The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

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

Mike, you want to learn how to love your life, how to enjoy it more.

Yes, I want to know, how do I come to love my life, the fact that I'm alive? I don't think I ever have, and that seems to be kind of a fundamental starting point for a happy life.

Okay, so can you give me just a few details of where you're at now, maybe just two or three sentences?

Yes, I'm in my early 30s. I've got a career, and I'm thinking about transitioning to a different career, hoping I will like it more. I've experienced fleeting moments of happiness in my life, but nothing that's been very long term. I've been pretty riddled with anxiety.

And what's the core of the anxiety?

A lot of it is the fear of others, pleasing them, what they might think of me if they discovered who I really was, what I really thought, fear of confrontation.

Okay, so what is it that you're thinking or who are you that you're afraid to expose to people?

I don't know. I... I'm gay. I've accepted that, but it was traumatic as a kid growing up.

Okay?

Kind of a goofy guy deep down, and I've always tried to put up a front like I'm very serious.

So you're living at odds with yourself. You feel like the world wants you to be other than you actually are, and your strategy is to try to cater to them, meaning just a global mass of eyes peering in on you. Right? What if you were willing to just gently run some experiments and challenge that, and allow yourself in some situations to be a little more goofy, to come out and say what you mean?

Yeah, I'm listening.

And to, you know, value yourself. I mean, partly the gay issue is one thing, and that definitely sets up dynamics because it’s not the cultural norm. So you've got a battle on that end, but how you adopt that really matters. If you feel at ease with yourself, comfortable with yourself and you're not questioning it—assuming there's nothing to question, assuming that you are peacefully at ease with a same-sex partner rather than a heterosexual partner—then if you're at ease, nobody can hurt you. They can say mean things, but it would be like someone saying to me, "Ellen, you're a shrink. Shrinks are all jerks. They don't know what the heck they're talking about." I know who I am, so I hear their comment and think, "Oh, how unfortunate that they hold that view. Maybe they've had some bad experiences." That’s not who I am; they're not seeing me.

Yeah, I think I am pretty much at ease with that aspect of my life.

Okay, so where is the fear of others and the need to please them coming in?

I’m not sure.

Were your parents that type? Did they have a parenting style that made you feel embarrassed coming home if you weren’t perfect?

No, not really.

Yeah?

I'm just afraid of the... I mean, I get a very uncomfortable feeling when I feel like I'm going to do something that I don't think someone else will like.

Okay, that was my question. The reason I asked earlier is, are you going to do something that violates someone's rights? Are you going to steal, cheat, lie, manipulate, defraud?

No, no.

So what type of thing would you be doing that someone may not like?

Disagree with them politically.

Okay, that’s… go ahead.

I mean, I work in a religious environment, and I’m an atheist. So I feel like I can never be myself. I have to put up a front for everybody.

Okay, so you feel like a fish out of water. Partly, it's knowing what your atheism is based on. Of course, some people connect atheism with paganism, communism, and everything bad—Satan and the rest. There’s also a rational moral code, where you can not believe in God, but that doesn't tell you what you do believe in. If you have a rational moral code where honesty, integrity, independence, thinking for yourself, justice, productivity, and basically being rational are your guides, then you can use that as your basis for connecting with people, and just sidestep their irrational beliefs. They’re free to have them; they just can't impose them on you. You don’t have to fake that you share those views but instead connect with what you value in other people. For myself, I’m friendly with all sorts of people from all walks of life with differing views. We connect better the closer we are in values, but that doesn’t mean I would ditch a person who has a really different religion or any religion. I’m not going to ditch them. I’m going to enjoy what I enjoy with them, and we can have good conversation. So we can choose not to base the relationship on heavy political talk. The more you know how to defend yourself—meaning, the more you ground your thoughts in reality—the better for you.

What I would recommend is my book with Ed Locke, The Selfish Path to Romance. It's at SelfishRomance.com, and we have a whole section on making yourself lovable and communication skills that would help you own your own life much more and not feel like you're at odds with the world. Listen, thank you so much for your call, Mike.

And here’s a little more from Dr. Kenner:

Is this for me? This is lovely.

Well, I'm glad you like it, because I picked it all up myself.

I don’t know if I can accept this.

Why not?

Because you spent far too much.

All right. Well, then I'll take a couple of things back.

Daphne, would you please just take the damn basket?

What do you get yourself across about?

Well, you can give me a gift, but I'm not allowed to give you one back?

Oh, so that’s the only reason you gave me this?

Yeah, that’s the way it works.

Gift-giving is tricky business, and it certainly is, because we all have different interpretations. I often feel very good when I give someone a gift. Many times, if someone gives me a gift, I feel inadequate—why didn’t I give them a gift? We question ourselves: is it really a good enough gift? Did they really like it, or are they just saying it? We don't anticipate that people will tell the truth, because sometimes we don’t tell the truth, and that can come back to bite us. So what is the best approach with gifts? Just value yourself, know when it's appropriate to give a gift, and if someone's giving you a gift and you think they're trying to buy you off, it's okay to say, "I can see how much effort you put into this, and I'm feeling uncomfortable with it." It's fine to say something like that. The dynamics of gift-giving bring up the dynamics of a relationship in general. And the more you can keep things honest, respectful, fun, and loving, the better.

For more Dr. Kenner podcasts, go to DrKenner.com.

Here's an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance by Drs. Kenner and Locke:

The experience of shared sexual pleasure is important because it greatly strengthens the bond between partners. As long as there's a bond to strengthen, sex can reinforce romantic love, but it cannot create closeness from thin air. It is the expression of love, not its cause. Sex cannot create self-esteem that is lacking in one or both partners. As a celebration, sex expresses self-value, but it cannot fill the void of non-self-value. Lack of sex or unsatisfying sex often undermines a romantic relationship by weakening the existing bond between partners. Sexual dissatisfaction can undermine feelings of closeness and intimacy and send the relationship on a downward spiral that spreads far beyond sex, especially when one or both partners' frustration and anger leads to progressively less sexual satisfaction for both.

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