Dr. Wendy is sharing three toxic relationship habits. We are also talking to Dr. Finkel, author of the bestselling book The All-Or-Nothing Marriage: How the Best Marriages Work—is a professor at Northwestern University, where he has appointments in the psychology department and the Kellogg School of Management. At Northwestern, he also serves as the Morton O. Schapiro Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research and founding co-director of the Center for Enlightened Disagreement. He studies romantic relationships and American politics. In his role as director of Northwestern’s Relationships and Motivation Lab (RAMLAB), he has published ~170 scientific papers and is a Guest Essayist for The New York Times. The Economist declared him “one of the leading lights in the realm of relationship psychology.”
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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 wallsh Show on demand
on the iHeartRadio app. Welcome back to the Doctor Wendy
Wall Show on KFI AM six forty live everywhere on
the iHeartRadio App. All right, I want to add to
my social media because so many people have been dming me.
If you would like to send me a question in
(00:22):
my social media, you may. Instagram is where we check
a lot during the show at Dr Wendy Walsh. At
doctor Wendy Walsh's a handle. All right, here we go.
First listener, Hey, Doctor Wendy. I met a man in
October and he always kept me at a distance. I
didn't mind because I'm dating multiple people.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Ooh. Anyway, one of my friends.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Which some people may consider a celebrity oo, ran into
this man at a party and my friend talked really
great about me to him. Now he's trying to take
me seriously. Should I be concerned that he started moving
with intention after a celebrity gave him the green light?
(01:06):
There's a lot to unpack here, A lot to unpack here.
All right, So, first of all, he's taking you seriously,
are you have you guys had a conversation about this,
about exclusivity, about anything? And what about all these other
multiple people? There are a lot of people. It sounds
like a party of a relationship here. So first of all,
(01:28):
let me just ask you what do you want? Forget
about what he wants or your multiple people want. What
do you want? I'm thinking that because of this question,
that you actually like him and would like to have
an exclusive, one on one monogamous relationship with him. All right,
So if so, then focus on him. You don't have
(01:50):
to tell him. Focus on him. Should I be concerned
that he started moving with intention after a celebrity gave
him the green light? No, you were just one lucky person. Okay,
you're a lucky lucky person because you know it's great
we gather information about people from all kinds of sources.
He could have run into somebody at a party who
was one of your exes who had bad things to say,
(02:12):
and that would have been terrible.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
So you're good. You're good.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
But ask yourself what you want and move with intention
towards what you want. Dear doctor, Wendy, my close friend
had sex with my new girlfriend. Oh, what oh, back
when they were in high school? Okay, not a big deal,
but they kept it a secret until I told her
(02:37):
I loved her?
Speaker 2 (02:40):
What do you make of this? WHOA?
Speaker 1 (02:43):
All?
Speaker 3 (02:43):
Right?
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Why now?
Speaker 3 (02:46):
So?
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Again? I always have to go back to what do
you want? Would you have preferred that the two.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Of them, your beautiful new girlfriend who you loved a lot,
had sex with your close friend back when they were
in high school? I don't know how many years between
the high school and the now. I don't see your age,
so I don't know if you guys, are you know,
twenty two or thirty two or forty two or fifty two.
I don't know the time would make a difference there,
(03:13):
But would you have preferred that they held that secret?
Speaker 2 (03:17):
I think that would have been worse?
Speaker 3 (03:18):
Right?
Speaker 1 (03:19):
So, now, why did she tell you after you told
her you loved her? I think that's a question for
you to ask her to say, Hey, I've been thinking
about something. When I told you I loved you, then
soon after you revealed that you had sex with so
and so, I'm wondering why you chose to do it then.
(03:40):
Or you could simply say, what did it feel like
when I told you I loved you or what you know.
Just ask, don't try to read the tea leaves. Just
ask people and then you'll know.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
All right.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Moving on, here's a good one from a listener. Hey,
doctor Wendy, I just met a bow and he has
a thirteen year old daughter. I don't care for the
way they speak to each other. I'm too new in
his life to say anything, but I really like him.
When is the appropriate time to say something? Answer?
Speaker 4 (04:12):
Never?
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Never? Okay, they got their own little relationship. And first
of all, sounds like you do not have a thirteen
year old daughter, so you don't know how teenagers talk
and roll their eyes and what they do. So he
is not okay, he's not going to respect you intervening
as a parent and criticizing his parenting. So I'm a
(04:34):
little sensitive to this subject. And I'll tell you why
my daughters talk terribly to me, and many people have
mentioned it. But I'm not in charge of them. I mean,
now they're adults, so it doesn't matter. Now I can
have boundaries and I could leave the room, or I
can say, hey, I don't like that tone of voice,
no dinner for you, whatever. And so it's also to
(04:59):
other people looks bad, but it's actually kind of normal.
Like I don't know, maybe we're just naturally impolite and
that's our way of showing love. It took me years
for me, getting all rattled with my two daughters to say.
I kept saying, oh, you guys, stop arguing, stop fighting
all the time. It drives me crazy that you're bickering
all the time. And they look at me, eyes wide
(05:19):
in shock, and go, we're not bickering. This is how
we communicate. And I realized, oh, that's how it is.
So No, you don't have especially you're new. No no, no, no, no,
you don't care for the way they speak to each other. Wait,
maybe it's the way he's speaking to her that you
don't like, and maybe you're worried he's gonna talk that
(05:42):
way to you someday. Now you have a case. Okay,
Now I'll let you say something like, hey, you know
when you said to your little girl blah blah blah,
it sounded kind of critical and punitive, and you know,
maybe it was something awful, like talking about her body
weight or something like that. You know, so just say
it kind of didn't sit well with me, And I
(06:03):
hope you don't plan on talking to me that way sometime,
right and just say it's sweet like and see what happens.
You have a right to talk about him. You don't
have a right to talk about her. You can't parent her.
All right, I think we have time for one more,
Dear doctor Wendy. What can I conclude from my situationship
cuddling me all night? He can't sleep without touching me
(06:24):
in some way? He wasn't like this before. He's being
more affectionate because he knows I'm dating someone else. I
would like to be with him. How can I use this,
use this to my advantage? Oh, my goodness, the tangled
webs we weave.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
All right?
Speaker 1 (06:44):
What can you conclude from the fact that the person
you're actively seeing and having sex with also wants to
give you affection, that he likes you and he wants more.
But now you're assuming that he's being more affectionate because
he knows you're dating someone else. You know, you guys
(07:05):
only need to have a conversation, all right, What do
you want? You said, I would like to be with him.
I would like to be with him, that's what you wrote,
and not anybody else. Then why are you seeing anybody else?
Are you using it to try to manipulate him? Manipulation's
never good. Honesty's the best policy. First of all, situationships
are very hard to get out of, and they're very
(07:27):
hard to convert. I mean, you can quit them, but
they're very hard to convert, convert into a real relationship.
I'm just saying, so you're gotta have the conversation. Just say, hey,
I like how to cuddle me all night. I'm wondering
if it's happening, because you know I'm seeing somebody else.
Would you like me to not see anybody else?
Speaker 3 (07:43):
Just ask?
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Okay, when we come back.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Three toxic relationship habits, three things, Three more things we're
not supposed to be doing in our relationship. You're listening
to Doctor Wendy Walls Show and KFI AM six forty
Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
Listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI AM
six forty Welcome back to the.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Doctor Wendy Walls Show and KFI AM six forty Live
everywhere on.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
The iHeart Medio app.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
And all right, there's more news on what we're doing
wrong in our relationships. Wait, coming up, I have a
guest who's going to tell us what we can be
doing right. He's got some love hacks, and he's an
actual relationship researcher, so he's somebody we should listen to. However,
some good people were quoted in this article. An article
(08:34):
of The New York Times written by Jancy Dunn talked
to various relationship researchers. Yeah, there are people running labs
and doing tests, and she came up with three toxic
behaviors that we should never be doing in our relationships.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Now.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
I want to remind you I talk a lot about
doctor John Gottman's work right at the Marriage Lab up
at the University of Washington, and I'm able to tell
you that he says there are things called the four
horsemen of the Apocalypse. Four horsemen of the Apocalypse, that's
what he likes to call it. Right, And it is
(09:10):
criticism like attacking your partner's character or personality, things like
you never think about anyone but yourself, you know, something
like that. Another might be showing complete contempt for your partner, disrespect, sarcasm, mocking,
eye rolling. Another one is defensiveness, denying any responsibility, or
(09:32):
playing victim. Oh, yeah, but I can't, but you made
me do it, right, that kind of stuff. And then
the worst of the worst, according to John Gotman, is stonewalling,
like shutting down, with drawing the silent treatment. Basically, so,
John Gotman found that couples who consistently engage in these
behaviors are most likely to divorce. Okay, now there's three more,
(09:56):
according to research. And before I tell you these three,
I should tell you that Julio and I had a
little tiff this week. I tell you whenever we do,
it's so rare. I get to tell you, like three
times a year. I was experiencing some anxiety about something
that shall remain unnamed, and he responded by saying that
(10:19):
he had had the same problem before. But in what
I imagined, again, it's all in my imagination. Is that
essentially what he implied by his statement was you have
no reason to be worried like I've been through this.
I'm fine, right, That's what I imagined. He didn't say
it like that, and he didn't say that that's what
I imagined. And then I got more snarky at him
(10:42):
because I wasn't getting the empathy that I thought I deserved,
and then I perceived stormed out the door and closed
the door. Actually, what happened is that he had a
zoom to get to and he looked at his watch
and realized he was one minute late to get on
his zoom, so he ran out of the room to
go get on that zoom. But of course my perception
(11:04):
was different. So anyway, we talked about it later and
he said something that ended the discussion, which was, I'm
going to try to do better. I know it's all
my fault. I shouldn't have said that. Now, you would
think that would be a good thing to hear. It
did end our whole conversation as we were exploring it,
(11:27):
kind of shut it down in a way. But I
still didn't feel good because I didn't feel like we'd
fully processed both sides. Wouldn't it be awful to have
to live with me or have to fully process both sides?
Speaker 2 (11:40):
So, in fact, this.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Is one of the three toxic behaviors cited by journalist
Jancy Dunn in The New York Times this week. One
researcher calls it folding early as a dismissive tactic. So
you're in the middle of conflict with your person and
they say, I know, I'm the worst, I'm a terrible partner.
So this is their way to not actually deal with
(12:05):
the problem. Instead they take the whole blame. They fall
on the sword, but it stops the conversation, and like,
how can you argue it when they say, because you
have to go back and go, no, you're not all
that bad, you're not the worst, and no it's not
all your fault. And then you're arguing about something else,
whether it's their fault or not, or whether they're a
bad partner or not, instead of trying to solve the problem.
(12:28):
So I talked to Julie about this later. I said,
you know, you folded early, dude.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
He's like what.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
And then we actually got time to process the whole thing.
The other helpful thing was that twenty four hours had
gone by and we were able to be in a
different mood as we were bed in bed in the
morning and cuddling and you know, environment everything different. All right,
here are the two other things, uh declaring a winner
(12:54):
and a loser. So it's really important that every one
understand that there should be only one winner in any
relationship during any conflict, and that winner should be the
relationship right. In many ways, I think couples would do
(13:17):
well to imagine that whatever the conflict is, that it
is a puzzle that you're trying to solve together. It's
not a competition. It's not a I'm gonna make them
apologize to me. I'm gonna make them say it was
their fault. Really does an extracted apology feel any good
(13:37):
at all? Never does, and keeping score keeps the two
of you apart. My favorite word to using conflict is how,
and the question is how can we solve this? I
also totallyo this morning, by the way, about our fight.
I said, he said, well, what do you want me
to say? Somebody's going on like that? He doesn't talk
like that. I just do that guy voice somehow me
(14:00):
to say? And I said to say, how can I
help you? How can I help you? That's what we
all need to learn to say. And the other person
should have an answer for that, how can I help you?
They better give some kind of owner's manual of how
to do it?
Speaker 2 (14:14):
All right?
Speaker 1 (14:15):
And here's the third thing that is a toxic behavior
in relationships that we shouldn't be doing.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
I don't do it. I don't do it.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
But plenty of people do it, especially at the beginning
when they first get into therapy, quoting their therapist during
a fight, you know, like, well, my therapist says that
you're a narcissist. No no, no, no, no. This is
called authority sighting. It's bringing an invisible third person into
(14:48):
the fight and your partner can't fight them back because
they're not in the room. And therapists should not be
used as a weapon, folks. You know, one of the
reasons why people will quote their therapist a lot is
because they're trying to eventually get to a place where
they own the feeling or the thought, but they're not
(15:11):
there yet. Sometimes people will say, and this is not
when you're fighting with your partner. Just in general, people say, well,
my therapist says blah blah blah blah blah. And they're
saying it because they want people to say, yeah, that's right,
and then they're like, oh, confirmation, maybe that's true, right,
or they don't have the ability yet to own it,
you know, to own it. Like my therapist says that
(15:34):
I don't have clear boundaries with stuff. How about just
have the clear boundaries right, just you know, don't But
at the beginning. I know we love to quote our
therapist just saying all right, so don't fold early and
blame yourself just to end a fight. Stay in it
and process. Take the time you need to go for
a walk or get a good night's sleep. It's okay
(15:55):
to go to bed mad. You have my full permission.
If you're trying to process something and it's late at
night and somebody's overtired, or God forbids somebody drunk, this
is not the time to solve things. So but don't
fold early, spend time talking it out, don't compete with
each other, don't declare a winner or a loser, and
definitely don't quote quote your therapist. Hey, when we come back,
(16:19):
I have a very special guest. I'm so excited to
have him on the show. You're listening to the Doctor
Wendy Wall Show on KFI AM six forty live everywhere
on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 4 (16:29):
You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI
AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Welcome back to the Doctor Wendy Wall Show on KFI
AM six forty Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. Well,
my next guest is someone I am very excited to
have on the show. He's the author of the best
selling book The All Or Nothing Marriage, How the Best
Marriages Work.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Now, He's not just some dating coach sitting on TikTok.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
He's a professor at Northwestern University and also Kellogg's School
of Management. He studies romantic relationships and American politics. Whew,
that's a collision, and The Economist once declared him one
of the leading lights in the realm of relationship psychology.
Doctor Eli Finkel, thanks so much for joining the Doctor
(17:18):
Wendy Wall Show.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having me, and.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
I am excited to hear about your take on marriage.
Before we get into what I like to call news,
you can use tips for people and love hacks. Can
we talk a little bit about the whole idea of marriage.
Some people think that marriage is becoming extinct. Can we
remind people the history of marriage and what its cultural
(17:44):
reason for being even is.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
Yeah? I love the question. Most of us, right, we
live in one particular historical and cultural moment, and we
think that marriage just is that that's what it always was.
But of course marriage is a social and institution that
changes over time, and one of the things that I
learned a lot from doing is tracking how marriage has
(18:08):
changed over time, the expectations that we bring. And it
turns out that we are in an era where we
have changed the institution of marriage in a way that
makes it more fragile, but also makes the best marriages
better than the best marriages of earlier eras.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Right, And I actually have one of those great marriages. Now,
I just got married in August, So I'll let you
know in five years. But let's go back into history.
So and let's go back to way back. So in
our anthropological past, obviously marriage didn't exist.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
But what was you think the advent?
Speaker 1 (18:44):
Do you think it was when we moved into agriculture
or when did this whole concept of one heterosexual male,
one heterosexual female together in one abode, helping offspring that
came from both of them?
Speaker 3 (18:56):
Only, Well, there's been you know, it has formed in
all sorts of cultural contexts, in all sorts of ways,
with all sorts of structures. The thing that I found
especially useful to do was to unpack how it was
structured when you know, Europeans first started colonizing this land,
and then track it up until the present day. And
(19:16):
if you look at that first era, it was it
was an agricultural era, and the way we think about
marriage today just would not make much sense. People of course,
preferred to love their spouse, and if the sex was good,
that was even better. But people didn't say things like,
you know, gosh, Jeff is a good man, and yet
(19:37):
I don't feel the pitter patter when I you know,
when we kiss, and therefore I'm not going to marry him.
Because marriage was too important. It was literally about things
like food, clothing, and shelter, and these more psychological sorts
of needs. People just couldn't really prioritize them back in
that era.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
You know. I remember one time touring a former plantation
down in the south in the Louisiana and I found
it really interesting forget about the tragic parts of history.
But one of the things they had in the ladies
bedroom was a glass case that had letters that she
had written to her sister, who was a wife on
(20:15):
another plantation down the way, and they really looked like
quite love letters. And when I asked the tour guide
about this, she said, well, often Irish and English girls
were sent over to the New World to be wives
of the plantation owners, and their closest relationship was often
with their sibling. It wasn't any form of romantic marriage.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
And yet she.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Talked about, you know, my dear sister, you are in
my heart at all times. I love you, I can't
wait to see you. It was a love letter to
her because that was really her secure attachment more than
her husband.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
Yeah. Yeah, it's beautiful. It's also, you know, heartbreaking in
its own way, but it is true that again we
stand up in front of our our loved ones and
you know, a minister of the faith and say I
want to marry you because you're my best friend or
you complete me. And that just isn't what it used
to be about.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Right.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
That's why it wasn't crazy for people back in an
earlier era to marry people they had never met or
have families sort of set up the whole arrangement for us,
because it wasn't primarily about the individual fulfillment of the spouses.
And that's really changed. I mean it started changing in
a widespread way around the middle of the eighteen hundreds
when we had industrialization and then a bunch of young
(21:33):
people for the first time ever anywhere were geographically and
economically independent of their parents. And it was then that
they started to think, well, I would like to marry
based on my own personal fulfillment. And we've continued to
see that trend up until the present day. And like
I said, I don't want to sound like I'm judging
or castigating people. I'm delighted that I live in this
era of marriage. And you know, it is more fragile
(21:57):
because there are marriages that would have been totally sufficient
for our grandparents, and today we say no, not for
the expectations I'm bringing, not for the things I'm looking
to get from the marriage. But what we forget is
along with those expectations comes something positive, which is we're
seeking a deeper emotional, spiritual, psychological sort of connection than
(22:17):
people were seeking, say a few hundred years ago, but
even fifty or seventy five years ago, and some of
us are sticking the landing on that. And it's pretty
great when we're able to do that.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
When it does happen.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Now. Your book is called the All or Nothing Marriage.
Does that allude to the fact that today people want
not just a protector, provider, caregiver, a survival marriage, but
they also want a best friend, They want intellectual stimulation,
they want emotional support. Is this the part of the
all that we want in our marriage?
Speaker 3 (22:50):
Yes? And really the all or nothing marriage is. What
has happened as a result of those changing expectations is
that the average marriage, at least in the USA, if
you track this stuff over time, the average marriage has
gotten worse. You know, divorce rates are much higher than
they were one hundred years ago or three hundred years
ago and so forth. And our level of satisfaction, even
(23:11):
in those marriages that make it, is a little lower
on average, but there is a substantials are so high.
That's right, that's right, because we end up disappointed with
the things aren't The marriage isn't delivering everything we'd ask.
But again, some of them are pretty good. And so
when I say the all or nothing marriage, I'm referring
to this current era where the average marriage is worse
(23:32):
than before, but the best marriages are better than ever.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
You know, I had a friend, I have a friend
and she was in a terrible marriage for years, and
I always you say, you got to leave them, you
got to leave them, And she said, you know, you
just like things to be better than I need them
to be like from the outside, I was like, I
wouldn't put up with it even for all that money
he's thrown in there, but she was happy.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
With the money.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
You know what's fascinating about that is I think that
the two of you, if you've just described your temperaments,
you are more likely to have a truly extraordinary connection
because of how demanding you are, what your expectations are.
But at the same time, you're more likely to be
disappointed in a marriage that's like kind of okay and
like pretty good. But she's doing just fine with that marriage.
(24:20):
And for you it wouldn't work, but for her it
works just fine.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
It works just fine. Exactly. Listen, when we come back,
we have to go to a break.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
I want to talk about some of your must try
love hacks from your book. And also I'm going to
ask you if you tried any of these hacks with
your wife.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
We'll talk about this when we come back.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
You are listening to the Doctor Wendy Walls Show on
KFI AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 4 (24:42):
You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI
AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
Welcome back, to the Doctor Wendy Walls Show on KFI
AM six forty Live Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app My
guest doctor Eli Finkel, author of the All or Nothing Marriage,
How the Best Marriage Work? And also, I forgot to say,
co host of one of my favorite podcasts, Love Factually,
(25:09):
Love Fact, Doctor Eli, How did you come up with
this idea for a podcast?
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Oh? So, this is a podcast I'm doing with Paul Eastwick.
I think he's been a guest on your show recently
as well. He and I are both relationships researchers, and
we came to this sort of disconcerting realization that, you know,
there are literally hundreds of people who devote their careers
to trying to use the methods of science, that is,
developing hypotheses and collecting data and evaluating the evidence with
(25:38):
regard to what makes relationships good or bad, and most
of those findings are cloistered in like academic libraries. And
so we had this idea that, like, what if we
could get those insights, the best scientific insights, out to
the public in a way that was just really fun
for everybody. And so what we decided to do is
is do that through them or through the mechanism of movies,
(26:02):
popular romance movies like When Harry Met Sally, or La
La Land or you know whatever else Jerry Maguire. These
movies inject into the culture ideas about how relationships work. Well,
we have the data.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
And a lot of wrong ideas.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
By the way, Yeah, that's right, that's totally right. But
one thing it's been satisfying. Each episode is about a
particular movie, and one thing that we force ourselves to
do in each episode is say, like, what does the
movie get right and what does the movie get wrong?
And it is it is definitely a mixed bag. It's
our opportunity to you know, fact check Hollywood, and sometimes
they do get it right also, so it's been fun
(26:37):
to try to take a sober lens to those things.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Well, one of the things that I've always said about
romantic comedies is that they end at the beginning.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
They end at the beginning of.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
It really well, you're right, you are absolutely right. It's like, well,
we worked through that, we had the meet too, and
then we had the conflict, and then we like realized
it was all okay, and we fell in love and
then the movie ends, right, But well, there is the
next sixty.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Years and now the work comes.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Yeah, exactly, Well, anyway to everybody if you're listening, Love
Factually is available on the iHeartRadio app as well. Okay,
let's get back to the all or Nothing marriage? How
the best marriages work? What are some of your must
try love hacks for all of us?
Speaker 2 (27:15):
And I'm taking notes here.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
Well, the idea of the love hack is, you know,
you get people like me to, you know, talk on
shows about how to make relationships good, and mostly it's
conversations about a lot of work.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Right.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
It's like, here are the ways that you can invest,
and here's how to have a more active sex life
to work at it, and here are the communication things
you need to do and it's going to be hard,
and all those things are good. Right. In the book
and the All and Nothing Marriage, I talk about those things,
but I also spend the chapter basically saying, are there
any quick and dirty things we can do? Not the
things that are going to make a bad marriage a
(27:50):
good marriage. You need to work hard to do that.
But are the things that we can do to like
make things just a little bit better regardless of how
good the marriage is. And yet there's a bu bunch
of sort of quick and easy things we can do.
One of my favorites. I've actually called it the marriage hack, right.
It's trying to think about conflict in our relationship not
(28:11):
through our regular vantage point, not through our own two eyes,
but from the perspective of a neutral third party who
wants the best for everybody.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
And we ran we ran a big candid camera in
the room.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
That's exactly right, a fly on the wall or something. Yeah,
it's a more friendly than candid camera perhaps, But we
ran a study where we randomly assigned couples to do this,
and then we track them versus a control condition of
couples who didn't get this advice, and we found that
their marriage was literally better over time. And all they
had done throughout the course of the study is they'd
written for twenty one minutes over the course of the year,
(28:47):
trying to think about conflict in their relationship from this
neutral third party perspective. And so that's one of those
quick and dirty things we can do to make ourselves
a little bit happier in our marriage.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
Just to imagine you're watching it going on and taking
both people's sides, like, oh, come on, you.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
Guys, that's exactly right. It's just like a reorientation. A
reorientation sometimes people call it self distancing, because from our
own perspective, it's really easy to understand why everything we
did was reasonable and why the other person is being
totally outrageous. It turns out you just force yourself to
be like, well, what would this look like if I
were watching the two of us right now? Would I
(29:23):
be able to see his perspective a little bit better?
Would I be able to understand maybe I'm being a
little hypocritical? We can do that if we try, and
it's not much work.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Can I ask you about gratitude. Is it a love hack?
Speaker 3 (29:35):
I think it is. Yes. So there's lots of different
ways you could go about this, but the love hack
version of gratitude is simply reminding ourselves of the nice
things that our partner has done for us. And one
place that I like to start to think about gratitude again.
I don't know what everybody's sort of worldview is or
(29:55):
religious background, but the best that the scientists can tell
us is that the universe started thirteen point eight billion
years ago, the Earth started around four and a half
or five billion years ago, and we emerged from that,
and we are literally stardust. When I say literally, I
mean the best the scientists can tell us is that
we emerge from some big cosmic explosion. And from that
(30:16):
point of view, the amount of grievance that we allow
ourselves to feel that we indulge in seems to be
a little excessive. Can we remember that, yes, there are
ways that our partner wasn't perfect, absolutely, but there are
certainly nice things that our partner is doing as well,
and we can make ourselves and our partner happier if
(30:37):
we lean in on those gratitude sorts of feelings.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
So I'm going to tell you a story.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
So one of the things my husband does is he
leaves drawers open an inch or two in a half
pastard way, as well as closet doors crack. And one
day it occurred to me that this was my problem,
not his, that it's not his job to make me happy.
If I need an organized environment, that is my issue,
not his, And so I decided to reframe it and
(31:04):
turn it into a little workout. Sometimes I do squats
as I'm closing his drawers and doing it with a
niece so.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
That I'm getting some benefit.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
I try to get into weird contorted body positions as
I closer, so that list I'm getting work out. But
also every time I close a drawer, I say I love.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
You, Julio, I love you Hula. How nice just to
remind my brain.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
Yeah, because you just as easily could have said what
a jerk. How easy would it be for him to
have closed this? I've asked him thirty times. He knows
it's important to me. You would have been totally within
your rights. It would have been a reasonable way to respond,
and yet you chose this other way to respond, and
both of you are much happier.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
Yes, of course, now he leaves things open more often
because he likes to hear that I love you.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
Oh insensive, I'm kind.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Of rewarding it.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
Okay, we have very little time left, but I do
want to ask you for one more quick hack, and
have you tried them all on your wife?
Speaker 3 (31:59):
Have I tried all of them? One of my favorite
hacks is really straightforward one. It's related to what we
were talking about here, which is, there are circumstances that
exist in the world. Those are real, but what the
circumstance means, that's up to us. The world. Like facts exist,
but they don't interpret themselves, and so we get to
interpret what we want to do. And you have just
(32:19):
offered a great example with regard to the open drawer.
You get to interpret that however you want. Have I
used all eight of the love hacks in my own marriage?
My guess is that I have. I haven't been systematic,
I haven't gone one to eight to do it, but
if I look through the list of eight, I'm confident
that I have tried to use them in my own
marriage as well.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
Yes, so you literally being a relationship expert, a relationship researcher,
does your wife feel threatened or grateful?
Speaker 3 (32:44):
She just rolls her eyes. She just thinks this idea.
I mean, the dedication of my book is to my wife, Allison,
who thinks it's hilarious that I'm a marriage expert.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
Now, Julio tells his friends, if I can't have a
healthy relationship with this one, I can have it with anybody.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
Oh that's interesting.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Thank you so much for joining us. The book is
the All or Nothing Marriage, How the Best Marriages Work,
and the podcast is Love Factually?
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Get It? Love Actually?
Speaker 3 (33:10):
Is It?
Speaker 2 (33:11):
Love Actually?
Speaker 1 (33:11):
Is one of my favorite movies, by the way, but
love factually, there's an f in there.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Doctor Eli Finkle, thank you so.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
Much for joining us, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
And that brings the Doctor Wendy Wall Show to eight clothes.
I'm always here for you every Sunday night from seven
to nine. You can also follow me on my social
media at doctor Wendy Walsh. You've been listening to The
Doctor Wendy Wall 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
(33:43):
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 wallsh Show on demand
on the iHeartRadio app. Welcome back to the Doctor Wendy
Wall Show on KFI AM six forty live everywhere on
the iHeartRadio App. All right, I want to add to
my social media because so many people have been dming me.
If you would like to send me a question in
(00:22):
my social media, you may. Instagram is where we check
a lot during the show at Dr Wendy Walsh. At
doctor Wendy Walsh's a handle. All right, here we go.
First listener, Hey, Doctor Wendy. I met a man in
October and he always kept me at a distance. I
didn't mind because I'm dating multiple people.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Ooh. Anyway, one of my friends.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Which some people may consider a celebrity oo, ran into
this man at a party and my friend talked really
great about me to him. Now he's trying to take
me seriously. Should I be concerned that he started moving
with intention after a celebrity gave him the green light?
(01:06):
There's a lot to unpack here, A lot to unpack here.
All right, So, first of all, he's taking you seriously,
are you have you guys had a conversation about this,
about exclusivity, about anything? And what about all these other
multiple people? There are a lot of people. It sounds
like a party of a relationship here. So first of all,
(01:28):
let me just ask you what do you want? Forget
about what he wants or your multiple people want. What
do you want? I'm thinking that because of this question,
that you actually like him and would like to have
an exclusive, one on one monogamous relationship with him. All right,
So if so, then focus on him. You don't have
(01:50):
to tell him. Focus on him. Should I be concerned
that he started moving with intention after a celebrity gave
him the green light? No, you were just one lucky person. Okay,
you're a lucky lucky person because you know it's great
we gather information about people from all kinds of sources.
He could have run into somebody at a party who
was one of your exes who had bad things to say,
(02:12):
and that would have been terrible.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
So you're good. You're good.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
But ask yourself what you want and move with intention
towards what you want. Dear doctor, Wendy, my close friend
had sex with my new girlfriend. Oh, what oh, back
when they were in high school? Okay, not a big deal,
but they kept it a secret until I told her
(02:37):
I loved her?
Speaker 2 (02:40):
What do you make of this? WHOA?
Speaker 1 (02:43):
All?
Speaker 3 (02:43):
Right?
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Why now?
Speaker 3 (02:46):
So?
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Again? I always have to go back to what do
you want? Would you have preferred that the two.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Of them, your beautiful new girlfriend who you loved a lot,
had sex with your close friend back when they were
in high school? I don't know how many years between
the high school and the now. I don't see your age,
so I don't know if you guys, are you know,
twenty two or thirty two or forty two or fifty two.
I don't know the time would make a difference there,
(03:13):
But would you have preferred that they held that secret?
Speaker 2 (03:17):
I think that would have been worse?
Speaker 3 (03:18):
Right?
Speaker 1 (03:19):
So, now, why did she tell you after you told
her you loved her? I think that's a question for
you to ask her to say, Hey, I've been thinking
about something. When I told you I loved you, then
soon after you revealed that you had sex with so
and so, I'm wondering why you chose to do it then.
(03:40):
Or you could simply say, what did it feel like
when I told you I loved you or what you know.
Just ask, don't try to read the tea leaves. Just
ask people and then you'll know.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
All right.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Moving on, here's a good one from a listener. Hey,
doctor Wendy, I just met a bow and he has
a thirteen year old daughter. I don't care for the
way they speak to each other. I'm too new in
his life to say anything, but I really like him.
When is the appropriate time to say something? Answer?
Speaker 4 (04:12):
Never?
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Never? Okay, they got their own little relationship. And first
of all, sounds like you do not have a thirteen
year old daughter, so you don't know how teenagers talk
and roll their eyes and what they do. So he
is not okay, he's not going to respect you intervening
as a parent and criticizing his parenting. So I'm a
(04:34):
little sensitive to this subject. And I'll tell you why
my daughters talk terribly to me, and many people have
mentioned it. But I'm not in charge of them. I mean,
now they're adults, so it doesn't matter. Now I can
have boundaries and I could leave the room, or I
can say, hey, I don't like that tone of voice,
no dinner for you, whatever. And so it's also to
(04:59):
other people looks bad, but it's actually kind of normal.
Like I don't know, maybe we're just naturally impolite and
that's our way of showing love. It took me years
for me, getting all rattled with my two daughters to say.
I kept saying, oh, you guys, stop arguing, stop fighting
all the time. It drives me crazy that you're bickering
all the time. And they look at me, eyes wide
(05:19):
in shock, and go, we're not bickering. This is how
we communicate. And I realized, oh, that's how it is.
So No, you don't have especially you're new. No no, no, no, no,
you don't care for the way they speak to each other. Wait,
maybe it's the way he's speaking to her that you
don't like, and maybe you're worried he's gonna talk that
(05:42):
way to you someday. Now you have a case. Okay,
Now I'll let you say something like, hey, you know
when you said to your little girl blah blah blah,
it sounded kind of critical and punitive, and you know,
maybe it was something awful, like talking about her body
weight or something like that. You know, so just say
it kind of didn't sit well with me, And I
(06:03):
hope you don't plan on talking to me that way sometime,
right and just say it's sweet like and see what happens.
You have a right to talk about him. You don't
have a right to talk about her. You can't parent her.
All right, I think we have time for one more,
Dear doctor Wendy. What can I conclude from my situationship
cuddling me all night? He can't sleep without touching me
(06:24):
in some way? He wasn't like this before. He's being
more affectionate because he knows I'm dating someone else. I
would like to be with him. How can I use this,
use this to my advantage? Oh, my goodness, the tangled
webs we weave.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
All right?
Speaker 1 (06:44):
What can you conclude from the fact that the person
you're actively seeing and having sex with also wants to
give you affection, that he likes you and he wants more.
But now you're assuming that he's being more affectionate because
he knows you're dating someone else. You know, you guys
(07:05):
only need to have a conversation, all right, What do
you want? You said, I would like to be with him.
I would like to be with him, that's what you wrote,
and not anybody else. Then why are you seeing anybody else?
Are you using it to try to manipulate him? Manipulation's
never good. Honesty's the best policy. First of all, situationships
are very hard to get out of, and they're very
(07:27):
hard to convert. I mean, you can quit them, but
they're very hard to convert, convert into a real relationship.
I'm just saying, so you're gotta have the conversation. Just say, hey,
I like how to cuddle me all night. I'm wondering
if it's happening, because you know I'm seeing somebody else.
Would you like me to not see anybody else?
Speaker 3 (07:43):
Just ask?
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Okay, when we come back.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Three toxic relationship habits, three things, Three more things we're
not supposed to be doing in our relationship. You're listening
to Doctor Wendy Walls Show and KFI AM six forty
Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
Listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI AM
six forty Welcome back to the.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Doctor Wendy Walls Show and KFI AM six forty Live
everywhere on.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
The iHeart Medio app.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
And all right, there's more news on what we're doing
wrong in our relationships. Wait, coming up, I have a
guest who's going to tell us what we can be
doing right. He's got some love hacks, and he's an
actual relationship researcher, so he's somebody we should listen to. However,
some good people were quoted in this article. An article
(08:34):
of The New York Times written by Jancy Dunn talked
to various relationship researchers. Yeah, there are people running labs
and doing tests, and she came up with three toxic
behaviors that we should never be doing in our relationships.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Now.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
I want to remind you I talk a lot about
doctor John Gottman's work right at the Marriage Lab up
at the University of Washington, and I'm able to tell
you that he says there are things called the four
horsemen of the Apocalypse. Four horsemen of the Apocalypse, that's
what he likes to call it. Right, And it is
(09:10):
criticism like attacking your partner's character or personality, things like
you never think about anyone but yourself, you know, something
like that. Another might be showing complete contempt for your partner, disrespect, sarcasm, mocking,
eye rolling. Another one is defensiveness, denying any responsibility, or
(09:32):
playing victim. Oh, yeah, but I can't, but you made
me do it, right, that kind of stuff. And then
the worst of the worst, according to John Gotman, is stonewalling,
like shutting down, with drawing the silent treatment. Basically, so,
John Gotman found that couples who consistently engage in these
behaviors are most likely to divorce. Okay, now there's three more,
(09:56):
according to research. And before I tell you these three,
I should tell you that Julio and I had a
little tiff this week. I tell you whenever we do,
it's so rare. I get to tell you, like three
times a year. I was experiencing some anxiety about something
that shall remain unnamed, and he responded by saying that
(10:19):
he had had the same problem before. But in what
I imagined, again, it's all in my imagination. Is that
essentially what he implied by his statement was you have
no reason to be worried like I've been through this.
I'm fine, right, That's what I imagined. He didn't say
it like that, and he didn't say that that's what
I imagined. And then I got more snarky at him
(10:42):
because I wasn't getting the empathy that I thought I deserved,
and then I perceived stormed out the door and closed
the door. Actually, what happened is that he had a
zoom to get to and he looked at his watch
and realized he was one minute late to get on
his zoom, so he ran out of the room to
go get on that zoom. But of course my perception
(11:04):
was different. So anyway, we talked about it later and
he said something that ended the discussion, which was, I'm
going to try to do better. I know it's all
my fault. I shouldn't have said that. Now, you would
think that would be a good thing to hear. It
did end our whole conversation as we were exploring it,
(11:27):
kind of shut it down in a way. But I
still didn't feel good because I didn't feel like we'd
fully processed both sides. Wouldn't it be awful to have
to live with me or have to fully process both sides?
Speaker 2 (11:40):
So, in fact, this.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Is one of the three toxic behaviors cited by journalist
Jancy Dunn in The New York Times this week. One
researcher calls it folding early as a dismissive tactic. So
you're in the middle of conflict with your person and
they say, I know, I'm the worst, I'm a terrible partner.
So this is their way to not actually deal with
(12:05):
the problem. Instead they take the whole blame. They fall
on the sword, but it stops the conversation, and like,
how can you argue it when they say, because you
have to go back and go, no, you're not all
that bad, you're not the worst, and no it's not
all your fault. And then you're arguing about something else,
whether it's their fault or not, or whether they're a
bad partner or not, instead of trying to solve the problem.
(12:28):
So I talked to Julie about this later. I said,
you know, you folded early, dude.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
He's like what.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
And then we actually got time to process the whole thing.
The other helpful thing was that twenty four hours had
gone by and we were able to be in a
different mood as we were bed in bed in the
morning and cuddling and you know, environment everything different. All right,
here are the two other things, uh declaring a winner
(12:54):
and a loser. So it's really important that every one
understand that there should be only one winner in any
relationship during any conflict, and that winner should be the
relationship right. In many ways, I think couples would do
(13:17):
well to imagine that whatever the conflict is, that it
is a puzzle that you're trying to solve together. It's
not a competition. It's not a I'm gonna make them
apologize to me. I'm gonna make them say it was
their fault. Really does an extracted apology feel any good
(13:37):
at all? Never does, and keeping score keeps the two
of you apart. My favorite word to using conflict is how,
and the question is how can we solve this? I
also totallyo this morning, by the way, about our fight.
I said, he said, well, what do you want me
to say? Somebody's going on like that? He doesn't talk
like that. I just do that guy voice somehow me
(14:00):
to say? And I said to say, how can I
help you? How can I help you? That's what we
all need to learn to say. And the other person
should have an answer for that, how can I help you?
They better give some kind of owner's manual of how
to do it?
Speaker 2 (14:14):
All right?
Speaker 1 (14:15):
And here's the third thing that is a toxic behavior
in relationships that we shouldn't be doing.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
I don't do it. I don't do it.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
But plenty of people do it, especially at the beginning
when they first get into therapy, quoting their therapist during
a fight, you know, like, well, my therapist says that
you're a narcissist. No no, no, no, no. This is
called authority sighting. It's bringing an invisible third person into
(14:48):
the fight and your partner can't fight them back because
they're not in the room. And therapists should not be
used as a weapon, folks. You know, one of the
reasons why people will quote their therapist a lot is
because they're trying to eventually get to a place where
they own the feeling or the thought, but they're not
(15:11):
there yet. Sometimes people will say, and this is not
when you're fighting with your partner. Just in general, people say, well,
my therapist says blah blah blah blah blah. And they're
saying it because they want people to say, yeah, that's right,
and then they're like, oh, confirmation, maybe that's true, right,
or they don't have the ability yet to own it,
you know, to own it. Like my therapist says that
(15:34):
I don't have clear boundaries with stuff. How about just
have the clear boundaries right, just you know, don't But
at the beginning. I know we love to quote our
therapist just saying all right, so don't fold early and
blame yourself just to end a fight. Stay in it
and process. Take the time you need to go for
a walk or get a good night's sleep. It's okay
(15:55):
to go to bed mad. You have my full permission.
If you're trying to process something and it's late at
night and somebody's overtired, or God forbids somebody drunk, this
is not the time to solve things. So but don't
fold early, spend time talking it out, don't compete with
each other, don't declare a winner or a loser, and
definitely don't quote quote your therapist. Hey, when we come back,
(16:19):
I have a very special guest. I'm so excited to
have him on the show. You're listening to the Doctor
Wendy Wall Show on KFI AM six forty live everywhere
on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 4 (16:29):
You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI
AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Welcome back to the Doctor Wendy Wall Show on KFI
AM six forty Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. Well,
my next guest is someone I am very excited to
have on the show. He's the author of the best
selling book The All Or Nothing Marriage, How the Best
Marriages Work.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Now, He's not just some dating coach sitting on TikTok.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
He's a professor at Northwestern University and also Kellogg's School
of Management. He studies romantic relationships and American politics. Whew,
that's a collision, and The Economist once declared him one
of the leading lights in the realm of relationship psychology.
Doctor Eli Finkel, thanks so much for joining the Doctor
(17:18):
Wendy Wall Show.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having me, and.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
I am excited to hear about your take on marriage.
Before we get into what I like to call news,
you can use tips for people and love hacks. Can
we talk a little bit about the whole idea of marriage.
Some people think that marriage is becoming extinct. Can we
remind people the history of marriage and what its cultural
(17:44):
reason for being even is.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
Yeah? I love the question. Most of us, right, we
live in one particular historical and cultural moment, and we
think that marriage just is that that's what it always was.
But of course marriage is a social and institution that
changes over time, and one of the things that I
learned a lot from doing is tracking how marriage has
(18:08):
changed over time, the expectations that we bring. And it
turns out that we are in an era where we
have changed the institution of marriage in a way that
makes it more fragile, but also makes the best marriages
better than the best marriages of earlier eras.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Right, And I actually have one of those great marriages. Now,
I just got married in August, So I'll let you
know in five years. But let's go back into history.
So and let's go back to way back. So in
our anthropological past, obviously marriage didn't exist.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
But what was you think the advent?
Speaker 1 (18:44):
Do you think it was when we moved into agriculture
or when did this whole concept of one heterosexual male,
one heterosexual female together in one abode, helping offspring that
came from both of them?
Speaker 3 (18:56):
Only, Well, there's been you know, it has formed in
all sorts of cultural contexts, in all sorts of ways,
with all sorts of structures. The thing that I found
especially useful to do was to unpack how it was
structured when you know, Europeans first started colonizing this land,
and then track it up until the present day. And
(19:16):
if you look at that first era, it was it
was an agricultural era, and the way we think about
marriage today just would not make much sense. People of course,
preferred to love their spouse, and if the sex was good,
that was even better. But people didn't say things like,
you know, gosh, Jeff is a good man, and yet
(19:37):
I don't feel the pitter patter when I you know,
when we kiss, and therefore I'm not going to marry him.
Because marriage was too important. It was literally about things
like food, clothing, and shelter, and these more psychological sorts
of needs. People just couldn't really prioritize them back in
that era.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
You know. I remember one time touring a former plantation
down in the south in the Louisiana and I found
it really interesting forget about the tragic parts of history.
But one of the things they had in the ladies
bedroom was a glass case that had letters that she
had written to her sister, who was a wife on
(20:15):
another plantation down the way, and they really looked like
quite love letters. And when I asked the tour guide
about this, she said, well, often Irish and English girls
were sent over to the New World to be wives
of the plantation owners, and their closest relationship was often
with their sibling. It wasn't any form of romantic marriage.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
And yet she.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Talked about, you know, my dear sister, you are in
my heart at all times. I love you, I can't
wait to see you. It was a love letter to
her because that was really her secure attachment more than
her husband.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
Yeah. Yeah, it's beautiful. It's also, you know, heartbreaking in
its own way, but it is true that again we
stand up in front of our our loved ones and
you know, a minister of the faith and say I
want to marry you because you're my best friend or
you complete me. And that just isn't what it used
to be about.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Right.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
That's why it wasn't crazy for people back in an
earlier era to marry people they had never met or
have families sort of set up the whole arrangement for us,
because it wasn't primarily about the individual fulfillment of the spouses.
And that's really changed. I mean it started changing in
a widespread way around the middle of the eighteen hundreds
when we had industrialization and then a bunch of young
(21:33):
people for the first time ever anywhere were geographically and
economically independent of their parents. And it was then that
they started to think, well, I would like to marry
based on my own personal fulfillment. And we've continued to
see that trend up until the present day. And like
I said, I don't want to sound like I'm judging
or castigating people. I'm delighted that I live in this
era of marriage. And you know, it is more fragile
(21:57):
because there are marriages that would have been totally sufficient
for our grandparents, and today we say no, not for
the expectations I'm bringing, not for the things I'm looking
to get from the marriage. But what we forget is
along with those expectations comes something positive, which is we're
seeking a deeper emotional, spiritual, psychological sort of connection than
(22:17):
people were seeking, say a few hundred years ago, but
even fifty or seventy five years ago, and some of
us are sticking the landing on that. And it's pretty
great when we're able to do that.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
When it does happen.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Now. Your book is called the All or Nothing Marriage.
Does that allude to the fact that today people want
not just a protector, provider, caregiver, a survival marriage, but
they also want a best friend, They want intellectual stimulation,
they want emotional support. Is this the part of the
all that we want in our marriage?
Speaker 3 (22:50):
Yes? And really the all or nothing marriage is. What
has happened as a result of those changing expectations is
that the average marriage, at least in the USA, if
you track this stuff over time, the average marriage has
gotten worse. You know, divorce rates are much higher than
they were one hundred years ago or three hundred years
ago and so forth. And our level of satisfaction, even
(23:11):
in those marriages that make it, is a little lower
on average, but there is a substantials are so high.
That's right, that's right, because we end up disappointed with
the things aren't The marriage isn't delivering everything we'd ask.
But again, some of them are pretty good. And so
when I say the all or nothing marriage, I'm referring
to this current era where the average marriage is worse
(23:32):
than before, but the best marriages are better than ever.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
You know, I had a friend, I have a friend
and she was in a terrible marriage for years, and
I always you say, you got to leave them, you
got to leave them, And she said, you know, you
just like things to be better than I need them
to be like from the outside, I was like, I
wouldn't put up with it even for all that money
he's thrown in there, but she was happy.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
With the money.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
You know what's fascinating about that is I think that
the two of you, if you've just described your temperaments,
you are more likely to have a truly extraordinary connection
because of how demanding you are, what your expectations are.
But at the same time, you're more likely to be
disappointed in a marriage that's like kind of okay and
like pretty good. But she's doing just fine with that marriage.
(24:20):
And for you it wouldn't work, but for her it
works just fine.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
It works just fine. Exactly. Listen, when we come back,
we have to go to a break.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
I want to talk about some of your must try
love hacks from your book. And also I'm going to
ask you if you tried any of these hacks with
your wife.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
We'll talk about this when we come back.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
You are listening to the Doctor Wendy Walls Show on
KFI AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 4 (24:42):
You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI
AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
Welcome back, to the Doctor Wendy Walls Show on KFI
AM six forty Live Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app My
guest doctor Eli Finkel, author of the All or Nothing Marriage,
How the Best Marriage Work? And also, I forgot to say,
co host of one of my favorite podcasts, Love Factually,
(25:09):
Love Fact, Doctor Eli, How did you come up with
this idea for a podcast?
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Oh? So, this is a podcast I'm doing with Paul Eastwick.
I think he's been a guest on your show recently
as well. He and I are both relationships researchers, and
we came to this sort of disconcerting realization that, you know,
there are literally hundreds of people who devote their careers
to trying to use the methods of science, that is,
developing hypotheses and collecting data and evaluating the evidence with
(25:38):
regard to what makes relationships good or bad, and most
of those findings are cloistered in like academic libraries. And
so we had this idea that, like, what if we
could get those insights, the best scientific insights, out to
the public in a way that was just really fun
for everybody. And so what we decided to do is
is do that through them or through the mechanism of movies,
(26:02):
popular romance movies like When Harry Met Sally, or La
La Land or you know whatever else Jerry Maguire. These
movies inject into the culture ideas about how relationships work. Well,
we have the data.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
And a lot of wrong ideas.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
By the way, Yeah, that's right, that's totally right. But
one thing it's been satisfying. Each episode is about a
particular movie, and one thing that we force ourselves to
do in each episode is say, like, what does the
movie get right and what does the movie get wrong?
And it is it is definitely a mixed bag. It's
our opportunity to you know, fact check Hollywood, and sometimes
they do get it right also, so it's been fun
(26:37):
to try to take a sober lens to those things.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Well, one of the things that I've always said about
romantic comedies is that they end at the beginning.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
They end at the beginning of.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
It really well, you're right, you are absolutely right. It's like, well,
we worked through that, we had the meet too, and
then we had the conflict, and then we like realized
it was all okay, and we fell in love and
then the movie ends, right, But well, there is the
next sixty.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Years and now the work comes.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Yeah, exactly, Well, anyway to everybody if you're listening, Love
Factually is available on the iHeartRadio app as well. Okay,
let's get back to the all or Nothing marriage? How
the best marriages work? What are some of your must
try love hacks for all of us?
Speaker 2 (27:15):
And I'm taking notes here.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
Well, the idea of the love hack is, you know,
you get people like me to, you know, talk on
shows about how to make relationships good, and mostly it's
conversations about a lot of work.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Right.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
It's like, here are the ways that you can invest,
and here's how to have a more active sex life
to work at it, and here are the communication things
you need to do and it's going to be hard,
and all those things are good. Right. In the book
and the All and Nothing Marriage, I talk about those things,
but I also spend the chapter basically saying, are there
any quick and dirty things we can do? Not the
things that are going to make a bad marriage a
(27:50):
good marriage. You need to work hard to do that.
But are the things that we can do to like
make things just a little bit better regardless of how
good the marriage is. And yet there's a bu bunch
of sort of quick and easy things we can do.
One of my favorites. I've actually called it the marriage hack, right.
It's trying to think about conflict in our relationship not
(28:11):
through our regular vantage point, not through our own two eyes,
but from the perspective of a neutral third party who
wants the best for everybody.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
And we ran we ran a big candid camera in
the room.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
That's exactly right, a fly on the wall or something. Yeah,
it's a more friendly than candid camera perhaps, But we
ran a study where we randomly assigned couples to do this,
and then we track them versus a control condition of
couples who didn't get this advice, and we found that
their marriage was literally better over time. And all they
had done throughout the course of the study is they'd
written for twenty one minutes over the course of the year,
(28:47):
trying to think about conflict in their relationship from this
neutral third party perspective. And so that's one of those
quick and dirty things we can do to make ourselves
a little bit happier in our marriage.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
Just to imagine you're watching it going on and taking
both people's sides, like, oh, come on, you.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
Guys, that's exactly right. It's just like a reorientation. A
reorientation sometimes people call it self distancing, because from our
own perspective, it's really easy to understand why everything we
did was reasonable and why the other person is being
totally outrageous. It turns out you just force yourself to
be like, well, what would this look like if I
were watching the two of us right now? Would I
(29:23):
be able to see his perspective a little bit better?
Would I be able to understand maybe I'm being a
little hypocritical? We can do that if we try, and
it's not much work.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Can I ask you about gratitude. Is it a love hack?
Speaker 3 (29:35):
I think it is. Yes. So there's lots of different
ways you could go about this, but the love hack
version of gratitude is simply reminding ourselves of the nice
things that our partner has done for us. And one
place that I like to start to think about gratitude again.
I don't know what everybody's sort of worldview is or
(29:55):
religious background, but the best that the scientists can tell
us is that the universe started thirteen point eight billion
years ago, the Earth started around four and a half
or five billion years ago, and we emerged from that,
and we are literally stardust. When I say literally, I
mean the best the scientists can tell us is that
we emerge from some big cosmic explosion. And from that
(30:16):
point of view, the amount of grievance that we allow
ourselves to feel that we indulge in seems to be
a little excessive. Can we remember that, yes, there are
ways that our partner wasn't perfect, absolutely, but there are
certainly nice things that our partner is doing as well,
and we can make ourselves and our partner happier if
(30:37):
we lean in on those gratitude sorts of feelings.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
So I'm going to tell you a story.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
So one of the things my husband does is he
leaves drawers open an inch or two in a half
pastard way, as well as closet doors crack. And one
day it occurred to me that this was my problem,
not his, that it's not his job to make me happy.
If I need an organized environment, that is my issue,
not his, And so I decided to reframe it and
(31:04):
turn it into a little workout. Sometimes I do squats
as I'm closing his drawers and doing it with a
niece so.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
That I'm getting some benefit.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
I try to get into weird contorted body positions as
I closer, so that list I'm getting work out. But
also every time I close a drawer, I say I love.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
You, Julio, I love you Hula. How nice just to
remind my brain.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
Yeah, because you just as easily could have said what
a jerk. How easy would it be for him to
have closed this? I've asked him thirty times. He knows
it's important to me. You would have been totally within
your rights. It would have been a reasonable way to respond,
and yet you chose this other way to respond, and
both of you are much happier.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
Yes, of course, now he leaves things open more often
because he likes to hear that I love you.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
Oh insensive, I'm kind.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Of rewarding it.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
Okay, we have very little time left, but I do
want to ask you for one more quick hack, and
have you tried them all on your wife?
Speaker 3 (31:59):
Have I tried all of them? One of my favorite
hacks is really straightforward one. It's related to what we
were talking about here, which is, there are circumstances that
exist in the world. Those are real, but what the
circumstance means, that's up to us. The world. Like facts exist,
but they don't interpret themselves, and so we get to
interpret what we want to do. And you have just
(32:19):
offered a great example with regard to the open drawer.
You get to interpret that however you want. Have I
used all eight of the love hacks in my own marriage?
My guess is that I have. I haven't been systematic,
I haven't gone one to eight to do it, but
if I look through the list of eight, I'm confident
that I have tried to use them in my own
marriage as well.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
Yes, so you literally being a relationship expert, a relationship researcher,
does your wife feel threatened or grateful?
Speaker 3 (32:44):
She just rolls her eyes. She just thinks this idea.
I mean, the dedication of my book is to my wife, Allison,
who thinks it's hilarious that I'm a marriage expert.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
Now, Julio tells his friends, if I can't have a
healthy relationship with this one, I can have it with anybody.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
Oh that's interesting.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Thank you so much for joining us. The book is
the All or Nothing Marriage, How the Best Marriages Work,
and the podcast is Love Factually?
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Get It? Love Actually?
Speaker 3 (33:10):
Is It?
Speaker 2 (33:11):
Love Actually?
Speaker 1 (33:11):
Is one of my favorite movies, by the way, but
love factually, there's an f in there.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Doctor Eli Finkle, thank you so.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
Much for joining us, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
And that brings the Doctor Wendy Wall Show to eight clothes.
I'm always here for you every Sunday night from seven
to nine. You can also follow me on my social
media at doctor Wendy Walsh. You've been listening to The
Doctor Wendy Wall 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
(33:43):
AM six forty from seven to nine pm on Sunday
and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
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