The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

The Selfish Path to Romance. Download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com

Here is a question that I received from Barbara. Dear Dr. Kenner, my husband, Joe, passed away last summer. We had been married 20 wonderful years. This was not the first time around for us; we knew what we were doing. I cannot remember one cross word between us. That's amazing. Joe helped me through many surgeries, including cancer. Last year, he was diagnosed with a debilitating cancer. We spent many days and weeks in the hospital. I would get there at 6 AM and leave about 9 PM. The chemo was awful—96 hours straight. He was so sick. I am having a terrible time without him. I'm sad and lonely. I cry a lot. I miss him so much. I try to remember every day we had. I was lying next to him when his heart stopped. I had my hand on his heart for two days. I never left him for the last 24 hours. We spent many hours for four months in bed holding each other. My question is, is this normal? Is this terrible sadness part of grieving? I am so lost, Barbara. PS, I will be 70 years old soon.

So, Barbara, is it normal? I want to answer yes and no. For example, it's not normal to have a wonderful relationship like that, but it's wonderful. It's wonderful to have that, and you want to have a lot of empathy for yourself when you have built up a lifetime value of integrating your life with another person that you love so dearly, and you don't want to lose him in your life. You see that it's hopeless after a while, and you try to milk every moment out of it. That is a profound loss, and that you can have very profound grief. The part that I'm a little concerned about is you don't want to wrap yourself up in grief. When people go through a trauma, such as after 9/11, I heard a phrase on the radio that I liked a lot: after 9/11 for the survivors, if you lost a loved one, you need to build a parallel life for yourself without losing the memories of the person you love. Those memories will be with you for a lifetime. You want to be good to yourself, though, and not wrap yourself around the trauma that you've been through. You've been through mega trauma, and you also want to experience your life, and it's really hard, especially if you've been connected for 20 years. It's really hard to be independent and to think, what hobbies would you enjoy? Maybe they won't be the same hobbies that you had with him. Maybe they will. But what hobbies or interests or activities can you get involved in? What other relationships do you have? Some people shy away from people after they've lost a loved one, which is sad, but if that happens, you can build new relationships. There’s a book called The Loneliness Book that you can look up. I don't have it in front of me now; it's by Mary Ellen Copeland, and she gives some good tips on how to kind of break old habits and give yourself permission to take small steps in the direction of having a richer life for yourself.

Now I'm going to pause for a minute. What could keep a person trapped in reliving daily what the trauma that you went through and what that life was like, keeping the memories? Well, one thing that can keep you trapped is guilt, and guilt, as I say, comes in two flavors. One is earned guilt, and it doesn't sound like you have a whole lot of that, but sometimes people magnify a small thing. Maybe you weren't there till nine o'clock one night, and you feel guilty. I mean, that's ridiculous. You don't want to beat yourself up for that. But there is also another guilt called unearned guilt. You did nothing wrong, but you're torturing yourself, and sometimes, if you lose a loved one, for example, you both had cancer, you might have some passing thoughts or maybe even some recurring thoughts of, “I wish it had been me and not him.” You might have what's called survivor's guilt, and if you're dealing with that, you definitely want some help to disentangle yourself. If you're saying to yourself, you know, “Why did he die? I'll never forget him. I want to remember every moment with him.” What are you directing your mind to do? You're directing your mind to continually keep the grief in the forefront of your mind. And that's not completely healthy. You do want to remember him, and there's no way you'll ever forget him. But life is about achieving your values. You want the notion in your mind of, “I want to create a life for myself. I want to wake up in the morning and enjoy my day and have activities and friendships that make my life more interesting.” So that's something that takes effort, and it takes a plan. You can do it on your own, or you can do it with a therapist, as I had mentioned earlier.

And in terms of being 70 years old, my father is 90 years old. He lost my mother, and he made the decision he didn't want to focus on his death. He didn't want to focus on his eventual death or my mother's death, and so he made the choice to really embrace his life. And he's connected with all family members and friends. I mean, he travels still at the age of 90; he's very independent, and he would think that you're a spring chicken at the age of 70, so you still have a lot of life in front of you, and you want to give yourself permission. This is key to enjoy it.

And here's a little more from Dr. Kenner. Maybe you're having difficulty with yourself. Maybe you're just really annoyed with yourself, or you have a lifelong pattern of beating up on yourself, being really, really hard on yourself. You know, in some sense, it's unfair. People have told you that's unfair, and yet you just get out the battering rim and beat up on yourself a little bit more whenever you can. It's like you can't do anything right. You know, many people will say, with a parent, “My mother or my father, nothing was ever good enough. Nothing was ever good enough.” Well, how many of us internalize that and we go through life singing the song, “Nothing's ever good enough” to ourselves and feeling lousy? Well, you need a way to disentangle yourself from that type of premise.

For more Dr. Kenner podcasts, go to DrKenner.com and please listen to this.

Here's an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance, the serious romance guidebook by clinical psychologist Dr. Ellen Kenner. Suppose you're on a first date with an attractive woman, but you know very little about her. You discover that she's a single mom who raised two children on her own, sending them to good schools because she wanted them to develop basic skills and the ability to think when the time was right. She started a small business on her own. She read and took online courses to help ensure that her business would succeed. You discover that she was always honest with customers. She seems totally genuine and not trying to impress you. With each new discovery, you're aware of the very positive emotions you're experiencing—the beginning of love. Certainly, there are brain chemicals at work here, but they and the love were the result of the information you gained and appraised, not chemicals.

You can download chapter one for free by going to DrKenner.com, and you can buy the book at Amazon.com.