The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

The Selfish Path to Romance. Download chapter one for free at Dr. Kenner.com, and I received a question from Maggie on romance.

Hi, Dr. Kenner, my boyfriend John and I have been together for almost eight years. So picture that—they’re together for eight years. We’re engaged to be married. Three months ago, I had a bout of depression, and I shut him out. We never really broke up. I’ve started to heal, and I asked for forgiveness. John said he did not want to work on our relationship now, but he did not want to break up either. He says he loves me and that I’m his soulmate, but he is now dating Betsy. I told him that that’s the end of our relationship, but he won’t let me go or try to work it out. Please help me. Maggie.

Maggie, for one, he can’t hold on to you if you want out of the relationship. If this is a relationship breaker, a deal breaker—that he’s dating Betsy—then you can leave. He doesn’t own you. And maybe that’s a piece of your depression, that you want to own your own life. Nobody owns you. If you’re ambivalent, that’s a different situation. If you don’t know whether you want to stay with him, or why you might want to stay with him, or why you might want to leave, then what you want to do is really, really be honest with yourself, and maybe even take a piece of paper and write reasons why I want to stay. And if you find your mind shying away from some reasons, don’t do that. Just let it all hang out. You can always shred the piece of paper later. And write reasons why I want to leave, and reasons why I’m still straddling the fence, so to speak. So if it’s not working out, you are free to move on, and you can tell him that. Say, “Listen, it’s not working. You know, I can’t—you’re with Betsy. It’s just not working.” It might open up the conversation. He might be willing to talk earlier. Remember he said he’s not ready to talk yet, but he doesn’t want to leave you. So you might start the process, and at that point, you want to not only be honest with yourselves but with each other. You want to find out what is the basis for our relationship, and you want to talk about things that you might want to improve, or at least talk about if there are relationship breakers, why you think it’s just not working.

That second point I want to bring up…

Hey, I got to 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.

I wish I knew more about what girls want from a relationship. Well, I wish I knew more about what I want. Where’s that ad I saw? 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. Huh? This Selfish Path to Romance…that is interesting.

The second point I want to bring up is, what was your depression all about? You know, depression just…unless it’s medically—maybe you’ve got a brain tumor, or maybe there’s some major change in your life; you were fired suddenly—it just doesn’t float down and descend upon us. We need to know the cause of it. Sometimes it is biological. Many times it’s psychological, and unfortunately, people will very often mistake those psychological causes as, “Oh, it’s just brain chemistry.” And that’s too bad, because there is some phenomenal therapy out there—cognitive therapy—and you could get yourself some help. You could even go to my website, Dr. Kenner.com, and check out what I think is one of the best cognitive therapy books, which is Mind Over Mood. And you could do that on your own, or you could do it with a therapist guiding you, and that might even be better. But what was your depression all about? You’re together for eight years, which is almost a common-law marriage; you’re engaged to be married, and then what happened? For three months, you go silent. My gosh, if I had been engaged with someone for eight years, we’re all psyched about a wedding, we decide to tie the knot, and all of a sudden they…they don’t have any interest in me. They shut me out. I would definitely, for three months, consider maybe I want to date someone else. Maybe this is not good for me. Will it happen again? So you want to understand your own depression. Was it caused by the relationship? Maybe there was a major mismatch. You wanted children, he didn’t, or vice versa. Maybe after eight years, there was a lot of mutual resentment that had built up. Maybe you both need communication skills, or maybe you were bored with one another or fearful of commitment. I mean, if you go for eight years—I do know somebody who went for a very long time and actually more than one person, and then got married, and it worked out very well. So that’s not always the case, but sometimes there are reasons that people don’t…will have long-term dating and not tie that final knot of the legal documents.

You know, everybody will make their own choices.

And another question is, what about your sex life? Perhaps it wasn’t working for you or for him, or maybe it was dead—a dead sex life. So you want to figure out what your ambivalence is about and what caused you to get depressed. And only you can figure that out; only you can figure out what shut him out. So you want to… And let’s just for a moment look at it from his perspective. He might be thinking, “You know, I might be moving on. I don’t want to completely leave her yet, because we have a long-term investment here. But Betsy is a lot lighter than her. She doesn’t get depressed. And what if? What if Maggie gets depressed again? What if she shuts me out again? What if we have kids and she shuts me out? I don’t want to go through that pain again.” So he might be testing the waters with this new relationship—Betsy, and it’s fully understandable that you don’t want to share him. Again, you have every right to part ways, and if you want to mend any ruptures in the relationship, that’s going to take two, and you want to observe his actions, because many times actions are…I think most of the time, actions speak louder than words. And so the best gift you can give yourself is self-understanding. And I’ll recommend one more book, which is the book that I wrote with Dr. Ed Locke. It’s…bear with me on the title…it’s called The Selfish Path to Romance. And by “selfish,” we do not mean the mean, rotten way to romance. We mean the self-esteem, the self-valuing, the self-responsible, the self-nurturing, the loving way to romance. You value yourself. You learn how to speak your own mind in a very respectable way. You learn to listen to the other person carefully. You learn to value your own values and one another’s. And it’s a win-win situation. So again, the book I wrote with Dr. Ed Locke is The Selfish Path to Romance, and the subtitle is How to Love with Passion and Reason. How do you keep that going over the years? How do you resolve disputes? That’s not the subtitle; that would be a very long subtitle. The subtitle is just How to Love with Passion and Reason.

For more, Dr. Kenner podcast. Go to Dr. Kenner.com and please listen to this.

Here’s an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance by Dr. Ellen Kenner:

Here’s an example of how gender differences can cause conflict. Andres was a good provider and loved surprising Cara with special gifts, but she felt lonely and invisible. On the deepest level, he was unaware of her most profound values and feelings. He was of no comfort when she had a fight with her mother or had a bad day with her cranky boss. She wanted Andres to listen and commiserate with her. She would relate bad experiences, not with the intent of getting his advice, but to feel understood. But Andres would launch into telling her precisely what to say and do. He wanted to fix everything. How would they address this common pattern in relationships? Cara would need to be clear about what she needs, and Andres could learn how to be a sympathetic listener.

You can download chapter one for free at Dr. Kenner.com, and you can buy the book at amazon.com.