The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

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

This is Meryl. No, that's unacceptable. Listen, tell Warren, if we don't ship by Tuesday, we won't be in the stores by Mother's Day, and that's unacceptable. So don't give me any excuses. And do it. Do it, just shut up and get it done. Oh, honey, you broke your phone. It's okay. I carry extras.

Be very purposeful as to how you set up your life, or you'll be eaten by the demands. This was said by Dr. Ed Locke, and it's my pleasure to welcome him to the show today. He's a Harvard alumnus with a PhD from Cornell. He's a senior writer with the Ayn Rand Institute and a fellow of the American Psychological Association, and he has so many wonderful tapes on self-esteem, stress and coping, making effective choices in the study process, and setting goals to improve your life and happiness. And welcome to the show, Doctor.

Thank you for having me.

I want to give you a situation that many moms—and probably some dads—can relate to, and tell me: how would life planning help reduce the stress?

I'm at wits' end. My nerves are absolutely frayed, Dr. Locke. I'm working part-time as a paralegal, and I'm taking an evening course in law. And then I have to take the kids to soccer, to dance, to karate. And on top of that, Mom is always calling me to pick up something or other for her and to take her to her doctor's appointments.

And then I've got this friend Krista. Now, Krista is a good kid. I like her. We've been friends for a long time, but she's always complaining about her kids, and I just don't have the time to talk with her, but I can't tell her no.

Then picture this: my husband comes home at night. He's relaxing with his newspaper, he's got a beer in his hand, and he wants sex. Yeah, right. He never helps out. He just thinks that bringing home a paycheck is all that's needed.

I'm telling you, Dr. Locke, I am so stressed out that I'm afraid I'm gonna go crazy. I'm afraid I'm going off the edge. Now, how could I use some life planning there to help me out?

The first thing she would need to do is sit down with her husband and say to him, “I can't live like this.” And say, “Let me go over the things that are driving me slightly insane, and let's together work out a plan for me to lessen the stress.” For example, if the husband is such a great breadwinner, maybe the part-time job is not necessary. Maybe the husband could do more around the house, more cooking. Maybe he could sometimes take the kids to activities. So I think that would be the number one thing—to work out a plan with your spouse to divide up the labor so your stress is not so—

That takes breaking a huge pattern. Because if my husband hasn't been talking—I mean, if this is the pattern that's set in, and this is what he's come to expect—we probably need some counseling to be able to break—

Possible if he's not sympathetic, and tell him that—assuming that she loves him—tell him, you know, she really likes sex, but her life is so stressful and she's just too tense to get in the mood anymore, and that that's causing her additional stress.

That might catch the husband's ear pretty fast. So that’s a good way to turn things around. So she's got to be assertive in a nice way, and say, “I can't deal with this, okay?” So I think—

It's affecting everything, and it's affecting our relationship.

In a book I recently read, they talked about tipping over the first domino. If she invites him to have sex, then that might be a good means to catch his attention and to engage his cooperation better.

And then what about all the other things? I mean, the kids are just booked to the hilt. And then she's got her mom, and she's got her friend—

What you can do sometimes with the kid thing is you could share a responsibility with another parent. Every other day they would do it; every other day you would do it—a parent who has their kid in the same activity. So that can often be helpful.

Now, with friends, it's a difficult thing because—

Hey, I got to interrupt this because we've got to pay some bills. Thirty seconds, that's it. A very quick ad, and then Allen 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? Uh, 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.

Now, with friends, it's a difficult thing, because you don't want to hurt your friend, but your friend's not really being a good friend, in this case, by using you as—using you as a therapist. So I think you have to be proactive in choosing your friends, as well as every other part of your life. And if your friends aren't making you happy, then they're not great people to have as friends.

So you could start by simply saying, “I do value your friendship, but I just don't have the time to deal with this. I'm going to have to cut down the amount of hours we talk a week.” Friend will undoubtedly be hurt, but that will be a starting point. And it might be—it might end up breaking off the friendship, or might not, depending on the situation. But it looks to me like a one-way friendship, not like a two-way friendship, right?

And even the thought that you had about the friend really needing therapy—she could say, “You know what? I feel like I'm functioning as your therapist, and I'm not educated enough to do that. I'm thinking, if you had therapy, and then we could touch base, maybe we can talk for five or ten minutes and you can catch me up on things”—but to put a time limit on it too—then that may help retain the friendship.

Yeah, that's another possibility. And with Mom again—I don't, we don't know the details of the mom's income or stuff—but I think something you could say is, “Mom, I'm just completely overloaded. Could you possibly take a taxi to the doctor?”

Go with a friend of Mom’s? Network of friends? Or they now have vans—I think many cities just have vans you can call—and they're decent. They don't look like a grimy taxi.

So you have to really be—you can't be in a position of being the exploitee with your own consent. Here, you have to not sanction what's happening to you and take action to change things. And no one's going to do it for you. You have to do it yourself.

Right. So she needs to stand back and look at her entire day or week and see how she's spending her time, and start to prioritize what's of top value to her. If it's her evening course in law, then that may come first. If it's some time with her husband, then that may come first. If it's some time alone—many women or men in the same situation want some time alone—that may come at the top.

And then you also are breaking all of her problems into individual bits, rather than dealing with it all as one lump sum, right?

But often you can combine the problems. Like, a lot of the problems are things concerning joint responsibilities with her husband. A lot of the problems are of that nature. So even though that's one thing, that actually is five things—cooking and house and kids—

Maybe they can hire a housekeeper. Maybe they can hire a kid after school to drive the kids. So if she lets her husband know where she's at—many women don't speak up—or husbands in the same situation—they need to speak up. If the communication breaks down, then you have a life full of stress.

Well, thank you so much for joining us, Dr. Locke.

Thank you for having me.

And you want to know your own breaking point with stress. One of the things that I learned when I was in graduate school, actually, was that everybody has a breaking point. We can overload ourselves with so many stressors—whether it's the kids, whether it's your in-laws, family, friends, whether you're in school or whether you're working one or two jobs—you can overload yourself so much that you just start to break down.

And I knew I was breaking down when I just found myself sitting in a corner in the kitchen and not able to move. And I said, “Something has to give.” And I said, “But nothing can give.”

And then I did something I had never done before. I picked up the phone, and I called one of my professors. I was in college at the time, in graduate school, and I asked to take an incomplete. I had never done that. That was not my style.

And the person said he fully understood. I had two kids and was—you know—family and—and that was fine, and I completed it during the summer, and that reduced my stress.

So you want to figure out a strategy of how to reduce your stress. You can't do it all. Something’s got to give—and it's not you that gives.

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 and co-author Dr. Edwin Locke, who’s world famous for his theories in goal setting.

What can you do when your partner refuses to work with you to resolve conflict?

Sometimes the underlying problem is that partners are not addressing the real issue. The resisting partner may not want to acknowledge, or may not explicitly know, what the real issue is. For example, a man may resist planning a romantic evening because he fears the humiliation of impotence. Nurturing, supportive discussion may help him talk about this issue and deal with his fears openly and move towards some solution.

You can download chapter one for free by going to DrKenner.com and you can buy The Selfish Path to Romance at Amazon.com