am now going to
my social media because I love to answer your questions
on relationships.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Reminder, I'm not a therapist.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
I'm a psychology professor, but I've written three books on
relationships and I like to.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Say I did the work.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
I'm a survivor of eighteen years of therapy on and
off over the course of twenty.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Eight years, and.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
I have a lot of wisdom. I'm a woman of
a certain age and I've got some wisdom for you.
So let's go and look at the dms. Remember I
will always keep your identity anonymous. You can DM me
on any of my social media platforms. The handle is
at doctor Wendy Walsh. Okay, Hi, Doctor Wendy says this listener.
I just started seeing my ex of five years again,
(00:59):
so that I mean you were together five years you
were broke up five years ago. I'm guessing we were
broken up for a year and a half. Oh no,
so they were together for five years, then you were
broken up for a year and a half. Got it
While we were broken up. I was bi curious, it's fair,
So on one drunken night on vacation, I ended up
having a three way with a couple who are somewhat
(01:21):
in our friend group. I see them maybe every couple months.
All three of us knows it was purely physical because
the girl was also by curious, and yes, I did
things with the guy too. I'm wondering if I should
tell my boyfriend because he knows them, and I feel
weird about keeping him in the dark. But another part
tells me that it would give him unnecessary anxiety about it,
(01:45):
because to me, it was completely just an experimental thing
of the past. Well, this is an interesting conundrum, and
this is an excellent question. I want to start by
talking about the by curious thing. First of all, if
you believe the work of Kinsey and some of the
more recent work of evolutionary psychologists, they would say that
we are all kind of wired to be bisexual. Calm down, you,
(02:08):
people who are homophobic and freaking out. Kinsey was one
of the first sex researchers to look at not only
people's behavior, but they're fantasies. Because he did his work
in the nineteen forties, fifties, sixties, and he asked people
about their sexual behavior, what they did with who frequency,
but he also asked them what they fantasized about. And
(02:29):
he found he had a scale one to six right
Kinsey scale, one being one hundred percent heterosexual in behavior
and fantasy and one being one hundred percent homosexual in
behavior and fantasy, and he found that most humans are
actually around a three folks.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
So there you go.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
It's a big, long scale and a gray area. Not
that you may act on it, but you may have
fantasy material. There's nothing wrong with being curious now, whether
it's a couple or an individual. When you enter a relationship,
if you are socializing with somebody that you've had sex
with before, you might feel this urge to be completely
(03:07):
come clean and be intimate. My answer is for you
to assess what it would mean to you a current relationship,
because your real struggle is I want to have one
hundred percent authenticity and honesty about everything in my relationship,
but you also want to not hurt your partner. Or
(03:29):
give them unnecessary anxiety. Now, the other piece is you
have two potential loose cannons out there, the other people
who may talk. They may have another drunken night and
mention something. It's not fair to swear them to secrecy
because their experience is their experience, and they own it,
and everybody owns their own experience. My feeling is this,
(03:51):
if it doesn't come up and there's no reason to
bring it up, there's no reason to tell every single
detail of your sexual background, especially because you're telling them
to a heterosexual man. Now, there's research to show that
men are more squeamish about hearing about female sexual history
(04:12):
than we are women about hearing about a man's sexual history.
That is also evolutionary programmed into us. It's not just
about the sexual double standard. It is the fact that
in our anthropological past, if men risked hooking up with
a woman who liked to share her eggs with the team,
then he might have ended up raising another guy's eggs.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
So therefore.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
He's sort of naturally not going to want to hear
about even you know, as open minded as my fiance is,
he doesn't want to hear. He doesn't want to hear.
So my personal advice is to not bring it up
unless you find it's necessary. Unless it's being brought up.
If you start, you know, socializing with this couple more often,
if they start flirting with you, if they make an
(04:57):
allusion to what happened, you're going to have to come clean.
If you and your partner might be having a conversation
someday about past sexual experiences and he's sharing things with
about him, okay, then it makes sense. But to bring
it up for no reason, just to cause anxiety in him.
I don't think you need to. Don't think you need to.
If you guys disagree with me, please send me a
(05:19):
DM because I know you know that I'm always about open,
honest and authenticity, But this time I disagree.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
You disagree, you should tell him.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
I think that there's nothing more embarrassing than being in
a couple with somebody, and then you're on the outside
of an inside, an insider that everybody's aware of except
for yourself.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
They're not close, she said, they might see them only
every couple.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
They're in the same friend group, so they will see
each other. And then this man knows that he slept
with my girl, and I have no idea. I just
want to know, you know, I just want to be aware,
so there's no inside kiki or like you know, behind
my back.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
I don't like that.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
I also want to wait till their relationship becomes more solid,
because she said she just started, says for facts of
five years, why don't we wait till they grow some intimacy?
Speaker 3 (05:59):
Then you had me around this man and you didn't
tell me till two years after that you had sex
with him because you wanted to wait to feel more secure.
Now I don't trust you. That's how That's just how
I operate. I don't know if I'm right, but that's
just how I feel.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
I'm gonna say, pick your time, Okay, yes, but pick
your time fair.
Speaker 5 (06:16):
That's fair.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
I think that's fair. All right?
Speaker 1 (06:18):
That was That was a prickly one, wasn't it. There's
lots of opinions on that. Okay, here's another one. Hey, doctor, Wendy,
have you been through a situation where you miss a
guy the person who had a situationship with Oh, you're
making a big assumption that I had a lot of situationships. Okay,
I did, but we didn't call them situationships. Then we
just called them friends with benefits, or we call them hookups,
(06:40):
we call them booty calls. Actually in my day anyway,
that you miss him so much that when he's back
in the picture, you feel nothing but anger and resentment
when you speak to him. Am I crazy? This is
a weird thing. Okay, my darling. Here's what I want
to say to you. I want you to call a therapist,
(07:02):
especially a therapist who specializes in attachment, because it sounds
to me like your attachment style maybe on the anxious side.
And I have had that exact situation happened to me
before that, even though it was a hook up, a
booty call, a situationship of friends with benefit I became
(07:25):
kind of attached. And then when they didn't reciprocate or
they didn't provide the emotional intimacy that I craved, I
was angry and I was often passive aggressive with them,
even you know, when I was in a sexual relationship,
doing weird game, playing weird games with them, because I
was actually unaware of how angry I was that the
(07:50):
relationship wasn't meeting all of my needs. And it was
only through therapy that I learned that my reaction was
related to my own attachment style.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
And I will say that it is very.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Very common for women to not be able to adapt
to a hookup culture or situationships because women's biology is
unique and women are often their bodies get attached through
hormones and oxytocin, and it's very difficult for them to
have just a part time, one foot in relationship. So
please reach out to a therapist because I want you
(08:26):
to work through this the way I did. All right,
when we come back, I got more from your social
media if you'd like to send from my social media.
If you'd like to send me a DM, the handle
is at doctor Wendy Walsh. All right, you've been listening
to the Dr Wendy Walls Show on KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 4 (08:44):
You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI
AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Welcome back to the Doctor Wendy Walls Show on KFI
AM six forty. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Going into my dms on Instagram if you'd like to
send me one, It is at doctor Wendy Walsh at
d R Wendy Walsh. Okay, dear doctor Wendy. This man
asked me out on a date and told me I
can choose the restaurant. I chose a pricey place because
(09:12):
that's where I eat. When I sent him the restaurant,
he told me he was thinking more tacos and beer,
not philet mignon. I told him we could change the place,
but he stopped responding. I feel like he thinks I'm
a gold digger or something. Should I pop up with
tacos for him?
Speaker 2 (09:28):
No? So here's what you learned. You guys are not
a good match. You see, this is how you learn.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
The beginning of any new relationship is all about eliminating
those that are inappropriate. If you want to have a
lifetime of tacos and beer, then yeah, chase him down.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
That's going to be it.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
If you're a philet mignon girl, it's not that he
thinks you're a gold digger. He thinks you're.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Out of his league, and that's okay. You can move.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Along unless you're ready to be tacos and beer and
fast food and get a little billy maybe some hips,
all the fattening food.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
No, you know, if you make more money now.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
I also I want to sort of clarify something here
that we right now in the mating marketplace have an
oversupply of successful women. So you're gonna find ladies that
there are a lot of women making way more money
than men. So the words to the whys here is
probably don't suggest the super expensive restaurants right away and
(10:27):
just see where it goes. Because your idea of a
power man might be a guy who can power a stroller.
Right So maybe you learned don't do Philly Migno right away.
He's not getting back to you, which tells me that
he's lost interest, not because he thinks you're a gold digger,
but because he thinks you're out of his league. Now,
if you really, really, really really like him, then do
what you said pop up with Takos.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
What does that mean?
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Show up? Don't show up like at his house? That
sound stockersh like.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
Well, when you're into somebody and you want to like
prove you know, yep up, like you bring a cake
or a pie.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Or she knows she's going to see him, I guess
she knows where she's going to see him, because I
don't want to be stalkering him or anything. All right,
dear doctor Wendy, I can't stop ruminating on my latest breakup.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Oh I'm sorry about that. It's destroying me mentally.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Oh. What are some healthy hobbies I can start to
alleviate myself. Well, first of all, you need to go
see a therapist because this kind of rumination is chronic anxiety.
It could be related to attachment insecurity, something that happened
early in life.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
I'm not your therapist, but I would say you need
to see a licensed therapist to work through some of
the stuff. From my own personal experience, having recovered from
an anxious attachment style, having spent months and years decades
of my life ruminating over lost men who I couldn't
get back, I will tell you the number one thing
that helped me was exercise. Yeah, just get to the gym,
(11:52):
work out how hard, especially cardio, get those endorphins going.
You'll feel so much better. That's what worked for me.
All right, here's another one, Dear doctor Wendy, I need help. Okay, Well,
thanks for reaching out to me. I am new to
this area and my first meaning new to LA or
new to the area of dating. New to the area
(12:13):
of dating as sind a person.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
What do you think they mean?
Speaker 3 (12:15):
I would assume new to the because I'm new to La.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Okay, okay, La.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
I'm new to La and my first connection was with ooh,
a dangerous person. I want a restraining order. What are
some other ways I can find safety and community in
a new area.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Well, I have to tell you something.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
I have gone to the police a number of times
in my life to ask for restraining orders on people,
often strangers, often somebody I might have had one date
with when I was a young hot woman.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Okay, that's when the stuff happens.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
And they were very clear that it's super hard to
get a restraining order unless somebody physically assaults you, shows
up at your house regularly and you can take pictures
of them, they're et cetera. But if they're on public property,
even then it's hard. Remember in the documentary on Netflix
with the what's the name there?
Speaker 2 (13:01):
The Dutch baby, No no, No, the Duchess and.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
The Prince and Princess are up in Santa Barbara, the
real life ones Harry and Megan.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
So Megan was saying when.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
She was on suits and dating him and she was
filming in Toronto. The you know, thousands of people would
be peering through fences and doing everything she said. In
real life that would be having a stalker, but the
police could do nothing because they were standing on public land.
Speaker 4 (13:27):
Right.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
It's very hard to get a restraining order.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
I have one.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
You do have one on somebody. I do.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
My ex boyfriend. He was he was not okay, he
was dangerous, a dangerous person.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Is he in this state? No, He's in New.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Jersey, thankfully, and I don't think he can afford to
fly to this state greatly. However, getting the restraining order
was very difficult. It took a bunch of different the
order chances. He violated it every single week. I was
at the police department submitting that he violated.
Speaker 5 (13:54):
The only reason he.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Got arrested was because he assaulted another man who I
was dating. So it's hard as a woman out here.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
I hate to tell you this, my love.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
If you ask me how you can find safety and
community when you're in a new area, it may simply
mean if he knows where you live, moving, I'm sorry,
finding a new place, and you may be able to
get out of your lease if you feel threatened, But
you've got and You've got to find new friends through
your work, through the gym, through other kinds of social connections.
(14:24):
But you've got to get healthy people around you so
that you can feel safe.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
That's so scary and a protector.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
You were able to break your lease if you were
if you felt like your life was in danger, So
hopefully California is the same way.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Yeah, I broke my lease and it was no no.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
You know, I'm a landlord and one of the things
I do is criminal background checks on people because if
you know, if you put somebody in your building and
they do some violence on another, I think landlords might
even be able to get sued because the bad person
in there near there.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Yeah, it's so hard.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
It's you know, one of the most vulnerab groups in
our society, our young females, and we need to rally
around them and help keep them safe. And guys, you
need to do that. Walk them to their cars, be
nice to them, be the good guy. You are listening
to the Doctor Wendy wall Show on KFI AM six
forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 4 (15:17):
You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI
AM six forty Welcome back to.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
The Doctor Wendy Wall Show on KFI AM six forty,
Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 4 (15:29):
Well.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
I mentioned at the beginning of the show that I've
got married this weekend and it's very exciting. It's different
depending on what your age is, the kind of partner
you would choose. You know, I've always said a relationship
is an exchange of care. That care can take so
many different forms. It can be emotional support care. It
(15:51):
can be intellectual stimulation care. It can be financial care,
sexual care, domestic care, childcare. It can be all those things. Right,
But as we get older, it gets real because when
till death do us part is.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Spoken, it's you know, potentially authentic.
Speaker 4 (16:09):
Right.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
So gray marriage is something that I feel, having just
gone through, it is a sacred On the other hand,
this is also a time of life for many where
long term marriages culminate. I don't like to say fail,
I don't like to say breakup. I like to say finish,
(16:30):
the work has been done. I wanted to invite a
guest who works with couples all the time, doctor Dana McNeil.
She is an expert in relationships and she really understands
that in our most intimate relationships, we all just want
to be her. She's a therapist practicing in San Diego,
Doctor McNeil, Did I get that right? You did, San Diego.
(16:54):
Thanks for being with us. So let's talk about gray divorce.
First of all, when we talk talk about gray divorce,
we're talking about divorce over the age of forty five fifty.
Speaker 6 (17:04):
The forty five fifty ish, yeah, as we're starting to well,
maybe stop coloring our hair, but we've probably all been
gray for longer than that. But yes, that's typically and
it's about thirty percent of the percentages of divorces across
the board. So it is actually the highest percentage or
of the population of divorce is people over fifty, more
(17:26):
than any other age group. We are seeing that that
is the area where we are getting more and more
divorces occurring.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
So I read a statistic once.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
I don't know if this is accurate when people banter
around that fifty percent divorce rate. It doesn't apply to
every marriage. But you only hit the fifty percent risk
when you've been married more than twenty years, right, So
if you're younger, you're actually more likely to.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Stick it out.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
But it is, so let's talk about why at this time,
what happens in people's individual development and what's happening in
the relationship.
Speaker 5 (18:01):
There's so many reasons.
Speaker 6 (18:03):
I mean. The first is often if a couple has
put all the focus on their children and now they're
empty nesters, that phrase, which is we're finally getting our
children to like get out and like move on.
Speaker 5 (18:15):
With their lives.
Speaker 6 (18:15):
Or they've gone off to college and we haven't developed
our relationship.
Speaker 5 (18:19):
We've just put all of our focus, all of our energy.
Speaker 6 (18:22):
All of our time into taking the kids to soccer practice,
going to rehearsals, getting their lives sorted.
Speaker 5 (18:29):
That's one thing that happens.
Speaker 6 (18:30):
Retirement happens if there's an age gap between you and
your partners.
Speaker 5 (18:34):
Say maybe you married somebody that's five or six.
Speaker 6 (18:36):
Years older than you and ones ready to retire. They
want to go have vacations, they want to go have fun,
and you're still in your career, or you're a business
owner and you're not ready to retire. That can create
differences in the ways that you want to spend your life.
There can also be differences in the way that you
handle sex or the way that you approach sex, or
maybe one of you has problems with sex or doesn't
(18:59):
desire sex the same way that you did anymore, And
so some couples are like, I'm sorry, I'm still in
my sexual prime and I'm not going to be with
somebody that doesn't put a focus on sex. There can
be a lot of reasons, and one of the ones
that I see a lot in my clients is that
we have grown apart right, and there's a we are
in marriages a lot longer than we used to be.
(19:20):
If you think about like back in the day when
we were pioneers, we were dying off at thirty years old.
Speaker 5 (19:25):
Now we're living well into our hundreds.
Speaker 6 (19:27):
If we do this right, and if you say, okay,
your kids are gone and they're out of the house
and you're fifty to fifty five, it's a lot of
time left with somebody that you don't have any common
interests with, that you don't enjoy spending time with. And
one of the things that I see that's the most
painful for me to see in clients is you can
be on the couch with them and still fill alone,
(19:48):
and that is devastating when you have time to think,
I maybe got thirty good years left, and is this
what I want to spend it with?
Speaker 5 (19:55):
With some that I can't even carry on a conversation with.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
So just to say that, because I've all always said
that when they invented the words till death do us part,
death was pretty imminent. And if you got married in
the year nineteen hundred, the average length of that marriage
was about twelve years. And so this idea that we're
supposed to be to find our soulmate in our twenties
and stay with them until our eighties is actually very rare,
(20:20):
isn't it.
Speaker 6 (20:21):
Yeah, And we're asking so much more of our partners
these days. We are asking our partner to be our
best friend, to be that person that wants to go
shoe shopping with us, to be the sexiest person that
I've ever met, and to still be hot and not
be hanging out in yoga pants all day, even though
we went through a pandemic together. To be funny, to
be interesting, to be intell like we ask so much.
(20:42):
We used to ask, like you have child bearing hips
and you can plow a farm, you will do We
ask so much more, and we are coming more and
more to divorce, not because of the four big a's,
which were alcohol, addiction, abandonment, abuse. Right now we're like, well,
you're not as interesting as I likes, aren't have fun
with you. So we're coming up with a lot more
(21:04):
reasons to validate our reasons for divorce as well.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
And I would also add that women's economic rise means
women are putting up with you know, their demands are higher.
They're like, I don't really need you to pay the bills,
so you've got to do all this other stuff now,
and if you're not going to do it, I can
go find somebody else.
Speaker 6 (21:23):
Yeah, they are wanting to have intellectual stimulation. They're wanting
to be partnered. They want their partners to recognize that
you know, this is and there's needs to be a
quality in our relationships. And so it's no longer okay
for a lot of my female clients to just in
their perspective, carry the burden in their relationship, especially in
(21:46):
emotional loads, for like taking care of the things that
go into making a home a home.
Speaker 5 (21:52):
They're not okay with it anymore.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
I do want to say that great divorce isn't always bad, right,
I mean, we're not looking at good and bad here.
It's just sort of a phenomenon. But the pain you
mentioned comes from probably when one person wants to keep
the relationship.
Speaker 6 (22:14):
Yeah, there's pain, or there's a lot of times couples
are I've been letting you know four years that there's
a problem and the other partner has sort of been
having an affair with their job, so the mistress has
been getting the best part of them for a long time.
And then one person will just be like, Okay, I'm
done and they're like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 5 (22:34):
I had no idea, And.
Speaker 6 (22:35):
It's like, well, you kind of were in denial or
maybe you didn't know what to do with it so
you didn't address it.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
And I hate to put a gender on it, but
it's more often that men are blindsided by divorce.
Speaker 5 (22:45):
Right, Yeah, that'd be right. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Now, is there a way to have a healthy, good
gray divorce.
Speaker 6 (22:56):
Sure, I mean, if you still intend to try to
have some sort of friendship and remember that, especially if
you still have children together, you still do have a
common value and you are modeling for your children what
healthy couples ending looks like. Right, It doesn't have to
be something horrific. You can do it with care and
with kindness and with love and hopefully still retain your friendship.
(23:18):
This is a person that's had a lot of milestones
in their life with you, that have been with you
some really rough times. And it's not that you're saying
I don't care about you anymore. I just don't care
to continue forward with you.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
We have to go to a break. But when we
come back. You mentioned something children of adult divorce. Let's
talk about the other people who are involved in gray
divorce and they include adult children, grandchildren and also new
partners who you know, family holidays, what's happening for the future.
Let's talk about this when we come back. My guest
(23:53):
is doctor Dane McNeil in private practice in San Diego.
We are talking about Gray divorce. You're listening to the
Doctor Wendy Wall Show KFI AM six forty. We're live
everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 4 (24:03):
You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI
AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Welcome back to the Doctor Wendy Wall Show on KFI
AM six forty, Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. My
guest doctor Dana McNeil in private practice in San Diego, California,
works with a lot of couples and we're talking about
gray divorce. Hopefully it won't happen, but if it does happen,
just know it's very common, more common than one would think.
(24:31):
All right, doctor McNeil, and we talk about the impact
on adult children, whether they're in their twenties or thirties
or even forties, what the experience is like for them
when the family they've always known is now separated.
Speaker 6 (24:46):
You know, it's mixed. Some kids are like, I'm glad
you guys did this. If you were staying together for me,
you didn't need to write. I've seen you unhappy for
a long time. I've seen you disconnected for a long time.
It's time I appreciate that you stay together until I
got on my feet. Please go live your best life.
Some kids are not that way. They want you to
(25:07):
continue to be that unit because when they come home
on holidays, they want things to be exactly the way
that they always were, and they want their parents to
sort of be frozen in time so that when they
need them, they have that appliance that they can turn on,
which is going to the family home and having everything
be exactly the same.
Speaker 5 (25:23):
So there's different ways.
Speaker 6 (25:26):
That kids show up, and a lot of it is
how much you've been enabling your children to not have
to deal with anything in life. I mean, if you
haven't been modeling for them what healthy couple's communication looks like.
There's the potential that this will catch them off guard
and they don't know how.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
To respond to it right because they learn their relationship
skills from their parents. It's funny you mentioned parents frozen
in time, because we all have this fantasy that our
parents are just sitting at home waiting for us to
come back, that our bedroom will stay the same, that
the food will be the same. I had the sad
event that my mother died of breast cancer when I
was thirty and she was just sixty.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
And I went to the.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Funeral and they are all these young women and replacement
daughters there and they say, oh, I never got out
of the house unless your mother called.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
She was amazing. I loved her, And I was like,
who are all these people? She had friends, She had friends.
Speaker 5 (26:13):
Except for sidea mime.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
But so that is part of it, is that children
have to understand that their parents are humans and have
all the same human needs, all right, let's talk a
little bit about now. Not necessarily that the relationship breaks
up because of an affair, but some people very quickly
are comfortable in couples and they very quickly get into
another relationship, and that can be very confusing, especially you
(26:42):
had talked about earlier. If you spent twenty five or
thirty years together, in every single family holiday together, what
do you do now around the holidays and you have
a new partner.
Speaker 6 (26:52):
Yeah, what you mentioned is statistically more often for men.
The research shows that more often than not, men or
in another relationship, if not mere within a year, and
women are typically two, three, four five years, so there's
a lot more distance. Women tend to want to get
sorted and get their life and men are like, no,
I can't be alone. I need someone to take care
of me and plan my social events. And so I
(27:15):
think having some honest communication about when is it going
to feel like it's too soon, and maybe making an
agreement as the original couple what feels like tolerable for
men being conscious, I mean the male and the female,
which which feels best for us? What do what do
our kids want? And what's realistic for our kids?
Speaker 5 (27:35):
Right?
Speaker 6 (27:35):
And maybe having like a family conversation. How do we
want to break up holidays if it's uncomfortable? Does mom
get Christmas Eve and Dad gets Christmas Day? With new
partners being sort of creative and having some flexibility and
ask telling your kids why it would mean so much
to you if they were willing to help you do
something for yourself, not just for.
Speaker 5 (27:56):
Them all the time in a loving way.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
It's hard for kids to get around their head around
the fact that they're grown up now. I mean, I
think when we're at our parents' presence, we always seem
to be kids again. Yeah, and in that kind of
demanding All right, before we go, some tips of advice.
If you say that a good thirty percent of divorces
happen over the age of fifty, is there anything people
(28:20):
can do to prepare themselves? And by the way, I
had a financial specialist on a few years ago, and
she was saying that divorce actually takes place two to
four years psychologically, two to four years before it's actually filed.
And during that two to four years, men are hiding
money and women are getting plastic surgery.
Speaker 7 (28:42):
Okay, all right, I more see that they're contemplating what
life will look like they're oftentimes fantasizing about what it's
going to be like to live by themselves and not
have to pick up their partner.
Speaker 5 (28:55):
They've been looking at ads for apartments.
Speaker 6 (28:57):
And kind of like visualizing how much they can afford
what their lifestyle will.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
Look like with They're going to get back on friends
that aren't necessarily sure friends. Right. Yeah, I remember, like
one of my friends, I knew she was getting divorced
before she knew she was getting divorced, because I watched
her Instagram change.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
I love every picture used to be always.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
Her and her husband, and then there were a lot
of her alone and looking more sexy than a woman
in her fifties should maybe on Instagram, and then a
bunch of shots of her out with girlfriends all the time.
And I'm like, that girl's had it for divorce, and
lo and behold, it happened. But I knew it beforehand.
Speaker 6 (29:35):
Yes, a lot of mental preparation and rehearsal about what
life is going to be like without them, and maybe
also like how will I handle the holidays? They might
have already had some thoughts about it. A lot of
times when couples are coming in to separate in my office,
the partner that is we call the leaning out partner
that's already planning for the divorce, has already thought well
about how they might want to do it and have
(29:56):
some suggestions.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
So right, so let me ask you this as a
couple's therapy, when couples come for therapy because someone has
brought up divorce in your experience, is the divorce pretty
much eminent? Are they come into couple's therapy really to
try to fix the relationship.
Speaker 6 (30:13):
It depends if you're saying I want a divorce when
you're in the midst of in physiological arousal because you're
in a fight, That is not typically because you want
a divorce. And I often say to my clients, please
don't mention it when you're in the midst of being upset.
If you've gone for like several long walks on the
beach and you've contemplated and you want to come back
and have a conversation in the backyard about how you
(30:34):
can't go on, that's probably more real than I got
mad because you forgot to put gas in my car
and I want a divorce. That's just you're releasing energy
and you're not handling it in a good way versus
I've been thinking about this for a long time, so
it's usually in the context of how it's been brought up,
how responsive the other person is, like they are they
(30:55):
taking you seriously because oftentimes I've heard you say this
so many times.
Speaker 5 (30:59):
I don't even take it seriously anymore.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
Right, it shouldn't be used as a threat and a
weapon or definitely the D word shouldn't come out. Any
parting words for people who feel like their long term
marriage is on the rocks. Any advice.
Speaker 6 (31:15):
About the pros and cons. Every relationship is going to
have things that you don't like. So if these are
deal breakers and you're okay with moving into relationship with
its own set of problems, maybe this is the best
thing for you.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
And sometimes change is good. Thank you so much, doctor
Dana McNeil for joining me on the Doctor Wendy Wall Show.
You guys are in the San Diego area, you can
where can they find you? Do you have a website?
Speaker 6 (31:43):
Yeah? We also do intensives for people around the country
that want to come travel and spend a few days
with us. It's called therapy getaway. And then yes, we
can see anyone in the State of California by telehealth,
or they can come local to my office in San Diego.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Thank you, thanks for being with us, and that brings
this episode of The Doctor Wendy Wall Show to a close.
It is always my pleasure to be with you every
Sunday from seven to nine pm.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
Yeah, I'm a missus now.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
Thanks for 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.
Dr. Wendy Walsh on Demand News
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