The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

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

Right now, I want to tell you about an email from a young woman who's having a lot of problems with intimacy. See what you think about this:

Dear Dr. Kenner, I have a few questions, and I've never really talked to anyone about them. I am very self-conscious when I think of becoming intimate with someone I like, or when I'm dating. I can't explain why I feel like this. I don't know if I'm scared I'll do something wrong or if I'm just self-conscious. I've never really been good at getting into a serious relationship because I feel then we have to become more intimate, which I avoid. How do I change this problem? Thanks, Jeanette.

Jeanette, I'm assuming you mean intercourse. I'm not sure exactly what you mean by intimate, whether it's just the kissing, the hugging, or intercourse itself, but before you even consider getting intimate, make sure you're with someone that you trust and you value, someone that feels lovable, someone who seems to see the best in you, that brings out the best in you. You don't want to just feel like you have to keep up with the Joneses, meaning if your girlfriends are dating and having intercourse and you haven't done it yet, then you have to catch up and somehow get a good grade on it. That's the wrong approach to romantic love, and that'll cause you problems down the line. So, just keeping that in mind, you want someone that you truly value, and you start to feel cushy, you start to feel warm about this person.

I also want to say you should avoid one-night stands. Even though they feel really good in the moment, if you're looking for true intimacy, a true connection with somebody, then you don’t want to cheapen love by having just a series of one-night stands. That's not romantic love. But let’s say you’ve dated a guy, and you know him, and you really like him. He’s so nice, you can’t wait till he comes over. You think about him during the day, and then you think about the next date, and you would love to get intimate. You'd love him to kiss you and go further. You'd love to do that with him too.

So first, notice what you say to yourself. This is noticing your self-talk. If you’re saying,

"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? 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, first, notice what you say to yourself. This is noticing your self-talk. If you're saying, "Well, what if I kiss him and he doesn't like the way I'm kissing? What if he goes to caress me, and I do something jerky, like I freeze or I pull away? What if he doesn't like the size of my breasts? Is my stomach too fat? What if it hurts when we have intercourse and I don’t know what’s going on and I get really embarrassed?"—if you’re flooding your mind with that type of self-talk, then notice where you’re focusing your mind. You’re not focusing on pleasure and romance; you're focusing on being judged by your partner and also judging yourself, feeling you can’t allow yourself to feel the good feelings without constantly monitoring them.

Psychologists, starting with Masters and Johnson and then Dr. Helen Singer Kaplan, have come up with a word for this. This is called spectatoring. Many married couples even do it when they’re making love. Spectatoring: picture yourself sitting in the bleachers, being a spectator watching a sports game or armchair quarterbacking, you know, sitting in front of your TV and critiquing every move. Well, Dr. Kaplan says that spectatoring is when a person watches his or her own sexual performance critically as though he or she were a third person. The goal is to stop this. If you think you’re going to do this, or if you've kissed a few times and you notice your mind is focused on critiquing yourself, then you want to stop it, because intimacy involves your ability to feel, to feel the passion, to feel the connection, to have good thoughts about the other person, and have them translate into a profound, sensual, sexual emotion. So you need to keep the critical judge at bay.

I want to read a little from Dr. Kaplan, because she says that for many women, even though we’re in a totally open culture, sex can still be associated with sin or shame and sometimes danger for many women. So she says, "Women who have been taught at an early age to consider passivity and compliance virtue are likely to react to their impulses to assume a more active role in sex with guilt and shame." She contrasts this by saying, "Men do not usually fear rejection and censure if they actively seek out sexual stimulation and pleasure. On the contrary, such behavior is usually considered a sign of virility." Dr. Kaplan advises, "To enjoy good sex, you must be able to suspend all distracting thoughts and lose oneself in the erotic experience."

Now, if you don’t know how to do this, you can get some skills. You can read a book, such as The Fulfillment of Female Sexuality by Lonnie Barbach. You can get Sexual Happiness: A Practical Approach by Maurice Yaffe and Elizabeth Fenwick, which will give you some education about sexuality. I mean, it’s such an open culture that we assume you know how to run a sexual relationship, but many times, you don’t know it’s a skill like any other activity, only this one is a very profound one with tremendous payoffs and tremendous hurts if it goes wrong.

Dr. Kaplan also says that persons who are anxious about sexuality frequently remain outside themselves, keeping tight control over their emotions, observing their sexual reactions—that's the spectatoring. You don’t want to preside as a judge at one’s own lovemaking. She says that’s highly destructive to sexuality. So, make sure you’re with someone you really want to move to the next step with, and take good precautions. Speak with your gynecologist if you need to about how to protect yourself from unwanted pregnancies, and learn to talk more openly with your partner, to be able to tell your partner what you like and don’t like—but that’s further along the line.

I'm Dr. Ellen Kenner, and I hope that’s helped you.

I mentioned earlier that I would tell you how we avoid holiday tensions in our family around gift-giving. In the past, we used to go out and buy gifts, and each time I’d wonder, will they spend more on me than I'll spend on them? Maybe I should get something bigger. Maybe I should have more gifts just in case they give me something unexpected. What if I don’t like the gift they give me? What if they don’t like the gift I give them? There’s so much awkwardness around gift-giving in our family, so we’ve come up with what we call a Yankee swap. You may know about it. A Yankee swap is when we each find something in our homes that’s either funny or we don’t want anymore. We get together, and then we wrap these very beautifully. Once we wrapped leftover food—a pizza pie that my son had from months earlier that was still in our freezer from a ski trip—and he got this pizza pie, and it was hysterical. Of course, he put it back in the pile because he didn’t want it. And my uncle put in handcuffs, and everyone was fighting for the handcuffs. My uncle had handcuffs because he went to auctions at a boys’ club, always raising his hand and buying items for the boys, so someone jokingly gave him the handcuffs. But of course, they have a sexual connotation, so our family members had a lot of fun joking about who wants the handcuffs today during the swap. Hope that helps!

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:

"What if your partner or spouse is constantly pursuing important values with your encouragement, but none of the choices include you? For example, you’re a chronic golf widow or a girls’ night out widower, or you’re ignored in favor of your partner’s career. If this happens, you need to ask your partner, 'How important am I to you? Am I a top value or way down on your list?' If it turns out that you’re not a top value, then, is this the right partner for you? The ultimate proof of how important you are to your partner is how your partner acts toward you on a daily basis, not just what words are expressed. With a loving partner, there will be many loving words as well as consistency between word and deed."

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