The Matt Walsh Show - Matt Walsh Gives Relationship and Parenting Advice

00:00:00.000 I want to start with this, though. This is actually not an email. This was a comment that somebody

00:00:20.180 left on YouTube on one of the shows this week that I thought was interesting. And it's not

00:00:23.740 looking for advice. It's actually giving advice. I just think it's good. So PBD Park Biz says,

00:00:28.580 parenting without screens is easy. You just have to join in and most parents won't. I don't think

00:00:34.280 my parenting is better or my child is well behaved with a screen. They're upset for a minute and then

00:00:38.840 they forget for a few. It takes a week to break the habit that most kids have. Just take it away

00:00:43.660 and don't give it back. The screens referring to. Be strong. Here's the part that's most important.

00:00:49.680 Spend time with them. Let them be in the room while you work. Let them ask 1,450 questions,

00:00:56.020 even if it's annoying. Stop being a child yourself and parent. I think that's extraordinary

00:01:01.280 advice. It's also very basic and it should be obvious, but the best advice often is. And this

00:01:07.340 is exactly right. The first thing when it comes to modern parenting anyway, this is like one of the

00:01:12.680 number one challenges is the screen. It's the siren song of all these screens that are constantly

00:01:19.620 beckoning to your children and to us and threatening to totally take over and absorb every minute of our

00:01:26.840 lives. And so you've got it. If you want to have a happy and fulfilled family and marriage and you

00:01:34.140 want happy, fulfilled children and you want to have some chance also of actually raising your own

00:01:39.060 children, of you being the one who raises them and that their moral formation and their spiritual

00:01:43.940 formation and all of that in their education is largely up to you. If you want some hope of that,

00:01:48.560 then you've got to be able to sever their ties and their dependency on the screen. And you just

00:01:55.940 got to be able to do it. And in some ways I don't have a lot of sympathy for parents that

00:02:01.240 like don't know how to do this or they don't want to, or they feel bad about it. No. Yeah. If you take

00:02:07.520 the screen away from your kid, maybe you've already given them a phone, big mistake, take it away,

00:02:11.620 say, well, nevermind. You can't have this phone. It's okay to admit when you made a mistake as a parent,

00:02:15.340 you could say, we made a mistake. We, you should not have this. We're going to take it away.

00:02:19.620 You take away that, you know, you severely cut down on TV time, on a time with video games.

00:02:27.880 If you do that, yeah, the kid's going to be upset. They'll be in a huff, whatever. Who cares?

00:02:34.620 You know, you cannot allow yourself to be emotionally manipulated by your children. You just

00:02:38.920 can't allow it. And what you should know as a parent is that there are basically like two kinds

00:02:44.280 of hurt that your child might experience. There's the discomfort that he might feel because he's not

00:02:51.460 getting something that he wants and yet shouldn't have. And you're taking that thing away or you're

00:02:57.540 limiting his time with that thing. And that makes him uncomfortable. That makes him bored.

00:03:02.700 And he's upset about that. There's like that kind of hurt. Okay. And then there's the real hurt.

00:03:07.780 There's a, you know, either emotional or physical where there's something deeper going on.

00:03:11.920 The first kind of hurt really shouldn't bother you. I can say for, for me as a parent, it just

00:03:16.880 doesn't. If my kids are whining because they want something and I don't give it to them. They want it.

00:03:21.820 They want to watch TV and they can't, they want to, you know, junk food snack. And I say, no,

00:03:26.140 you can't have that. They want some soda. And I say, I'm not going to give you soda. And they get,

00:03:29.680 they get a snit about it. That does, that has no impact on me at all. Like those kinds of emotions

00:03:35.620 from my kid. That's like, you got to get over that. That's just, I'm Teflon with that. That

00:03:40.840 bounces right off me. I don't care. Now, again, there's, there's the deeper kind of emotional

00:03:44.960 hurt that your child might feel and that you should take seriously. I mean, there are many

00:03:48.480 examples of that. Just a recent example for me. I was, uh, when I was most recently going on a trip

00:03:53.580 to another, speak at another college. And, uh, my son was like very upset that I was leaving again

00:03:58.940 because I've been traveling a lot. And he was really upset about, and he was in tears and he was,

00:04:02.200 now, of course, that's something deeper. That's like, I want to spend time with dad.

00:04:06.260 You're not here. I, you know, um, so then I'm going to sit down and we're going to have a real

00:04:11.020 conversation about that. Okay. And that does, you know, that's the kind of thing that that's a gut

00:04:15.060 punch that you actually feel as a parent, but there's other stuff where they're just whining

00:04:18.160 because they want something. You got to be able to, you know, be, be unfazed by that entirely.

00:04:25.620 And then yes, as the comment points out, you take the screens away, you take these things away

00:04:30.720 and especially when the children are younger, you can quite easily replace that in a way that

00:04:37.160 they will find more than satisfying and sufficient. If you're, if you spend time with them yourself,

00:04:42.200 but the dirty little secret, which is not much of a secret is that most parents,

00:04:45.920 this is exactly why they put their kids in front of the screens because they don't want to spend

00:04:49.580 time with their kids because they consider it taxing or annoying or right. Kid asks so many

00:04:54.760 questions or whatever, but you, you, you're a parent and this is what your child wants. It wants to be

00:05:00.380 around you, wants to spend time with you, especially for younger kids. And I think it's

00:05:05.360 one of the biggest mistakes that we make as parents of younger kids is that we don't give

00:05:09.640 children that time that they need and that attention that they need. You can't give them

00:05:13.420 attention all the time, right? Where they think the world revolves around them. They do want your

00:05:17.400 attention. They do just want to, they want to just be around you. They want to do the things that

00:05:20.860 you're doing. You don't always have to do childlike things. You can incorporate them into the

00:05:25.120 things that you're doing. They really like that. They want to do that. But you have a lot of

00:05:28.960 parents where they're annoyed by it. They don't want to, they don't want to deal with it. And so

00:05:33.360 they push the kids away. They say, ah, just go watch TV. And then the time inevitably comes

00:05:38.580 when they become teenagers or maybe even before that, where suddenly it's like a, a switch is

00:05:43.820 flipped. And now they don't even want to be around you anymore. They don't want your attention

00:05:47.860 anymore. And when that happens, we hear the story a million times from parents. That's when they

00:05:52.600 look back and they think of all those times when the kids were younger and begging for their

00:05:56.100 attention. And, and, and that's all they want. Like when you're a parent of a young child,

00:06:00.660 this is your biggest problem. It's just that your kids like you too much and they want to be around

00:06:05.100 you too much. It's like one of the biggest, it's one of the biggest issues that parents complain

00:06:08.240 about is when they have young kids, which is not really a problem at all. And once the kid gets

00:06:12.880 older, it doesn't want to be around you anymore because they're going through their teenage phase.

00:06:15.760 You look back on it and realize, oh, that was never a problem. That was a beautiful thing. I wish I had,

00:06:19.860 I wish I'd spent time with them when they wanted it. Maybe they would still want my attention now

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00:07:15.920 All right. Carter says, Mr. Walsh, I listened to and enjoy your show very much. I would hazard

00:07:21.640 to say that I agree wholeheartedly with your views on marriage and the family. Being a traditionally

00:07:25.240 raised Catholic myself, I've come to understand the beauty and joy that marriage and the family

00:07:28.960 can bring into one's life. However, I find it impossible to find anyone that I'm interested

00:07:32.720 in dating, much less marrying who resides anywhere near me. I was wondering if you would have any advice

00:07:37.400 or words different from the typical be patient or you need to get out more. I'll admit that I have

00:07:42.280 reclusive tendencies and that I mostly just go to work and then go home. With that said,

00:07:46.160 most of the young adult groups in my area would consist of women in professions, which would not 1.00

00:07:50.160 allow for a traditional marriage and family, which is how I'd want to raise children. I also don't 0.99

00:07:54.540 like bars. They're typically loud, dark, and crowded, which usually causes me to shut down. Not to

00:07:59.500 mention, I likely wouldn't find the kind of woman I'm interested in at a bar. Combine this all with 0.99

00:08:03.880 the fact that most of my dreams that have had any true value have all ended in failure. I find it hard

00:08:08.900 to maintain hope that there is someone out there for me. Perhaps you have the golden nugget of

00:08:12.920 wisdom that will help me hold on to hope. I guess my first golden nugget of wisdom, Carter, is to

00:08:19.140 stop expecting anyone to have a golden nugget of wisdom that's going to solve your problem.

00:08:25.740 The path forward and the solutions, the potential solutions, I think are obvious to you. In fact,

00:08:31.060 you dismiss some of them outright. You say, well, don't tell me this. Those are some of the answers.

00:08:35.700 You dismiss, for example, the young adult groups in your area because you assume, you say, well,

00:08:40.160 they would consist of the kind of people that I don't want to be around. And I would go here,

00:08:44.000 but I'm not going to find people there. And I would go there, but there's going to be the wrong

00:08:46.560 people there. It sounds like you're just sort of assuming all of that. He's right. And you're

00:08:50.900 not actually trying. You're not actually putting yourself out there. And as much as you don't want

00:08:54.020 to hear it, that is part of the solution for you, potentially, is you've got to put yourself out

00:08:59.420 there more. I mean, you said that you go to work, you come home, you don't really socialize with anyone,

00:09:03.380 you don't go anywhere else. Well, how would you meet anybody in that case? Even if it's

00:09:08.020 uncomfortable. And I totally get that as an introverted person, myself, I'm not into forced

00:09:12.600 group activities. I'm not into that, but I did some of that when I was single because I realized

00:09:16.980 I got to put myself out there. I got to get outside of my comfort zone a little bit, focus on

00:09:21.160 improving yourself to whatever extent you can. And then the other practical piece of advice that you

00:09:28.000 didn't rule out, at least from the start is that this is a big one, expand your search area.

00:09:32.200 So you're telling me to begin with that there's no one in your area who you find worthy. And I'm

00:09:37.460 willing to bet that there are women even in your area. There aren't many great things about the 1.00

00:09:41.760 modern dating scene, but maybe the only one is that you can, that you're not relegated just to

00:09:46.660 where you physically live. You can expand your search area by using dating sites and that sort of

00:09:50.180 thing. And you have to be willing to travel. You know, my wife, when I met her, she, she lived two

00:09:55.220 and a half hours away. So it wasn't like she was halfway around the country, across the country,

00:09:58.020 but she was two and a half hours away. And so that meant that like to see each other took effort

00:10:03.160 and time. That's not a bad thing though. Now when you have to put in it to begin with, you have to

00:10:07.820 put the effort in and the time in just to see each other and be around each other. I think that can

00:10:11.700 be a great advantage. Ashley says, I've been married for six years and with my spouse for almost 14

00:10:16.840 years. Yes, it took him that long to propose. My question is how often should a couple say,

00:10:20.720 I love you? My husband is not outwardly emotional, hardly at all, unless he's upset.

00:10:24.020 We next to never say, I love you. Should I initiate this more? What are your thoughts? Yeah,

00:10:28.140 you should initiate it more. Just tell him you love him. Also, you could talk to him about this.

00:10:33.260 Maybe you have, but I'm always surprised by how often it seems that people have these kinds of

00:10:38.000 issues in their marriage, which are like relatively minor. And then you talk to him,

00:10:42.280 you find out, well, they've actually never talked about it. Let me say, we don't really need to be

00:10:46.400 here. So this is something you could bring up to him, not in a nagging way, not in a scolding way,

00:10:50.200 nothing like that, not an accusatory way. Once again, things that could have been brought to my

00:10:53.900 attention yesterday. You find a time when you're both in a good mood and you're sitting on the

00:10:57.820 couch or something and you just tell him, you know, I know you love me, but it makes me feel

00:11:03.040 good to hear the words from you. And so I'd like for us to start saying it more to each other.

00:11:06.760 I think, I think he would respond to that if you said that to him. And it is important to say the

00:11:11.940 words, you know, it's not like you have to be on a schedule where it's like, well, you got to say,

00:11:14.960 I love you 14 times a week, you know, and if it's been a few days, you haven't said it,

00:11:19.500 then you got to catch up. It's not that, but you should, the words do matter to spouses and also

00:11:23.620 matters to your kids. I think we should also be telling your kids that you love them.

00:11:26.360 All right. This will be the last one. This is from Jacob says, Matt, I recently did the

00:11:30.000 impossible. I matched with a fellow sweet baby on Tinder. That does seem to be on Tinder is where

00:11:35.300 you found the fellow sweet baby. Wow. I didn't know we had a presence on Tinder. I don't know

00:11:39.560 if I'm happy about that or not. As you can imagine, I was extremely excited and we quickly began

00:11:43.340 discussing our views and learning about each other. We exchanged numbers and socials and began

00:11:47.980 talking. I asked her if she wanted kids. And I also joked that maybe we should move to Tennessee

00:11:52.140 together. So we can rub elbows with the fine people, the daily wire. After a couple of days,

00:11:55.700 I tell her that we should go out after the holidays to which she seemed surprised and told me that she

00:11:59.780 thought I was just her political buddy because I didn't. Oh man. Sorry, man.

00:12:04.680 Because I didn't flirt enough in the beginning and that she found someone else. This genuinely hurt.

00:12:10.980 I find it hard to believe she didn't know I wanted to date her when we were on a dating app.

00:12:14.600 Do you think this was her way of trying to let me down easy or is she just evil and in need of being 0.98

00:12:18.080 canceled? She's not evil. She's a member of the sweet baby. So she's a baby gang. So we 0.99

00:12:21.920 know she's not evil to begin with. I think this was, yeah, her trying to let you down easy.

00:12:28.980 Now on her part, she should be more honest with you, but people don't feel always comfortable

00:12:33.480 being that honest with, especially someone they don't know. And yeah, I think we can assume that

00:12:39.720 she realized that you're not on Tinder looking for a quote, political buddy.

00:12:43.560 You're such a good friend, right? The bestest.

00:12:46.180 One of the worst kind of like friend of all the ways to friend zone someone. I think maybe that's

00:12:53.160 one of the worst ways you can do it. Did you do anything wrong that made it so that she lost

00:12:57.120 interest that quickly? It's impossible for me to say based on this short description of the

00:13:01.780 exchange that I have here. If I were you, I wouldn't have made the comment about moving to

00:13:06.580 Tennessee together. And I know you phrased it as a joke. Sorry, I'm making a go of it in a new city.

00:13:11.720 It probably wasn't entirely a joke, was it? It was, you were kind of like feeling things out.

00:13:15.100 Not that you were going to move with her that moment, but when you just met someone on Tinder,

00:13:18.780 you haven't even met them in person and you're already even jokingly bringing up moving somewhere

00:13:22.480 together that might've freaked her out a little bit. Other than that, you know, based on this

00:13:27.100 doesn't sound like you did anything wrong and you didn't let it linger too long. I think oftentimes

00:13:32.100 the mistake a guy will make is that you, you, I guess what they call the talking phase and you do the

00:13:36.660 talking phase for weeks and weeks and months. And then finally you work up the courage to say,

00:13:40.900 Hey, maybe we should actually like physically go out together. And at that point, she's already

00:13:44.260 lost interest. My density has popped me to you. What? But, uh, you talked to her for a few days

00:13:52.340 and asked her on a date. That sounds reasonable to me, but she wasn't interested and found someone

00:13:57.100 else. These things happen. Get back out there. Don't let that discourage you. And we will end on

00:14:02.460 that encouraging note as we, uh, finish up here. Godspeed.

The Matt Walsh Show - April 15, 2023

Matt Walsh Gives Relationship and Parenting Advice

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