The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

The Selfish Path to Romance.

Download chapter one for free at Drkenner.com and Amazon.com.

I told a guy, I love him.

What I meant to say was,

Oh, I love that. But I got so caught up that I yelled out, Oh, I love you. And then all of a sudden he got this look on his face like Indiana Jones running from the big ball. Well, Roz, do you love him? No, but I said it so he should have said it back. It’s just polite. There is no more emotionally charged phrase in the language than I love you. Some people are just incapable of saying it. It makes them too vulnerable. Now, is it emotionally charged? Think of the times that you've said I love you in life, or you've heard people say I love you to you, and some came to my mind. I've heard people telling their cleaning lady, I love you. You know, they hang up on the phone and they say, I love you, and it's just a flat voice. I mean, this differs from being in a passionate, watching a passionate, romantic movie, and the two, the husband and the what, not the husband and the wife. Let's just say the man and the woman have gotten together, and they're in this wonderful, warm embrace, and you're just waiting to hear those words where he says, I love you, I love you, and she would return the words. And it's one of those high points in one's life, just seeing those moments, those treasured moments, or experiencing them in your own life. Now, let's contrast that to somebody receiving an award, you know, getting an Emmy or something and saying, I love you all, or maybe an award at Toastmasters, I love all of you. Person doesn’t even know you. It’s a new member. It's meaningless. It just reduces the phrase to mincemeat. Many of us say it to our kids. We say to our kids, I love you. Translate that. That means, hey, I gotta interrupt this, because we've got to pay some bills. 30 seconds, that’s it. A very quick ad, and then Alan will be back.

Romance. Oh, I wish guys knew more about what we want from a relationship. Boy, I wish I knew more about what I want. Where’s that ad I saw? Ah, here it is: The Selfish Path to Romance, a serious romance guidebook. Download chapter one for free at selfishromance.com and buy it at Amazon.com. Hmm, The Selfish Path to Romance, that is interesting.

Many of us say it to our kids. We say to our kids, I love you. Translate that. That means, do you love me? I’m feeling needy right now, and I need a hug. Can you just say I love you? You want your kids to answer? If they say, “Yeah, Ma,” no, you feel betrayed. Well, there was a little article in Good Housekeeping by Joy Behar. She says it’s called Joy to the World. She says, “When did I love you become the only acceptable way to end a conversation? It's gotten to the point where those three words I love you have replaced goodbye. I overhear phone conversations that go something like this: Okay, I’ll pick up a quart of milk, I love you, or I think I ate a bad piece of fish, I love you. We get it already. Let's not relegate I love you to the same category as Have a nice day.” And she ends up by saying, “The words I love you should be saved and savored to maintain their importance.” And then, of course, she has to end up, by the way, “I love you all.”

And here's a little more from Dr. Kenner.

Right before the break, a woman had asked me, how does she deal with her feelings of feeling terrible and anxious? She wants some advice on how to deal with that. Well, first, you can go to my website, Drkenner.com, and if I don’t have the article still up on how to decode your emotions, we're going to check that right after the show. You can get the book Mind Over Mood. And there are many other books there that are excellent to help you figure out how to introspect. That’s really what you're asking. What do I do with these emotions? And you don't just introspect, you don’t just look inwardly and figure out the details, the specifics of what's going on under the hood of your mind — not the hood of a car, but under the hood of your mind. You want to then prepare proper action. You want to figure out what to do, what choices to make that can better your life and get you out of that anxious mode, or that feeling terrible, guilty, sad, angry, ashamed. So, in decoding emotions, I had mentioned earlier that when you say, you know, I'm just feeling really bummed out, and I don’t know why. I don’t know why is the starting point. You then say, “What is it I don’t know? Why might I be bummed out? When did it first start? Who was I with? When have I felt better?” These are all introspective questions, and they’re wonderful questions. And if you sit down and journal — meaning writing it down on paper — you can shred it afterwards if you think your partner will find it, or your kids will find this. But uncensored, let out all your thoughts and do the detective work. You would do in therapy. If you can afford therapy, go to therapy. Get a good cognitive therapist or a good therapist. There are good therapists who aren’t cognitive therapists, but I happen to love cognitive therapy because it’s skill-oriented. Cognitive is just a dressed-up word for thinking therapy. You figure out what's underlying your emotions. Let's take a little example with this. Let’s say that this woman is very stressed out. She feels anxious and terrible. She doesn’t feel good enough. Well, good enough meaning what? By her parents’ standards? Well, then she needs to learn that it’s her life. She needs to set her own standards. She doesn’t need to be barefoot and pregnant, if that’s what her father wanted for her, that she can have a career if she wants it. If she feels not good enough in parenting her kids and she isn't a good parent, then she needs to get better parenting skills and she can read books on my website, Drkenner.com, that I highly recommend by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. If she feels she's not good enough because she’s in an abusive relationship, then she would need to figure out an exit strategy, and sometimes that’s not easy. When you're dumping on yourself just the way your partner is dumping on you. If she feels not good enough because she’s had failed relationships and doesn’t know how to find a partner and how not to wreck the next relationship, then she can read some books or learn some skills on how to make herself more lovable and how to feel more confident and pick better partners, pick better, and understand what mistakes she made the last time, assuming they were mistakes, and not make them again.

And here's a little more from Dr. Kenner.

Now, here's the dilemma that Adrienne’s in. She’s the woman that has the problem of celebrating her birthday on the anniversary of the death of a coworker’s child. “Dear Dr. Kenner, I recently started a job where I work with a very nice gal, Judy, and have been to her house for candle parties. I guess she sells candles, and I have found out that this is the one-year anniversary of her son’s death on my birthday. I don’t know what to do with that day approaching. She’s still very upset, to the point that she will just start crying and, I mean, heaving. I can’t imagine what it would be like if I were facing that. What can I do to help counsel this woman? I’ve been told. I have even told the girls at the office, please don’t send me flowers on my birthday. It's some sort of tradition that they send it to everyone. But I was told, don’t be silly. What should I do? Please help me with helping her through this time. Adrienne." Adrienne, I hear that you have two questions: What can I do to counsel her? And the other is, what do you do about your birthday? So, let’s take the first one. What do you do to counsel her? I would say, be absolutely true to yourself. If you feel really close to her, like a best friend connection — sometimes we feel that way with someone that we’ve met — then you can offer her a shoulder to lean on. You can say, “Judy, if you need to talk to anybody about what you’re going through, give me a call. I don’t think I’ll ever understand the intensity of the loss of a child, of the pain you’re going through, but I’ll be there to keep you company.” And I would add the following statement: “If I find it’s too much for me, Judy, I’ll let you know.” And maybe that’s an issue for therapy because I don’t want to pretend I’m your therapist; I don’t have those skills. Now, if that’s not your relationship with her, and you’ve got kids and a husband and friends of your own, and you don’t want to enmesh your life with this coworker — you go to work, candle parties, but you want to be cordial to her at work — then keep your boundaries. Do not give her that offer because if she starts to lean on you, she’ll sense that you really didn’t mean it, and you’ll feel friction all the time. She’ll know that you’re not fully tuned in. If she prefers privacy, if she just says, “No, this is something I want to deal with on my own,” then don’t keep intruding with questions. “Are you sure you're doing okay? Tell me what it’s like to have lost a son.” If she doesn’t want to talk about it with you or at work, just respect that. Everybody varies in how they want to grieve a loss. Many times, couples get in trouble because one partner, if they lost a child, one partner wants to reconnect with life again, and the other partner is still grieving the loss, and they see each other as villains, so you don’t want that to happen.

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

Here’s an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance by Drs. Kenner and Locke.

Think of your love relationship as a garden full of rare and valuable flowers, the most important treasure in your life. Growing a garden is impossible by just loving it. It has to be cultivated. If you start a garden and then neglect it, the plants will slowly wither and die. Cultivating a garden is an ongoing process requiring continuous thought and action. The same is true of love. If you truly value your partner, how do you show it? Here are seven ways to help you both feel truly cherished: 1. Work to understand your partner. 2. Encourage your partner to pursue his or her values. 3. Communicate constantly. 4. Show concern for your partner’s welfare. 5. Show generosity. 6. Make decisions together. 7. Respect your partner’s need for private time.

You can download chapter one for free at Drkenner.com, and you can buy the book at Amazon.com.