The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

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

Hi, Dr. Kenner, I think I suffer from depression, and I want you to help me briefly. My parents are divorced, and my mom is putting so much pressure on me.

Samantha, okay. Samantha, depression means that you are sad that you're going through a huge loss or huge losses, and depression adds something else: a sense of what's the use? Why bother? If you could have seen me right now, I just shrugged my shoulders, kind of, you know, like crumpled up in front. I give up. You can't fight city hall. Who cares?

And when you have that type of feeling as a young kid, you end up feeling powerless, and your parents are divorced. So, you know, at your age, I'm assuming, again, I'm going to assume that you're between the ages of nine and 14. At your age, you're probably wanting to be with friends and to get involved with school, and you've got this big problem.

This was sometimes adults call it the elephant in the middle of the room, the big problem that no one talks about, and that's that your mom is putting pressure on you. What type of pressure do parents put on their kids during a divorce?

Well, sometimes it's pressure: "You love me more than you love Dad, don't you?" And it's so sometimes you really don't want to be with Dad, after all he did. Sometimes it's pressure that divides you from the other parent. Sometimes it's just pressure around the house.

Mom may feel real frustrated that Dad's not around anymore to take out the garbage and do a lot of the work, and so she may pick on you. She may dump on you, and yeah, you usually do pick up more responsibilities when another parent leaves the house. That's reasonable, and actually, you can grow from it.

However, when a parent does it in a mean-spirited way, like "You've got to help me more around here," "You've got to do this," and "You didn't," "You didn't," "You have to make all the beds today." And you know when a parent just loses it and takes out some of the anger towards Dad on you, that's not fair either.

That's another sort of pressure you might be feeling. She may want you to give up going out with your friends, where you can't do the things you would love to do because you've got to help her. Or she may do something that's really, really hard, and it may feel good at the beginning.

She may want to cry on your shoulders. She may want you to be her therapist or her best buddy. And that sometimes works for a little bit, but works in quotes, meaning it doesn't work long range. You really want your own friends, and that isn't a good way to connect with Mom, and you would feel pressure that way.

There could be custody issues, custody battles going on, or Mom may want you to be a go-between. You know she may be giving you messages: "You tell your father that he better pick you up at this time," and "You tell your father that he owes money for child support."

You need to be able to speak up to your mother. You need to be able to let her know what you're feeling without counterattacking her. Just it's called talking about your self-assertiveness skills.

"I" language. You could probably Google it and find out what that's about, how to speak about what you're feeling from inside. When I say "I" language, I mean the pronoun "I" like, "I feel this, Mom."

And I'll give you a sample of that for a minute. You can also suggest, "Hey, Mom, maybe we can both go to counseling." If Mom says, "I'm not going to any shrink," you can go talk to your school counselor or talk to a relative that you feel real close to, maybe an aunt, or maybe someone that you can confide in, that could be supportive of you and maybe break through to Mom.

But here's something that you might try saying to her: you could say, "Mom, I love you, and I really wish we were closer. I don't know if you're feeling this too, but I'm feeling pushed away. I don't know if you're doing this intentionally or not, but I'm feeling pushed away."

Notice I'm talking about myself. I'm not saying, "Mom, you're pushing me away." I, you know, "Mom, I feel we used to have these relaxed fun times together. We used to read together. Do you remember when we used to laugh and go outside on the swings together? Now I feel like a punching bag at times, and I feel like a messenger. I feel like I need to send Dad messages from you, and it is overwhelming.

Sometimes, when you cry and you tell me all the details of what you're feeling, I feel embarrassed because I shouldn't be knowing what's going on between you and Daddy, and you know who you slept with or who he slept with, and I feel like I lost our good relationship.

Mom, you know what? Mom, divorce has been really hard on both of us. Let's work together to make our relationship warm and fun again. I want us to be mom and daughter again. How can we work towards that?

Now, if you were able to say something along those lines, that's instead of saying to her, "Mom, I'm sick and tired of you doing this to me. I can't stand it. I hate you," and then you feel even more depressed because now you've really damaged that relationship.

It's understandable that people do that, but it's not productive. So if you can try to reach your mom instead, I think that will help Samantha and just let her know that if it's too much for both of you, if you don't even know where to begin, there are wonderful skills out there.

You could go to therapy. You could even go to family therapy and have a mediator, a person in the room, a therapist who could help give you a voice and give you all some skills.

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Here's an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance, the serious romance guidebook by Drs. Kenner and Locke:

The ability to compromise is essential when you become parents. The significant responsibility of caring for children throughout their growing years requires that partners have excellent communication skills, including methods of fairly dividing up child-rearing responsibilities. Otherwise, misunderstandings grow, small slights ignite, and large fires in the soulmate relationship perish.

Wall Street Journal writer Sue Shellenbarger reported on this phenomenon in a 2004 article titled "And Baby Makes Stress." Three reasons cited included debt over spending on the baby, confusion over roles—who should be the stay-at-home parent and who is the breadwinner—and the inability of partners to talk without fighting.

Download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com and Amazon.com.