The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

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

And I want to welcome Nick to the show. Nick, you're having some difficulty in the area of sex, huh?
Yes.
Yeah, what's going on?

Seems like if I have sex early in a relationship, I innocently, like, lose interest in the girl.
Okay. And how many times has that happened?
Basically every single time except one.
Okay, how many? But is that like three times or 10 times, or 15 or 20?
Like around 20, probably 20 times.
So you date someone, and then early on, you become intimate with that person. You have sex with them, and then you leave them—you lose interest?
Yeah, just like everything feels good at first, and then it doesn't feel good.
What do you mean by “feels good”?
Well, I mean it feels like it would be right, and I guess sex feels like it would be the next step, which is probably wrong, but then instantly I lose interest in the girl.
Okay, so you're feeling like the pacing of it is moving properly. But how soon is it? I mean, is it on the first date, the second date?
From a week to a couple weeks.
So sometimes you date as much as a couple of weeks, and then you become intimate?
Yeah.
Okay. And how old are you?
24.
You're 24 years old. So you've had a lot of relationships—20, you're saying?
Yeah.
They don’t ever last very long though, right?
So you just roll them over very quickly. And then…

There has been one relationship that lasted like a year and a half, which is the longest I've ever had, and we didn't have sex for six months.
And that was the only one, and it lasted a year longer.
Yeah, but she was funny.
She was not putting it out as easily for me as some other girls.
I guess she wasn’t a loose woman?
Not sex so much, just period. Like she wasn’t—she didn’t commit. So it was kind of like I was chasing her the whole time.
So you like the chase?
Well, I guess I do. That’s the only conclusion I can come to. But the whole time I’m going through the chase, I’m wishing the girl would just commit.
But then as soon as she does, and she starts showing heavy feelings and emotions for me, then I lose interest.

Okay. So when you have an emotion such as you lose interest—that you're just not feeling connected anymore—you want to be able to translate that into words.
Capture what you might say in your mind. You know, what you might say—“Oh my God, what if she gets to know me?” Anxious. Or “I don’t know how to go beyond in a relationship. I don’t know what to do after this.”
Or, you know, I’m not sure what you say to yourself, but when you feel that “Oh, it’s all over. I have no interest in her any longer,” what goes through your mind? What thoughts?

Then it’s just like guilt, because I know I’m fixing to hurt this girl’s feelings.
I feel like I’ve done something wrong, and I feel bad because I told myself at the beginning, “Don’t have sex with her. Don’t have sex, don’t want sex.”
And then I do, and I end up usually hurting their feelings, which makes me feel bad—like makes my conscience feel bad, I guess.

Oh, so the pattern’s a little more complicated than what you’re saying. It’s not just “Oh, can I get her in bed?” and then you get her in bed and say, “Well, that was my goal. Now I can dump her.”
Like, I would love to be in like a meaningful relationship.

So guilt is killing you—the guilt of thinking that “this is wrong, I shouldn’t have sex with her.” Because if you have sex with her, what will happen? What do you predict will happen?

Hey, I’ve 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. 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?
The Selfish Path to Romance—that is interesting.

So guilt is killing you—the guilt of thinking that “this is wrong, I shouldn’t have sex with her.”
Because if you have sex with her, what do you predict will happen?

Usually, I'm scared I'm gonna lose interest in her.
I mean, I’ll really like the girl a whole lot until the point of sex.
But I don't know. I've got lots of ideas of what I should probably do, but I just wanted another opinion.

Okay. What are your ideas?

More or less just force myself not to do anything, and just really, really get to know the person beforehand.
I mean, actually be in love with the person before sex is involved.
Okay, that's a wonderful idea. And you have other ideas?

No, I mean, that's the only thing that I can come to conclusions that would fix things.

It’s the guilt. You want to explore your guilt, too—that’s another thing you can do.
Because if you’re having guilt when you feel you haven’t established the emotional intimacy, the connection…
People can have sex with other people, and sometimes it can be that you can get that wonderful, heightened feeling of romantic intimacy—a soulmate connection.
And sometimes it feels like you’re mutually self-pleasuring together, but you're both having your own fantasies, or you're not connecting at all.
It's like two kids in parallel play, but they’re not playing with each other.

Yeah.

And that will leave you feeling a very different emotion than the one that you’re wanting, which is more of that emotional intimacy.
Yeah.
So emotional intimacy means that you want to learn how to run a relationship.
What was your parents' relationship like?

Great. They were married 25 years until my dad passed away.
There was no problems.
They’d never divorced or anything like that.

That is unbelievable to hear because you're a kid—you’re on the inside. You get the inside story.
You didn’t hear them bickering, because people can stay together for 25 years… but then?

My dad was a—he was a truck driver, so he was gone for four or five days a week. Yeah, every week.
I mean, but that worked. I mean, they liked it, and it worked for them, and they were—I mean, they were both—they didn’t cheat on each other.
But there’s a better word for that.

There was no infidelity. I mean, they were committed to each other.
So what makes you think that you can’t have that when you have such good role models?

I don’t know. Like, I’m scared of when a girl, like—almost like when a girl falls head over heels, or almost I can tell she’s starting to fall for me or something like it, I back off.

Then you want to figure out what your self-talk is that causes you to back off.
If you don’t think you’re worthy of the “head over heels,” you will feel guilty.
If you feel like she’s seeing you accurately—you’re not exaggerating anything—then you will feel less guilty.
At least, sometimes guilt is earned. You have exaggerated something.
Sometimes it’s honor, and you’ve done nothing wrong. With honor and guilt, you want to get rid of it.
You want to see that the guilt is inappropriate—it’s not founded in reality.

Listen, what I would recommend—would you be interested in any therapy at all, or is that not your style?

I don’t know. Like, I’ve actually kind of discussed this with my mom, and she kind of thinks like maybe I should, like, be seeing someone.

I would recommend a cognitive therapist.
And there’s a website—The Academy of CT for Cognitive Therapy—dot org.
And you can go to that and find a therapist in your area.
They will help you identify the thoughts that are actually driving this pattern that you’re into, and give you skills to break it.
Okay?

Okay.

And we—you talked about some of the thoughts. You definitely want to explore guilt.
Because when any of us feel guilty, it messes up whatever goal we’re after.
So the guilt—it’s very good that you identified that.
And waiting, getting to know someone—you can’t get better advice than that, the advice you were giving yourself.
So you do want to get to know her.

Well listen, thank you so much for your call.
And I wish you some very happy emotional intimacy—real, lasting emotional intimacy in the future.

For more Dr. Kenner podcasts, go to DrKenner.com
And please listen to this:

Ned, here’s an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance: The Serious Romance Guidebook by Drs. Kenner and Locke:

Here’s an example of how gender differences can cause conflict.
Jeffrey loved Cindy, but he was frustrated with her when she would relate a bad experience with her family or boss.
Why didn’t she take his advice?
And she was always trying to pry him open, asking him how his day went, what he was thinking, what he felt about this or that—things he never thought much about or even felt compelled to think about.
He felt more at home with the guys on the basketball court, where there was no pressure to talk or analyze everything.
He felt drained by Cindy’s conversations about the relationship.

How would they address this common pattern among partners?
Cindy would need to learn to be clear about what she needs.
And Jeffrey could learn how to be a sympathetic listener.