The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

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

I got an email from a young teenager, a 17-year-old, who wants to know what to do with the boys in her life. Now I'm going to read her email. I can't highlight everything that she does, but this is typical teenage writing in the sense of the way she writes. Now, I know people abbreviate things when they're always typing on instant messages, so I'll cut her some slack for that. But her English is awful. It’s “Hi, Dr.”—no capitals, not even on the “I’s.” “I need an advice from you, and advice I'm”—there’s no apostrophe between the I and the M. “I'm a 17-year-old girl who was asked from a lot of boys to be their girls.” The “to” is obviously a numeral. “My problem is the one, the one I likes so much asked me out and nothing.” I won’t even try to spell that for you. “Happened until now, between us, I accept to be the girl of a guy who likes me and I like a little just to have fun. Then I broke up with him because I can’t play with his feelings. I'm confused. I need a guy who respects me and love me. I'm confused. I don’t know who I can accept with help me and teach me how to make a decision in my life, because I'm always confused. Thank you for your time. I'm waiting for your answer, Morgan.”

Morgan, at the age of 17, you are asking the right question, but it’s not about the boys, but about what is the proper way to make decisions in my life? How do I think rationally? Now, that's a fundamental question. And notice you also have a desire for integrity. You're saying, “I don’t want to play with his feelings,” so that is very good in you. You don’t—that’s one of the ways that you make decisions, is to notice that you don’t want to deceive people. You don’t want to be stringing men along or boys along. So whether it’s choosing your boyfriends, Morgan, or choosing a hobby or choosing a career or choosing whether to go to college or not, or whether to take drugs or not, or choosing whether to obey your parents or rebel or think independently—you need to learn. You need to know how to choose.

Now, your happiness depends on this, Morgan. This is not a minor issue. This is why you go to school. You go to school to think. When we study scientists in school, we’re studying how they think. When we learn math, we're learning a logical way of addressing reality, of addressing the facts. When you learn how to read, it totally expands your scope of thinking and of making decisions. You read about how other people make decisions. So what I recommend is that you pay a lot more attention, instead of to the guys—which, I mean, you're not going to not pay attention to the guys; you’re 17 years old. I understand that, and that's a part of what's fun in life. But train your mind to think, to think even about these guys, especially about these guys, because you don’t want to end up pregnant with multiple men. I mean, pregnant with one man and have a baby and then another man, and you want to drive your life in a good path for yourself that leads to your own happiness.

So what I recommend is—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 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? 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.

So, what I recommend is taking your mind much more seriously, taking your schooling much more seriously. Learn about scientists, learn about how they thought. Learn how to introspect. That means turning your thought processes inward on the contents and processes of your own mind, asking yourself, “What's going through my mind now, and why?” Keeping a journal or a diary helps, but you try to gain self-knowledge, knowledge of how your own mind works. When you have emotions, don’t just assume you’re at the mercy of your emotions. What cognitive therapy gives all of us is the ability to decode emotions: to take anger and to know that that means that things aren’t fair, to take sadness and to know that that's an indicator that we're experiencing a loss, to take anxiety and to know that that means we’re dealing with uncertainties in our life. Most people will go to their graves never knowing how to decode their own emotions, how to make sense of their inner world. So, in order to make sense of your outer world, you first need to learn how to introspect, to make sense of your inner world.

So here's what I recommend. I recommend you get the book The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, because that woke me up. That was a call for me to say, “Oh my gosh, I don’t know how to use my own mind.” And then I started Atlas Shrugged. And by that point, I just loved using my own mind. I went back to school and got my PhD after having been a housewife for many years. So you want to jump-start yourself in a similar way. You want to make yourself lovable, someone you admire, and that comes way before dating. Then after—I mean, you’ll be dating anyway, but you want to work on that simultaneously. Anyway, be very selective in the guys that you choose. Look for good character traits, not just necessarily for good looks. That’s important, but it’s not the fundamental. Look for good character traits, and I hope that helps.

And there are good books. There’s another one on my website. I mentioned a book earlier. My website is DrKenner.com, but it’s Get a Life, Then Get a Man, and it’s a book by Jennifer Bawden, and it's a playful book. It's a very easy, friendly read, and it’s very encouraging. So I hope that helps you, and good luck with that.

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:

“One major destroyer of romance, and in fact, of all relationships, is the threatening or initiating of physical force.” Devin’s relationship with Lydia is an example. He would bark orders at her, criticize her relentlessly, and slap her around whenever she talked back. If she tried to call a friend or her parents, he would yank the phone away from her. He did not let her spend money without his permission. She felt sick and trapped and often fantasized about escaping to a safe place. Before the marriage, Devin had seemed like a confident, take-charge guy, but she had not realized until too late what “take charge” meant to him. He was a control freak. Lydia should not just have fantasized about running away. She should have walked out.

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