The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

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

I have a question from hopelessly in love. This is Hi, Dr. Kenner. For 20 years, I've tried to hold our marriage together. My wife, Maggie, is so angry at my past failures. Even though I've asked her to forgive me, and she says she has, I have been faithful, and I do almost all of the cooking and all the cleaning. She recently told me we are done and has moved out of our bedroom to the spare room. About five garbage bags of stuff to be disposed of came out from her side of the room. The anger has always been there. She fought constantly with her mother and was out of the house at 16. I know it's nearly impossible to give her a diagnosis, but I want to save this marriage. She will not go to counseling. How can I get her to counseling? Any idea what may be the problem from hopelessly in love?

Hopelessly in love, I don't think having a diagnosis for your wife is the main issue. Unfortunately, you can't force her into counseling. You can get counseling for yourself to understand what happened to your marriage and your own role in it. You want to understand your own strengths, and you want to look where there are areas where you can improve yourself. I think that it would be absolutely phenomenal for you to be hopelessly in love with yourself.

Let's assume for a moment that your wife, Maggie, after a 20-year marriage, is erratic, and she's very difficult to live with. She angers easily, and she runs away from you, as she did with her mom when she was a kid at age 16. Then the question is, if you're hopelessly in love with yourself, why would you stay with her? What ideas might be keeping you trapped in an unsatisfactory relationship for how long? For two decades.

The big question mark that came to my mind, you know, I think of my relationship with my hubby, and we share the housework. We share the cleaning. Why are you doing all the cooking and the housework? I don't get it. People can have different divisions of labor within housework and within a relationship, but it seems like you are taking these on. I'm wondering, do you feel you need to live each day to appease Maggie or Margie? I guess Margie. Do you feel you need to win love from a person who may not even love herself? If she's angry all the time, that's a hint that she definitely may need counseling, but that's up to her. That's her business.

So if you're trying to appease her or maybe to make up for past failures, but it always feels lopsided now, then you have not mended it enough to have a relationship of equals, or maybe you've never had that relationship. If you value yourself, and if you can learn to be hopelessly in love with yourself, you will consider leaving Margie and eventually maybe find a better partner who you can admire and who will admire you.

Now, let's look at this from another angle, another possibility. Let's say that Margie has tried to be the good wife, and she feels massively betrayed by you, and her anger is a megaphone screaming out to you. It's not there 20 years of unfairness, and she feels that the relationship has hit a breaking point that she wants to divorce you. The question is, why? You definitely want that understanding for yourself.

When people are searching for the answers, why in their relationship, listen carefully to your partner's words. Listen carefully to her angry words, the tone, her body language. What is it saying? Along with her words, take a close look at your history together. What were your failures at the beginning of the relationship or during the relationship that you felt you had to apologize for?

The things that come to my mind are: did you cheat on Meg and Margie early in the relationship? Did you gamble? Did you have drinking or drugging problems that really messed up her life? Did you refuse to work, and she had to carry the load? Or maybe you were a workaholic and you never made time for her. Maybe you never did anything around the house, and so now you're pitching in feverishly, but it's a little too late and a little too little.

Maybe you pressured her for sex and you didn't attend to what pleased her. Maybe you never wanted sex with her, and you left her frustrated. I don't know those answers. You have the details of your own relationship and the dynamics that were going on. If you've messed up in some significant way and you now want to rescue the relationship, you want to listen very carefully to her. You want to learn what's called active listening. So it's not "yes, but," every time Margie says something to you. If not, she might have reached her breaking point, and she wants a divorce and doesn't even want to sleep in the same bed with you while waiting for it.

Your desire to get her back maybe more is your wanting not to face some facts about yourself that could use some improvement. If that's so, and if you have the courage to face those facts and improve yourself, then you can go to counseling and get that help, with or without her. So that's what I would recommend for that.

For more Dr. Kenner podcast, go to DrKenner.com and please listen to this ad. Here's an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance, the serious romance guidebook by clinical psychologist Dr. Ellen Kenner and Dr. Edwin Locke, who's world-famous for his theories in goal setting.

What if the partner you want doesn't want you? One essential principle to remember in the dating world is that you cannot force a mind. You can't force someone you like to like you. No matter how strong your desires, that person is judging your appropriateness for his or her happiness, just as you are doing. Rational dating properly includes mutually judging one another because love is so individual. Finding the right match is not easy, and rejection and disappointments are likely, if not inevitable, before you find the right partner.

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