The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

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

Here's an email I received from Shayna. See what you think about this. Hello, Dr. Kenner. I'm 15 years old. I live in Kentucky. I have a guy friend, Eric, who's 19 and he's about to graduate. I'm a freshman. When we talked, when we met, we talked all the time. I really like him, and I've become attached, but he doesn't like me. We always argue every beginning of the month. Now that's a little curiosity piece there. My friends say I get sad. My friends say we're like an old, unhappy married couple. When we fight, I don't know what to do. I get sad and I cry, and he never talks to me or sends me text messages. It seems like he's doing this to me. It seems like he likes doing this to me. I'm heartbroken. We used to be close. Sincerely, Shayna.

Shayna, you're so young; I would wish that your first experience with romance had been wonderful for you. This guy sounds like a jerk. If he doesn't like you, if he doesn't love you, don't cling to him; dump him. You want to discover that there are many, many good men out there, many, and I would love for you to have a rich dating experience. Your time is of value. Don't waste it. Don't spend that currency on this dude.

So when you walk away from this, it's very painful, but you've got to be very careful about where you take your thoughts. If you blame yourself and you think, "Oh my God, he doesn't love me; therefore, I'm not lovable. If only I did everything Eric wanted, then maybe I could win him back," you might think, "No one will ever love me." If you keep those thoughts, you will cling to him, being very needy, and you'll never discover the truth.

If you can see the situation more clearly, if you say to yourself, "This is a different thought path. Now, I thought this guy was nice, but it turns out he's not lovable. Better to cut my losses and move on," then the pain won't go so deep. If you say, "He's not the man I thought he was. He was good at the beginning, but I'm glad I found this out before we got married or had kids," you can also say to yourself, "I want to learn skills so that I choose a better partner next time."

There's a good book on my website about how to choose a partner properly. It's called Get a Life and Get a Man. I recommend that. My website is DrKenner.com. You also want to learn to value yourself more. I let him step on me, and I stepped on myself. I don't want to do that anymore. I deserve better than this. I want to figure out how to stand up for myself better in a relationship. That's what you want to do. So again, you can go to my website. There's another book, Couple Skills, that's good. You can go to my website, DrKenner.com, and really value your own happiness and your own life.

And here's a little more from Dr. Kenner.

I'm in a very strange mood, and I want to know what is causing my strange mood. It's not a good mood; it's not a bad mood; it's just a strange mood. What is causing it?

Okay, what causes a strange mood? Well, first, you need a much better emotional vocabulary. There are lists of emotions. It's not just good or bad. There's depressed, anxious, frustrated, annoyed—there's a mixture of all of them—guilty, disoriented, lots of words, and then you want to be able to learn what the emotions stand for.

And here's a little more from Dr. Kenner.

Right before the break, we were talking about an email that I received from Kevin. Kevin says he walked into a counselor's office. You know, they’re seeing a marriage counselor—he and his wife—and the marriage counselor is trying to tell him, "Love is something you choose to do. Love is totally a choice. If you choose to love your wife, then you'll love her. If you choose to love your husband, then you'll love him." And I'm saying that's not how it works. You can't just slap on superficially, say, "I choose this, therefore I love it." You don't do this with food. You know, "I choose to love lima beans or anchovies; therefore, I love them," or "wormy-looking things." I don't know. You cannot just force your mind.

Your mind evaluates it and it gives you the summation in the form of emotions. When we meet people, we get first a feel for them, an emotional feel. You like it, you don't like it, or it's kind of in between. You're a little bit on guard with a person. And then it's your mind. It takes effort to say, "Well, what is it that I'm picking up on? What is it that I'm admiring in this person? The way they're looking at me? You know, directly in the eyes? Their eyes aren't like skirting away." Or is it their smile? That they have a wonderful laugh that I'm liking, that just seems natural and spontaneous? What am I not liking—the shifty eyes or something? Name it to yourself, because then you have a much better handle on your life.

So the point with this is, to answer your specific question, is it the case that you can will love? The answer is no; you can't force an emotion that you don't feel. When people say, "I love everyone," they're lying. They can't. You cannot love everyone. You can evaluate everyone, but you cannot love everyone. We judge people. We judge people on character traits, moral character traits. Are they independent thinkers, or do they just say, "Yes, ma'am," or whatever they say? Do they just lie by whatever they were taught and assume that that's correct without using their minds? We judge them on that.

We judge them on whether they have a passive mind—they sit by the pool and drink beer all day and never think or watch soap operas all day—or do they have an active mind? Identify what goals they would love in life, what careers they would enjoy, and put in the effort to achieve those. Do you share hobbies with them or not? So emotions are summations based on your evaluation.

Now, what do you do with your wife at this point? Well, you and your wife want to specifically pinpoint what's wrong in your relationship and see if you can repair it. So I would get very specific in therapy. I would give you the skills as a book, Couple Skills by Matthew McKay and a few other authors that you can get at my website, DrKenner.com. But you have to repair the relationship to the satisfaction of both of you with effort, with a lot of talking, with a lot of listening, to find out what is hurting one another, how the relationship is damaged, how to repair it, if possible, and then when it's repaired, you will feel love. You will feel it, and that's how it works. It's not the reverse.

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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. Respect your partner's need for private time. People are individuals first and partners second. No matter how wonderful living with a romantic partner is, it necessarily will take some attention away from yourself. Sometimes people need time to do things alone. Partners need some freedom to do things in their own way, such as how they cook meals, what time they go to bed, how and if they make the bed, when and what they eat, what time they get up and shower, what TV shows they watch, if any, when they go out, and for what purpose—shopping, etc. They need to be free of concerns about always checking what their partner would want. Having some time alone reinforces your sense of being an individual.

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