The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

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

Here is the question I got from Sherry. See what you think about this. Hi, Dr. Kenner. My mother is 72 years old but tells everyone she is 65. So far, big deal. Okay, so she's a liar, but, you know, you get to 72... I don't know, I don't think I will do that, though. She says that she sees evil spirits throwing stones out of the window, and she also tells me that the Holy Spirits talk to her. So this is getting a little weirder. She changes her clothes maybe once a week, and she is on bad terms with her neighbors. Doesn't seem like a person you would want to make your best friend.

So Sherry continues: I have been on my own for a long time, but I need to stay with my mother for one month with my five-year-old son because I am currently in a desperate situation. What is wrong with my mother? My hubby says my mom is fine, but I know she isn't.

So, Sherry, your mother is definitely not leading a healthy life. She is irrational. I don't know whether she's suffering from dementia. One of the questions you can ask yourself is, has she always been like this? Is that why you live on your own and have for a long time, or is this some significant deterioration due to maybe the aging process? If she's 72, maybe she's got some dementia setting in. If it's dementia, get her to a medical doctor, or maybe she can get herself to a medical doctor if she'd be willing to do that, or a psychologist to see if there's a biological cause. So at least you get the understanding of what's wrong with my mother.

If it's been a lifelong problem—her lying, her poor grooming, her mystical, irrational ideas of evil spirits throwing stones out of the house, her dealing poorly with the neighbors—then you can see that she is not a person that you want to have your five-year-old around. She has wrong ideas that lead a person to wrong choices: choosing to lie, choosing to wear smelly clothes, fighting with the neighbors. So if I could sum it up, I would say you have two problems, Sherry. One is you're in a desperate situation. You have to stay with your mother for 28 days. I understand that. Do you have any other options? Really think hard about this—more reasonable friends, other family members. See if you have anybody else that you could stay with; if so, seriously consider those options. If not, when you're with your mother, can you leave the house early morning with your son and go to the library, read some children's books, go to a playground? Can you limit your child's exposure and your exposure to your mom's weird behavior, or close the door in the house so you have privacy? It's not great to expose kids to family members who are really out of it. You don't want them to have any influence on your kids. You want your kids to be rational, unless you use it as a learning experience. Look at what my mother thought, and look at where it got her.

The second problem you have is the problem with your husband.

Hey, I gotta 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.

The second problem you have is the problem with your husband. Why is he thinking mom is fine? You need a conversation with him to figure out why he thinks her saying that she's seeing evil spirits throwing stones out of the house or window is normal, her not cleaning is normal. So that is the very—the bigger problem. You're married to him; your mother, you're only with for a month. Very puzzling. So you need to make decisions to safeguard your son's mind. Being with a delusional, irrational person, with that type of a person, is not good for either of you. So I would try to talk, to have a conversation with your husband, and I even had the thought that maybe your husband could spend a week with your mom alone and then report back what he finds. You know, let him get the raw data, and that may be helpful.

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

Have you ever noticed that if you're leaving for work in the morning and you have an argument with your husband or wife or partner or your kids or maybe your parents, how that kind of sets a mood for the day, and it isn't a good mood? You feel bummed out. You feel like something is not resolved, and even though you can push it to the background in your mind, it just sets you off on a bad path, a bad... a bad... if you think of climate or weather, it's a stormy day, or it may not be a stormy day; it just may be a cloudy day inside your own mind. If you're struggling, which many of us do, with those types of conflicts that don't just go away, we seem to get in the same type of fights with our siblings, with our parents, with our kids, with our partners, over and over again. How do you break out of that pattern? How do you learn the skills to own your own life and to get up in the morning, give your kids a kiss, say goodbye—they go off on the bus or you drive them to school—or say goodbye to your honey, and both of you go off to work, and you just feel like at least you started the day well? You don't know where it will go from there. You know they may not kiss and hug you at work, but at least the people who matter most to you have connected with you, and you've connected with them. And what a wonderful benefit that many of us just take for granted and we don't pay attention to.

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

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

Emotions alone are insufficient to make the thousands of decisions and guide all the actions that have to be made over many years in order to sustain a passionate, intimate romantic relationship. Love can be sustained, but only by an active mental process—the process of thinking. Thinking is conscious and volitional. You must think about and plan what actions are needed to make your relationship with your loved one prosper in both the short and the long run, and then take the requisite action. One executive put it this way: "I simply decided to start treating my wife as if she were my most important client." That might not sound overly romantic, but I recognized the way I was wired, and this approach has worked exceptionally well for me. What this individual did was to consciously make his wife important.

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