The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

The Selfish Path to Romance. Download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com and Amazon.com. I'll read you this email. I know of a family that has two girls and a boy, and the girls are young. They dress up their little brother, who is three years old, as a girl. I was wondering, is this healthy? It doesn't seem like it would be. Just curious.

Amanda, okay, so you're looking at maybe a neighbor's kids, or maybe it's your sister's kids, and there are three kids in the family. What would be the danger in this? You know, you've got two little girls, and they're paying a lot of attention to their little brother, which is good in one sense, assuming they're not making a mockery of him, but they think it's really cute. He's like a little doll to them, like a Barbie doll to them. Or, I don't know what the counterpart to a Ken doll is—not a Ken doll. They're dressing him like a Barbie doll. And what's the harm in that? You know, they have just this. Kids play. It's fun. Don't make a big deal about it.

Well, I think differently. I think that kids need to respect the other gender, and that I've seen—I’ve worked with kids who were very young, whose mothers—look, for example, I'll take one gender. Mothers didn't want a boy, and they ended up, voila, having a boy. And they decided that they were going to treat this boy as a girl, and so they dress the boy up as a girl. And it's a very unstable situation. The little boy starts to value the things that girls would value, my little ponies and the Barbies. I would see these kids in my office, and I would have trucks, and I would have other very adventurous toys. And they would always go for wanting me to put little ribbons in their hair, which I was reluctant to do. But they had such gender identity issues. They were just very confused about what gender they were. And when I would see the mothers, the mothers would tell me that that's exactly what they were doing, that they wanted a girl, and if they didn't get a girl, they were going to get a girl anyway by forcing this boy into being a girl.

So in this case, the two girls are not doing this like an unstable mother would do this. They're just cute, so I wouldn't punish them at all. But from the boy's point of view, from the three-year-old boy's point of view, he is going to connect, in his mind, the attention and the affection and the love of his siblings with being dressed up in frilly clothes, being dressed up in mommy's shoes and in a skirt and whatever else they dress him up in. You know? So I don't think I would encourage that. I would encourage the girls to continue paying attention to him more appropriately, and I wouldn't make a big deal about it. I would just say, "Honey, why don't you try playing this with him, and you show him the sandbox, and let him show them how to build sandcastles, or show them a science experiment: sink and float." They can teach him how little items—some items sink, some float. You know, things that are appropriate for a three-year-old: plastic things will float, and rocks will sink. And you know, you can have a lot of fun. The girls can learn to have a lot of fun with their brother where it's not related to the type of clothes he dresses.

Of course, as an adult, I think that, 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.

Of course, as an adult, I think that some of—there are some hysterical scenes when men come out as adults. For example, on cruise ships, they'll occasionally have a skit where the wife has to dress up. Oh, we actually—I can tell you one that I was on with my sister. My sister had the job of taking a stranger, a man on a cruise ship, and trying to make him the sexiest guy on the cruise ship using their items. So they took my necklace, I had a red rhinestone necklace, and gave it to him as an anklet. They gave him a beautiful bra, a hat, earrings, you know, long draped earrings. And, boy, they tried to make him as sexy as possible—real sultry with the lipstick and the makeup. And of course, there were three teams competing against each other, and the men had to dress up as women in order to win on the cruise ship. Now, this was a lot of fun. You know, you see these guys wearing heels, you know, with the hairy legs.

Here’s the second half:

And I bet one was more beautiful than they were. And they all had—they were all given phony professions. So it was really cute. One, by the way, question.

Yeah, I recall going through family photos. Oh yes, great, great uncles dressed in skirts.

Oh yes, yes, my aunt is really my uncle in one of the photos. They did that years ago. That was the tradition. We had a big immigrant family that came over—my own family, and all the boys, the older boys, were dressed as boys in these very serious, severe pictures, wherever you want. Nobody's smiling. They're all kind of staring at the camera as if they were deer in headlights. And of course, the darling little girl in the front with the frilly dress on is none other than my uncle. You know, that's the way they used to do it. And I don't—I’m assuming that didn't have a bad effect. That's a very good point, but I also would not encourage that because there are a lot of alternative behavior games and activities that the two girls can play with the boy that don't complicate his life. This one is something that runs the risk of complicating his life, but I would not punish the girls again.

So I'm Dr. Allen Kenner. You're listening to The Rational Basis of Happiness. Someone else asked me the question about emotions: are emotions right and wrong? Emotions just are. They're your summary of how you're feeling. For example, if you're really angry with someone, well, it's your mind's evaluation based on your premises and based on whatever data your mind has collected at the time that this person has done you an injustice. For example, I could be really upset if a colleague said she was going to meet me for lunch and stands me up, doesn't show up, and I can be saying to myself, "That's it. I'm not going to meet her anymore. She burned the bridges with me. I sat there the whole time. I didn't order anything to eat because I was politely waiting for her." And I can't waste my time with people like this. You know how you have that tape recorder going off in your head? I'm really angry. And there's only one problem with this scene, which is that a few hours later, what if she calls me up and says, "Ellen, I am so sorry. I was in a fender bender, and they thought that something was wrong with me, so they rushed me in an ambulance to the hospital, and they wouldn't let me call you and tell you why I couldn't—why I wouldn't be meeting you for lunch."

Now I feel guilty and sad, and I don't feel angry with her anymore. Notice that I had a powerful emotion, but it wasn't based on all the facts. I had jumped to the conclusion that she stood me up, but I didn't have the facts as to why she did it, and she didn't do it deliberately, and I gave a malevolent motive to that. Now this is a fictitious example, but you can see that the emotion is there, but it is up to me to see if it's a fact-based emotion. I need the objectivity to look and see: is there an alternative explanation for her not showing up, or do I know that she stood me up deliberately?

And here's a little more from Dr. Kenner: "You concocted those mendacities in order to take advantage of me. All you had to say is, I don't love you, and I don't want to see you anymore. That at least would have been respectful."

Now I asked my husband, "Where is this from?" thinking it's from one of those old-time movies, and it is. It's from Back to the Future, part three—yes, it's part three—and it's when Doc tells the truth to the school teacher that he's in love with, and she doesn't believe him. So she said, "All you had to do was to tell me you don't love me, and that would be more respectful." Now in this case, it's a reverse situation because he is telling her the truth. He does love her, but in many situations, people are afraid to say, "I don't love you anymore," and they make up all sorts of stories to break off a relationship. It's much more a tribute to yourself when you're honest with yourself and the other person regarding the reasons for the breakup. It doesn't serve any purpose to lie. You don't have to be brutally honest, you know, "I don't like the pimples on your face," or "I don't—" you know, something a person can't change. You know, "Your looks are ugly." Or you can be tactfully honest, but it's much better to be honest rather than just to fake it or give it a wimpy excuse for.

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 Dr. Kenner and Dr. Locke: "Irrationality is one basis for divorce, but often differences can be reasonable. Two reasonable people may discover they are seriously mismatched. For example, one may have a career that requires long work hours, and the other wants a companion who has more time to spend together. Personalities may conflict. One partner may be formal and quiet, and the other extroverted and boisterous, or they may have just grown in different directions. Not all irreconcilable differences are moral issues. Many are just a matter of decent partners discovering that they are personally incompatible and wanting to find more compatible partners. Both partners have the right to end the relationship with mutual respect."

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