October 19, 2025 • 27 mins
Dr. Wendy knows why we are in a crush recession, PLUS is your husband weaponizing incompetence? And how to handle relationships highs and lows on KFIAM-640!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is doctor Wendy Walsh and you're listening to kf
I am six forty the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show on
demand on the iHeartRadio app. You know, I don't think
we ever forget our very first crush. For me, it
was seventh grade. I remember the kid's name was Dave,
(00:21):
and his hair kind of came over his you know,
his side part came over one eye. I don't know.
I was in the seventies and wish I could remember
his last name. It was so important at the time.
He was actually a short, squirrely guy, and I was
a tall, skinny drink of water. And I had such
a crush on him, and so I remember that's all
(00:41):
I could think about, right, And I was all of,
what are you in seventh grade? Twelve? Right, maybe thirteen?
And I would think about him all the time. My
heart would be beating all the time. Funny story though,
apparently I had morals and values, so you know how
you did everything with a buddy back then. So his
best friend asked my best friend out. So the two
(01:05):
of us were out, and what going out meant in
those days is going to a park just after dark.
And we were sitting on a hillside talking. The two
couples were like fifty yards away from each other, so
we had our own little privacy. And then he and
his body around the same time it must have been
on a queue, pulled out from their breast pocket a
(01:29):
little heart shaped locket and we were just blown away.
It was so exciting. So I just couldn't believe it.
This guy who I had a crush on, now I
had a date, and that he gave me this heart
shaped locket. And a couple days later, I was at
school and a busy body, gossipy, jealousy girl came up
(01:51):
to me and said, I'm gonna tell you something, and
this is the truth. He did not pay for that.
He shoplifted it, and I was mortified. I could not
believe that I had stolen merchandise around my neck. I
it was recess. I was in the hallway by my locker,
I remember, and I stormed out to the school yard
(02:14):
where he was standing with a bunch of people, and
I went hey, I yelled at him, and all the
kids stopped and turned like oooh, something's going down, and
out comes Miss Wendy and I looked at him and
all of a sudden, I just took that locket, grabbed
(02:35):
it with my full grasp, and yanked it off my
neck until the chain broke, threw it at him, hit
him right in the chest, fell to the ground, and
I said, you stole this, You're a thief. I refused
to wear stolen merchandise. All the kids were freaked out.
(02:55):
He was mortified, and I stormed back inside. It was
my big dramatic moment, and at that moment, my crush
was over. I was embarrassed that it all happened. I
couldn't believe I had those feelings. Well, recently I was
asked by a journalist this crazy question, which is, why
(03:18):
are we in a crush recession? Oh my god. These
relationship journalists come up with new terms all the time,
A crush recession. Not enough crushes going on. In case
you don't know what a crush is, it is an intense,
but often short lived, emotional and physical attraction toward another person.
It is characterized by idealizing them, thinking they're perfect, and
(03:42):
preoccupation your thoughts constantly thinking about them. But it actually
isn't based on deep knowledge or mutual intimacy. Okay, we
project this a crush is we project, you know, like
people have celebrity crushes, right, They don't know that person,
They just project onto them who they think they might be.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Right.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
So the big features are as I mentioned, idealization. We
think the person is special, perfect and has no flaws,
or the we really minimalize the flaws, minimize the flaws.
We find ourselves having intrusive thoughts, We daydream or ruminate
about somebody. We have emotional highs and lows. When they
(04:22):
notice us, we have a high. When they ignore us,
we have a low. Right, or we find out they're
talking to somebody else, or we saw them with somebody
else on Instagram, we have a low. But it's also
another hallmark is that you have a limited amount of
knowledge about this person, right, but you do get a
(04:43):
lot of physiological arousal. You feel it in your stomach,
your heart, your energy, your nervousness when thinking about this person.
That is what a true crush is. So why are
people having fewer and fewer crushes? Something that I think
(05:03):
doctor Helen Fisher wants called a dopam energetic reward system
dopamine energetic dopamine energetic reward system. So when I ever
consider any human behavior or any human experience. As you know,
if you've been listening to me for a while, I
(05:24):
always think of it in terms as biological, psychological, and sociological.
So biologically this is an easy one. As we age,
hormones go down. The crushes of our past live in
our past because of our immature brain and our surges
of emotion, surges of hormones. Right, the height of fertility
(05:47):
is our teens and our twenties, and after that reproduction
starts to get a little less urgent. And remember, believe
it or not, evolutionary psychologists would say that it is
to reproduce underlies most romantic crushes, even if it's completely unconscious. Right,
So part of this crush recession is that this relationship
(06:09):
journalist is in her thirties interviewing women in their thirties
and forties, and yeah, we get a little smarter. So
from a psychological perspective, hey, what comes with age. But
wisdom and wisdom makes people think back on those heady
surges of neurohormones that came with their early crushes and
(06:30):
then they consider what happened, Right, how'd that work out
for you? What was the eventual outcome. So I think
psychologically people become a little more rational and cautious when
making decisions about their love life right as they get older.
From a sociological perspective, there is this idea that crushes
(06:53):
belong to the young. A crush is youthful enthusiasm that
would kind of seem foolish for an adult to exhibit.
What I know, what I'm pretty sure of at least,
is that not having crushes doesn't mean you had early
childhood trauma and all that. In fact, it's usually the opposite.
(07:16):
People who have had trauma in their early life when
it comes to their intimate relationships tend to rush back
to the scene of the crime with a compulsion to repeat. Right,
So it looks like immature love or a crush, but
it's a repulsion to repeat their trauma as they're trying
to work things out. I think the decline in adult
(07:39):
crushes is mostly hormones and wisdom, and also love opportunity.
We have too many opportunities to meet too many mates,
so it becomes a blur. It's not like you find
this one person that's the big standout. Our brain is fuzzy,
is we're trapped in this paradox of choice thing. So
(08:02):
do I think crushes could be good? Yes, but not
if it makes you make major life decisions before you've
done an evaluation. But having a nice little surge of
hormones or a little butterflies in your stomach, well, sometimes
that's anxiety. But sometimes a little butterfly can help the
bond at the beginning of those neuro hormones. But if
(08:24):
it doesn't exist, that doesn't mean that you're not compatible.
It doesn't mean that you don't have love between each other.
It's just a different kind of love. It's a mature, committed,
intellectual love. Hey, after that lust phase comes the cost
benefit analysis phase, followed by the decision phase. Time to
(08:49):
make a decision. So anyway, I think crushes are overrated.
I really do. Hey, when we come back, is your
husband or your wife, or your boyfriend or your girlfriend
using weaponized incompetence against you? Ooh, I'm gonna explain this
(09:09):
when we come back.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
You're listening to doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI
AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
You know, recently I was asked by a journalist I
don't remember which magazine, website, newspaper, I don't know the
every day. One of my uh, one of the companies
I work with is called Datingadvice dot Com and I'm
an ambassador for them, and when they get requests from
media to provide information on the science of love, they
(09:40):
reach out to me to provide quotes. So I got
a request last week about a subject called weaponized incompetence.
I love how these relationship journalists come up with just
interesting language for old fashioned stuff. Right, So, what weaponized
(10:02):
incompetence supposedly is, it's when somebody in your relationship pretends
to be really bad at some kind of task, or
maybe exaggerates their inability, and they're doing it because they
hope someone else will do it for them. If it's
(10:24):
really taken at face value, like incompetence used as a weapon,
it can be a form of manipulation. It certainly can
be a form of avoidance. It's seen not only in
our love relationships, but oh I bet you see it
at your workplace all the time, getting other people to
(10:45):
do the work. You see those co workers. They seem lazy, helpless, incompetent,
but mainly it's just lazy. You know, years and years
ago I had just moved into the place that I
had bought, and my brother and his friend came to
visit to help me do things like, you know, hang
towel racks, install the dryer, you know, put a dimmer
(11:08):
switch in the dining room, all kinds of little things.
And they told me I needed some tools, and I
needed a drill, and so they were trying to show
me these things, but I had literally no interest. I
was a very busy barbie working in the TV business,
and I did not want to hold a drill. I
did not want to figure out any of this stuff.
(11:29):
Jump forward like thirty years now, where I've been a
landlady for years. I Am not calling a plumber. Okay,
I can change a flapper. I can I'm plugging toilet
I could do okay, that's now. Back then, I feigned helplessness.
It was a little weaponized incompetence. I say, can't. I
don't know how. I'm afraid of the drill. Oh no,
could it break my fingernail? I don't know. So when
(11:53):
my brother's friend, Mark, I remember, left just before they
went back to Ottawa, Canada, Mark me over to one
towel ring that was hanging in my bathroom, and he said,
do you notice that I left this a little loose
and here's the tiny screwdriver. Do you notice at the
bottom there's a little screw I never noticed these things
in my life. And you can just turn it, and
(12:15):
I want you to tighten it. Now. I'm going to
catch my plane, and when I come back to visit,
I want to see that snug on the wall. All right,
So they come back two years later. Mark did not forget.
He walked right back to my bathroom, and he was
appalled to see that the towel ring was still loosey
goosey on the wall. It had functioned. Okay, it worked,
(12:38):
But I want to tell you something. A few weeks
ago I fully overcame it. Julio and I were putting
together a shelf for my closet, you know, one of
those in your closet designed things. And it took two
people because you had to hold the thing, and then
you get the screw going with one hand while you're
(12:58):
still holding the other, and then you need somebody else
to hold the drill. He didn't even pause for a
second and go, hey, do you know how to hold
the drill? Would you mind doing none? Of that as
he's holding the thing, goes here, take the drill, do it,
and I just started doing it because he didn't question
my ability. He just assumed I could do it, right,
(13:20):
So there you go. Now, apparently I am a queen
with the drill because I wasn't allowed to use weaponized incompetence.
So let me say this, how can you tell? How
can you tell if somebody is genuinely not sure how
to do something? It might even be like cooking and
(13:40):
cleaning whatever laundry versus they're trying to make you do it.
So I always say, it's easy, just teach them. And
there was my friend Mark teaching me, and I still
didn't do it, and it was just a simple little screw.
So clearly that was my weaponized incompetence, right, I had
no interest in learning. So some of the signs might be,
(14:04):
let's say your partner's mom told you that that partner
had done it at home in their own home growing up,
and now all of a sudden forgot how to do it,
or what if you've seen them do it once before
and they're like, all of a sudden, you forgot how
to do it. Maybe they're proficient at a similar task.
Like there are dudes out there who say they can't cook,
(14:27):
but boy, when you fire up that grill, all of
a sudden, they know how to grill. But they look
very confused when they look at a stove, right. I
do want to say this though, It's really important to
understand why your partner dislikes a particular task. It could
be a negative memory from their childhood. For instance, I
(14:48):
grew up in a household with terrible gender roles, conforming
confining gender roles. I was the only daughter. I was
forced to do dishes with my mother after dinner while
I watched my brothers play outside the kitchen window. Today,
I happened to have chosen a husband who loves to
(15:10):
do dishes. So I sometimes relax with my glass of
wine after dinner, chatting with him and just watching him
clean up. And I'm so happy. You know. Years ago,
I lived with a man whose father had been a plumber. Now,
he told me that he was forced from a very
(15:32):
young age to be an apprentice to be an assistant
to his dad, and his dad was a licensed plumber,
and he went along every job and he had to
do the dirty work. So when I lived with him.
Could I get this dude to unclog a drain? No way,
But it was because it brought up so many bad
memories for him. Right, So it's important to understand the why,
(15:54):
and sometimes we have to learn to just accept each other. Right,
we can discuss the imbalance in our so called shared responsibilities.
We might find another way to distribute the work. Please remember,
no matter what relationship you're in, it's not your job
to change anyone. It's your job to understand them and
(16:16):
adapt to them and accept them or get out right
they're a human. Now, having said that, if someone is
burdening you with the lion's share of work in the house,
all you need to do is set a boundary. And remember,
a boundary is not a request. Everyone thinks a boundaries request.
You know what, I'm going to set up a boundary.
(16:39):
I'm going to ask you that you need to do laundry.
It's not a boundary. A boundary is a consequence. So
after you explain to them clearly what you want their
contributions to be, you should then think up a logical consequence.
Laundry is actually a great idea because you simply say, hey,
from now on, I'm gonna have my own little laundry
(17:01):
basket in my closet. I'm just gonna do mine, okay,
And you just let their laundry build up. If you've
been doing it for them and they're not wanting to
do the family's laundry, then way they get all frustrated
because they have no clean socks or underwear, right, or
they can't find a clean mug for their coffee. Let
it build up, right. But do remember, a boundary is
(17:23):
not about changing somebody. It's about changing your reaction to them. Hey,
when we come back, have you had these thoughts in
your marriage or your relationship, like, have I made the
right decision? I'm not really happy in this relationship and
then kind of the thought goes away. Did you know
that's totally normal. We need to talk about this when
(17:44):
we come back.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
You're listening to doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI
AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
You know, when you're in a long term relationship. You
probably know this. If you're in a long term relationship,
not like madly in love with your significant other all
the time, right, there's kind of ups and downs. And
I want you to know that even people in the
most secure connected relationships, you know, have moments where they're like, uh,
(18:16):
I'm in the right place. Is this the right person
for me? So here's some new research that I found
very interesting. A partner's satisfaction with their relationship can vary
a lot over the course of several days and even
(18:38):
in the course of a single day. Okay, So these
are results found by a new psychological study on short
term satisfaction in romantic relationships. It was recently foolished in
the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Here's the interesting thing. Okay,
first of all, when I read that and I started
reading the data in the study, I was like, Okay,
(18:59):
we're all off the home for having those moments where
we're like, oh my god, did I do the right thing?
Am I with the right person? Right? So we're off
the hook. There we go. But when I read a
little further, I found something else that the fluctuations, the
ups and the downs, that I love you, I hate
you kind of stuff tended to be synchronized between partners.
(19:23):
So if one person was having thoughts of why am
I here, the other person was having the same thoughts.
And so the researchers asked the question like, why, what
is the factor that's making this happen? And it's called
perceived responsiveness of a partner. That means how well a
partner recognizes, understands, and responds to your needs influences your satisfaction.
(19:46):
So let me give you an example. So let's say
you wake up one morning and you're exhausted. You had
a really bad day the day before. The traffic was bad,
the kids were home sick, and you still had to
work from home and it was hard. And then when
your significant other came in, they demanded food and they
were grumpy because they had a bad day. So you
(20:08):
wake up the next morning going why am I here?
I have a partner who doesn't even seem to help,
And you kind of stomp around a bit and you
get a little bit snitty. Maybe close the kitchen cabin
at doors a little too loud right now. If you
have a partner who says, hey, what's up? I'm sorry?
(20:28):
Did you have a bad day? How can I make
it up to you today? Do you want to talk?
Is there some things I can take off your to
do list today? Is there a way I can help you?
That's called your partner's responsiveness. A positive response. Right. If,
on the other hand, they hear you slamming those kitchen
doors and stomping around and they respond by doing the
(20:50):
same thing, then you are now synchronized in your negativity. Right. Oh,
I should also say and in a minute, I'm gonna
tell you how you can flip it. But I should
also say that. The searchers also found that if one
partner is generally emotionally unstable, meaning they don't have the
ability to manage their feelings, their feelings feel I don't
(21:14):
know what the word is like out of control, they
don't know how to turn it into words, they don't
know how to turn it into positive behaviors. They act
out when they have these Well, those partners have much
larger swings in their relationship satisfaction obviously. All right, now,
here's the takeaway for all of us. Short term dips
(21:38):
don't mean that the relationship is in major trouble right now.
If you have recurring big drops that go on for
weeks and months, yeah, I mean you're like, why am
I here? Right, And they're deeper issues that maybe you
haven't addressed, But I mean just a general up and down.
You know, my husband or wife is driving me crazy.
Right now, I need a little break. That's normal, absolutely typical,
(22:01):
absolutely normal now because, as I've just established, partner responsiveness
plays a really big role. If you instead can focus
on how you respond to each other's emotional needs, it
can help stabilize and improve the situation. Right and also
(22:22):
recognizing that when you're in a downturn, like in a dip,
they're probably in it too. So one of you has
to take the high road. One of you has to
emotionally regulate because it helps the other person emotionally regulate,
all right. That means learning some relationship skills and some
(22:43):
emotional intelligent skills. So here's an example. I do a
check in with my body because when I have a
feeling that's negative, it tends to come out of my stomach.
I feel like a kind of grumbly feeling or a
surge of adrenaline or fear. Their naws you. There's something
going on with my stomach. And rather than me just
(23:05):
ignoring it and acting out, I stop. I take a
few deep breaths, and I talked to my stomach okay,
and I just go, hey, what's going on? And then
I remember a conversation I had with someone or something
that somebody said or did to me that hurt my feelings,
and I'm like okay, and then I think it out
and I rationalize it through my head. You know, they
(23:26):
probably didn't mean it. They're probably just busy, or they've
been whatever, right, or this really relates to what happened
to me early in life, and now it's just a repeat.
So that's why I'm more injured than the average person.
I mean, I literally process it now. I've learned a
process because I did eighteen years of therapy, right, so
I have I'm lucky that I happen to have tremendous insight.
(23:47):
But you can learn it. All these skills can be
learned bit by bit. So let's talk about actions you
can take within your relationship. Check in regularly, literally with
how are you doing? How is your day? What do
we need in our relationship? Right? And when your partner
(24:10):
says something negative or that they had something bad happen
to them, or they think there's something bad with a relationship,
don't dismiss them, don't argue it. I will say, I
love my Julio, but he is a dude, and one
of his biggest errors in our relationship is he will
go yeah, but you know you have no reason to
really feel that way because ya da da da da.
(24:31):
And he tries to like challenge my feelings, and of
course I always say, don't challenge my feelings. Just give
me empathy. That's what I need right now. So you
might say things like ooh, that's hard, or I hear you,
or how can I help you right now? What kind
of support can I give you? It sounds like you
need to support, right, that's all you say. That is
(24:52):
not you losing in a battle. It's not you becoming
so vulnerable that you've lost yourself. It's you just saying, hey, babe,
I'm here, what can I do to help you? And
also just notice notice emotional dips. If your partner's feeling
down or dissatisfied, please do not ignore it. These How
are these are how things fester? Right? And when somebody
(25:17):
is in a happy mood, reward it, endorse it, love it,
say oh my god, it's so great to see you's
so happy. I remember when we were first dating, we
used to laugh like this all the time. Isn't this great? Right?
And you've got to support your own emotional stability then
you know how you have to do it. You listen
to me. Our emotions scary for you. Do you blow
up for no reason and you don't know why. Get
(25:39):
enough rest, manage the stress sores that are outside your relationship,
don't bring them home if it's work or whatever, and
just start to become aware how your mood can affect
other people. Just saying so, don't think it's all over
just because you've had thoughts of why am I here?
(25:59):
Every couple has dips on the regular ups and downs,
but then they feed each other and they start to
become synchronous. So somebody's got to learn to take the
high road, which means learn how to manage your own
feelings and learn how to support the other. It is
an ongoing people say relationships or work, that's it. It's
(26:19):
an ongoing journey where with the two of you can
accomplish together is way bigger than anything you can do
as an individual. So invest in your relationship in the
most expensive thing you have, your time, your energy, and
your feelings. Yeah, my favorite f word, feelings. Hey, that
(26:44):
brings the doctor Wendy waalh show to a close reminder
to everybody. Follow me on social media I post videos
nearly every day at Dr Wendy Walsh at Doctor Wendy Walsh,
but I'm always here for you every Sunday from seven
to nine pm. It is my pleasure to way in
with the science of love. You've been listening to Doctor
(27:05):
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 kf
I am six forty the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show on
demand on the iHeartRadio app. You know, I don't think
we ever forget our very first crush. For me, it
was seventh grade. I remember the kid's name was Dave,
(00:21):
and his hair kind of came over his you know,
his side part came over one eye. I don't know.
I was in the seventies and wish I could remember
his last name. It was so important at the time.
He was actually a short, squirrely guy, and I was
a tall, skinny drink of water. And I had such
a crush on him, and so I remember that's all
(00:41):
I could think about, right, And I was all of,
what are you in seventh grade? Twelve? Right, maybe thirteen?
And I would think about him all the time. My
heart would be beating all the time. Funny story though,
apparently I had morals and values, so you know how
you did everything with a buddy back then. So his
best friend asked my best friend out. So the two
(01:05):
of us were out, and what going out meant in
those days is going to a park just after dark.
And we were sitting on a hillside talking. The two
couples were like fifty yards away from each other, so
we had our own little privacy. And then he and
his body around the same time it must have been
on a queue, pulled out from their breast pocket a
(01:29):
little heart shaped locket and we were just blown away.
It was so exciting. So I just couldn't believe it.
This guy who I had a crush on, now I
had a date, and that he gave me this heart
shaped locket. And a couple days later, I was at
school and a busy body, gossipy, jealousy girl came up
(01:51):
to me and said, I'm gonna tell you something, and
this is the truth. He did not pay for that.
He shoplifted it, and I was mortified. I could not
believe that I had stolen merchandise around my neck. I
it was recess. I was in the hallway by my locker,
I remember, and I stormed out to the school yard
(02:14):
where he was standing with a bunch of people, and
I went hey, I yelled at him, and all the
kids stopped and turned like oooh, something's going down, and
out comes Miss Wendy and I looked at him and
all of a sudden, I just took that locket, grabbed
(02:35):
it with my full grasp, and yanked it off my
neck until the chain broke, threw it at him, hit
him right in the chest, fell to the ground, and
I said, you stole this, You're a thief. I refused
to wear stolen merchandise. All the kids were freaked out.
(02:55):
He was mortified, and I stormed back inside. It was
my big dramatic moment, and at that moment, my crush
was over. I was embarrassed that it all happened. I
couldn't believe I had those feelings. Well, recently I was
asked by a journalist this crazy question, which is, why
(03:18):
are we in a crush recession? Oh my god. These
relationship journalists come up with new terms all the time,
A crush recession. Not enough crushes going on. In case
you don't know what a crush is, it is an intense,
but often short lived, emotional and physical attraction toward another person.
It is characterized by idealizing them, thinking they're perfect, and
(03:42):
preoccupation your thoughts constantly thinking about them. But it actually
isn't based on deep knowledge or mutual intimacy. Okay, we
project this a crush is we project, you know, like
people have celebrity crushes, right, They don't know that person,
They just project onto them who they think they might be.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Right.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
So the big features are as I mentioned, idealization. We
think the person is special, perfect and has no flaws,
or the we really minimalize the flaws, minimize the flaws.
We find ourselves having intrusive thoughts, We daydream or ruminate
about somebody. We have emotional highs and lows. When they
(04:22):
notice us, we have a high. When they ignore us,
we have a low. Right, or we find out they're
talking to somebody else, or we saw them with somebody
else on Instagram, we have a low. But it's also
another hallmark is that you have a limited amount of
knowledge about this person, right, but you do get a
(04:43):
lot of physiological arousal. You feel it in your stomach,
your heart, your energy, your nervousness when thinking about this person.
That is what a true crush is. So why are
people having fewer and fewer crushes? Something that I think
(05:03):
doctor Helen Fisher wants called a dopam energetic reward system
dopamine energetic dopamine energetic reward system. So when I ever
consider any human behavior or any human experience. As you know,
if you've been listening to me for a while, I
(05:24):
always think of it in terms as biological, psychological, and sociological.
So biologically this is an easy one. As we age,
hormones go down. The crushes of our past live in
our past because of our immature brain and our surges
of emotion, surges of hormones. Right, the height of fertility
(05:47):
is our teens and our twenties, and after that reproduction
starts to get a little less urgent. And remember, believe
it or not, evolutionary psychologists would say that it is
to reproduce underlies most romantic crushes, even if it's completely unconscious. Right,
So part of this crush recession is that this relationship
(06:09):
journalist is in her thirties interviewing women in their thirties
and forties, and yeah, we get a little smarter. So
from a psychological perspective, hey, what comes with age. But
wisdom and wisdom makes people think back on those heady
surges of neurohormones that came with their early crushes and
(06:30):
then they consider what happened, Right, how'd that work out
for you? What was the eventual outcome. So I think
psychologically people become a little more rational and cautious when
making decisions about their love life right as they get older.
From a sociological perspective, there is this idea that crushes
(06:53):
belong to the young. A crush is youthful enthusiasm that
would kind of seem foolish for an adult to exhibit.
What I know, what I'm pretty sure of at least,
is that not having crushes doesn't mean you had early
childhood trauma and all that. In fact, it's usually the opposite.
(07:16):
People who have had trauma in their early life when
it comes to their intimate relationships tend to rush back
to the scene of the crime with a compulsion to repeat. Right,
So it looks like immature love or a crush, but
it's a repulsion to repeat their trauma as they're trying
to work things out. I think the decline in adult
(07:39):
crushes is mostly hormones and wisdom, and also love opportunity.
We have too many opportunities to meet too many mates,
so it becomes a blur. It's not like you find
this one person that's the big standout. Our brain is fuzzy,
is we're trapped in this paradox of choice thing. So
(08:02):
do I think crushes could be good? Yes, but not
if it makes you make major life decisions before you've
done an evaluation. But having a nice little surge of
hormones or a little butterflies in your stomach, well, sometimes
that's anxiety. But sometimes a little butterfly can help the
bond at the beginning of those neuro hormones. But if
(08:24):
it doesn't exist, that doesn't mean that you're not compatible.
It doesn't mean that you don't have love between each other.
It's just a different kind of love. It's a mature, committed,
intellectual love. Hey, after that lust phase comes the cost
benefit analysis phase, followed by the decision phase. Time to
(08:49):
make a decision. So anyway, I think crushes are overrated.
I really do. Hey, when we come back, is your
husband or your wife, or your boyfriend or your girlfriend
using weaponized incompetence against you? Ooh, I'm gonna explain this
(09:09):
when we come back.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
You're listening to doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI
AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
You know, recently I was asked by a journalist I
don't remember which magazine, website, newspaper, I don't know the
every day. One of my uh, one of the companies
I work with is called Datingadvice dot Com and I'm
an ambassador for them, and when they get requests from
media to provide information on the science of love, they
(09:40):
reach out to me to provide quotes. So I got
a request last week about a subject called weaponized incompetence.
I love how these relationship journalists come up with just
interesting language for old fashioned stuff. Right, So, what weaponized
(10:02):
incompetence supposedly is, it's when somebody in your relationship pretends
to be really bad at some kind of task, or
maybe exaggerates their inability, and they're doing it because they
hope someone else will do it for them. If it's
(10:24):
really taken at face value, like incompetence used as a weapon,
it can be a form of manipulation. It certainly can
be a form of avoidance. It's seen not only in
our love relationships, but oh I bet you see it
at your workplace all the time, getting other people to
(10:45):
do the work. You see those co workers. They seem lazy, helpless, incompetent,
but mainly it's just lazy. You know, years and years
ago I had just moved into the place that I
had bought, and my brother and his friend came to
visit to help me do things like, you know, hang
towel racks, install the dryer, you know, put a dimmer
(11:08):
switch in the dining room, all kinds of little things.
And they told me I needed some tools, and I
needed a drill, and so they were trying to show
me these things, but I had literally no interest. I
was a very busy barbie working in the TV business,
and I did not want to hold a drill. I
did not want to figure out any of this stuff.
(11:29):
Jump forward like thirty years now, where I've been a
landlady for years. I Am not calling a plumber. Okay,
I can change a flapper. I can I'm plugging toilet
I could do okay, that's now. Back then, I feigned helplessness.
It was a little weaponized incompetence. I say, can't. I
don't know how. I'm afraid of the drill. Oh no,
could it break my fingernail? I don't know. So when
(11:53):
my brother's friend, Mark, I remember, left just before they
went back to Ottawa, Canada, Mark me over to one
towel ring that was hanging in my bathroom, and he said,
do you notice that I left this a little loose
and here's the tiny screwdriver. Do you notice at the
bottom there's a little screw I never noticed these things
in my life. And you can just turn it, and
(12:15):
I want you to tighten it. Now. I'm going to
catch my plane, and when I come back to visit,
I want to see that snug on the wall. All right,
So they come back two years later. Mark did not forget.
He walked right back to my bathroom, and he was
appalled to see that the towel ring was still loosey
goosey on the wall. It had functioned. Okay, it worked,
(12:38):
But I want to tell you something. A few weeks
ago I fully overcame it. Julio and I were putting
together a shelf for my closet, you know, one of
those in your closet designed things. And it took two
people because you had to hold the thing, and then
you get the screw going with one hand while you're
(12:58):
still holding the other, and then you need somebody else
to hold the drill. He didn't even pause for a
second and go, hey, do you know how to hold
the drill? Would you mind doing none? Of that as
he's holding the thing, goes here, take the drill, do it,
and I just started doing it because he didn't question
my ability. He just assumed I could do it, right,
(13:20):
So there you go. Now, apparently I am a queen
with the drill because I wasn't allowed to use weaponized incompetence.
So let me say this, how can you tell? How
can you tell if somebody is genuinely not sure how
to do something? It might even be like cooking and
(13:40):
cleaning whatever laundry versus they're trying to make you do it.
So I always say, it's easy, just teach them. And
there was my friend Mark teaching me, and I still
didn't do it, and it was just a simple little screw.
So clearly that was my weaponized incompetence, right, I had
no interest in learning. So some of the signs might be,
(14:04):
let's say your partner's mom told you that that partner
had done it at home in their own home growing up,
and now all of a sudden forgot how to do it,
or what if you've seen them do it once before
and they're like, all of a sudden, you forgot how
to do it. Maybe they're proficient at a similar task.
Like there are dudes out there who say they can't cook,
(14:27):
but boy, when you fire up that grill, all of
a sudden, they know how to grill. But they look
very confused when they look at a stove, right. I
do want to say this though, It's really important to
understand why your partner dislikes a particular task. It could
be a negative memory from their childhood. For instance, I
(14:48):
grew up in a household with terrible gender roles, conforming
confining gender roles. I was the only daughter. I was
forced to do dishes with my mother after dinner while
I watched my brothers play outside the kitchen window. Today,
I happened to have chosen a husband who loves to
(15:10):
do dishes. So I sometimes relax with my glass of
wine after dinner, chatting with him and just watching him
clean up. And I'm so happy. You know. Years ago,
I lived with a man whose father had been a plumber. Now,
he told me that he was forced from a very
(15:32):
young age to be an apprentice to be an assistant
to his dad, and his dad was a licensed plumber,
and he went along every job and he had to
do the dirty work. So when I lived with him.
Could I get this dude to unclog a drain? No way,
But it was because it brought up so many bad
memories for him. Right, So it's important to understand the why,
(15:54):
and sometimes we have to learn to just accept each other. Right,
we can discuss the imbalance in our so called shared responsibilities.
We might find another way to distribute the work. Please remember,
no matter what relationship you're in, it's not your job
to change anyone. It's your job to understand them and
(16:16):
adapt to them and accept them or get out right
they're a human. Now, having said that, if someone is
burdening you with the lion's share of work in the house,
all you need to do is set a boundary. And remember,
a boundary is not a request. Everyone thinks a boundaries request.
You know what, I'm going to set up a boundary.
(16:39):
I'm going to ask you that you need to do laundry.
It's not a boundary. A boundary is a consequence. So
after you explain to them clearly what you want their
contributions to be, you should then think up a logical consequence.
Laundry is actually a great idea because you simply say, hey,
from now on, I'm gonna have my own little laundry
(17:01):
basket in my closet. I'm just gonna do mine, okay,
And you just let their laundry build up. If you've
been doing it for them and they're not wanting to
do the family's laundry, then way they get all frustrated
because they have no clean socks or underwear, right, or
they can't find a clean mug for their coffee. Let
it build up, right. But do remember, a boundary is
(17:23):
not about changing somebody. It's about changing your reaction to them. Hey,
when we come back, have you had these thoughts in
your marriage or your relationship, like, have I made the
right decision? I'm not really happy in this relationship and
then kind of the thought goes away. Did you know
that's totally normal. We need to talk about this when
(17:44):
we come back.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
You're listening to doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI
AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
You know, when you're in a long term relationship. You
probably know this. If you're in a long term relationship,
not like madly in love with your significant other all
the time, right, there's kind of ups and downs. And
I want you to know that even people in the
most secure connected relationships, you know, have moments where they're like, uh,
(18:16):
I'm in the right place. Is this the right person
for me? So here's some new research that I found
very interesting. A partner's satisfaction with their relationship can vary
a lot over the course of several days and even
(18:38):
in the course of a single day. Okay, So these
are results found by a new psychological study on short
term satisfaction in romantic relationships. It was recently foolished in
the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Here's the interesting thing. Okay,
first of all, when I read that and I started
reading the data in the study, I was like, Okay,
(18:59):
we're all off the home for having those moments where
we're like, oh my god, did I do the right thing?
Am I with the right person? Right? So we're off
the hook. There we go. But when I read a
little further, I found something else that the fluctuations, the
ups and the downs, that I love you, I hate
you kind of stuff tended to be synchronized between partners.
(19:23):
So if one person was having thoughts of why am
I here, the other person was having the same thoughts.
And so the researchers asked the question like, why, what
is the factor that's making this happen? And it's called
perceived responsiveness of a partner. That means how well a
partner recognizes, understands, and responds to your needs influences your satisfaction.
(19:46):
So let me give you an example. So let's say
you wake up one morning and you're exhausted. You had
a really bad day the day before. The traffic was bad,
the kids were home sick, and you still had to
work from home and it was hard. And then when
your significant other came in, they demanded food and they
were grumpy because they had a bad day. So you
(20:08):
wake up the next morning going why am I here?
I have a partner who doesn't even seem to help,
And you kind of stomp around a bit and you
get a little bit snitty. Maybe close the kitchen cabin
at doors a little too loud right now. If you
have a partner who says, hey, what's up? I'm sorry?
(20:28):
Did you have a bad day? How can I make
it up to you today? Do you want to talk?
Is there some things I can take off your to
do list today? Is there a way I can help you?
That's called your partner's responsiveness. A positive response. Right. If,
on the other hand, they hear you slamming those kitchen
doors and stomping around and they respond by doing the
(20:50):
same thing, then you are now synchronized in your negativity. Right. Oh,
I should also say and in a minute, I'm gonna
tell you how you can flip it. But I should
also say that. The searchers also found that if one
partner is generally emotionally unstable, meaning they don't have the
ability to manage their feelings, their feelings feel I don't
(21:14):
know what the word is like out of control, they
don't know how to turn it into words, they don't
know how to turn it into positive behaviors. They act
out when they have these Well, those partners have much
larger swings in their relationship satisfaction obviously. All right, now,
here's the takeaway for all of us. Short term dips
(21:38):
don't mean that the relationship is in major trouble right now.
If you have recurring big drops that go on for
weeks and months, yeah, I mean you're like, why am
I here? Right, And they're deeper issues that maybe you
haven't addressed, But I mean just a general up and down.
You know, my husband or wife is driving me crazy.
Right now, I need a little break. That's normal, absolutely typical,
(22:01):
absolutely normal now because, as I've just established, partner responsiveness
plays a really big role. If you instead can focus
on how you respond to each other's emotional needs, it
can help stabilize and improve the situation. Right and also
(22:22):
recognizing that when you're in a downturn, like in a dip,
they're probably in it too. So one of you has
to take the high road. One of you has to
emotionally regulate because it helps the other person emotionally regulate,
all right. That means learning some relationship skills and some
(22:43):
emotional intelligent skills. So here's an example. I do a
check in with my body because when I have a
feeling that's negative, it tends to come out of my stomach.
I feel like a kind of grumbly feeling or a
surge of adrenaline or fear. Their naws you. There's something
going on with my stomach. And rather than me just
(23:05):
ignoring it and acting out, I stop. I take a
few deep breaths, and I talked to my stomach okay,
and I just go, hey, what's going on? And then
I remember a conversation I had with someone or something
that somebody said or did to me that hurt my feelings,
and I'm like okay, and then I think it out
and I rationalize it through my head. You know, they
(23:26):
probably didn't mean it. They're probably just busy, or they've
been whatever, right, or this really relates to what happened
to me early in life, and now it's just a repeat.
So that's why I'm more injured than the average person.
I mean, I literally process it now. I've learned a
process because I did eighteen years of therapy, right, so
I have I'm lucky that I happen to have tremendous insight.
(23:47):
But you can learn it. All these skills can be
learned bit by bit. So let's talk about actions you
can take within your relationship. Check in regularly, literally with
how are you doing? How is your day? What do
we need in our relationship? Right? And when your partner
(24:10):
says something negative or that they had something bad happen
to them, or they think there's something bad with a relationship,
don't dismiss them, don't argue it. I will say, I
love my Julio, but he is a dude, and one
of his biggest errors in our relationship is he will
go yeah, but you know you have no reason to
really feel that way because ya da da da da.
(24:31):
And he tries to like challenge my feelings, and of
course I always say, don't challenge my feelings. Just give
me empathy. That's what I need right now. So you
might say things like ooh, that's hard, or I hear you,
or how can I help you right now? What kind
of support can I give you? It sounds like you
need to support, right, that's all you say. That is
(24:52):
not you losing in a battle. It's not you becoming
so vulnerable that you've lost yourself. It's you just saying, hey, babe,
I'm here, what can I do to help you? And
also just notice notice emotional dips. If your partner's feeling
down or dissatisfied, please do not ignore it. These How
are these are how things fester? Right? And when somebody
(25:17):
is in a happy mood, reward it, endorse it, love it,
say oh my god, it's so great to see you's
so happy. I remember when we were first dating, we
used to laugh like this all the time. Isn't this great? Right?
And you've got to support your own emotional stability then
you know how you have to do it. You listen
to me. Our emotions scary for you. Do you blow
up for no reason and you don't know why. Get
(25:39):
enough rest, manage the stress sores that are outside your relationship,
don't bring them home if it's work or whatever, and
just start to become aware how your mood can affect
other people. Just saying so, don't think it's all over
just because you've had thoughts of why am I here?
(25:59):
Every couple has dips on the regular ups and downs,
but then they feed each other and they start to
become synchronous. So somebody's got to learn to take the
high road, which means learn how to manage your own
feelings and learn how to support the other. It is
an ongoing people say relationships or work, that's it. It's
(26:19):
an ongoing journey where with the two of you can
accomplish together is way bigger than anything you can do
as an individual. So invest in your relationship in the
most expensive thing you have, your time, your energy, and
your feelings. Yeah, my favorite f word, feelings. Hey, that
(26:44):
brings the doctor Wendy waalh show to a close reminder
to everybody. Follow me on social media I post videos
nearly every day at Dr Wendy Walsh at Doctor Wendy Walsh,
but I'm always here for you every Sunday from seven
to nine pm. It is my pleasure to way in
with the science of love. You've been listening to Doctor
(27:05):
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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