The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

The Selfish Path to Romance. Download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com, and I want to turn to an email now.

Hello, Dr. Kenner. I have a friend who is having a crisis in her marriage and planning to divorce. I rallied for her, and I supported her 100%. Once the crisis was over, she and her husband repaired their marriage. She turned on me. She became extremely defensive, angry, and selfish toward me and towards others who sacrificed our time, energy, and emotions to help her during the crisis. I'm looking for some better understanding. Is there a theory behind what seems to be a common occurrence—her doing this? Sincerely, Bethany.

Bethany, I don’t know about a theory, but if you’re talking about betrayal, betrayal by a friend, that’s one possibility. People are complex; relationships are complex. Sometimes three is a crowd. So let’s take a closer look at this. You know, obviously coming from your perspective, you feel like you really reached out to her. You were there for her. You could have been, I don’t know, planting a garden, or reading a good book, or working maybe. And instead, you spent the time on the phone with her, trying to help out a friend in need. You offered her warmth, you offered her support, and she’s divorcing, so you think it’s a bonding period for both of you too. And then suddenly, she decides to get back with her husband and dumps you. You’re the hot potato. She just dumps you, and she dumps her other friends too. On the surface, it looks like you’re the injured party, and that may accurately be the case—you say that was totally unfair. She is not a good friend. I will never reach out to her again. She burned her bridges, and I’m moving on. And you feel betrayed, you feel hurt.

But you want to also give yourself a chance to look at the dynamics carefully, because sometimes it’s a pattern that takes place. Maybe your friend felt trapped. Maybe she felt she had to choose between her marriage and you, her hubby and you. Maybe he set some conditions and said, “Listen, you’ve been talking with Bethany, and you’ve told her everything about my personal life. I am very embarrassed. I don’t want to get together with her anymore. You choose—the marriage or your friends, Bethany being one of them.” And if he said that, she may have decided to choose the marriage. It would have been nice if she didn’t turn on you and become defensive and angry—what you’re calling selfish—but maybe that’s the cost of her staying together. In which case, you still make a judgment that you don’t like the way she separated from you.

A third thing that could have happened—

Hey, I gotta interrupt this, because we’ve got to pay some bills. Thirty seconds, that’s it. A very quick ad, and then Ellen 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.

A third thing that could have happened—maybe she badmouthed you so much to her husband, and she’s afraid that you might spill the beans or say something in front of him. Maybe you told a confidence that she didn’t want you to say, so she’s got to distance herself from you. There are different, better ways to handle that, obviously. Or she might have thought that you contributed to the difficulties. Maybe she thought you egged her on and said, “Oh, leave that guy. He’s no good for you, never has been,” and she felt like you fueled it—you and the other friends fueled it. And so now she’s angry, because now that she’s mending it, that’s the case. So there could be many different reasons; she just may want to move on in her life.

So you’re hurting. What do you do with your hurt? Well, you need to know how to judge friends, and the standard that’s the healthiest is a trade—a relationship. You can help out a friend, but at least they offer warmth or support or a rational explanation as to why they’re acting as they do. You can make the decision whether to stay with them, but it feels like in a friendship, “You rub my back, I rub your back, and we both win.” If you feel that you were sacrificing your time and energy and emotion—sacrificing. To me, the alarm bells go off because it sounds like you didn’t want to help her, but you did, and you sacrificed. You would much rather be doing other things, but you know, you had to give up everything for her. If you did it out of duty, that’s a mistake you may be making. I don’t like to be the recipient of duty. If someone says, “Oh, I was hoping to go to the movies today, but Ellen, I stayed home to be with you,” it’s like, “Oh, why didn’t you go to the movies?” I don’t want to feel guilty now because you didn’t do what you really wanted to do. I would much rather you be happy and be honest with yourself. Sacrifice is not good in relationships. It often undermines them and destroys them.

So if you had a conversation with your friend who decided to stay in her marriage and turned on you—if you had a conversation where you said, “After all I did for you, how can you leave me? You’re awful,” and she looks back at you and says, “How can you not want me to get back with my marriage? I can’t believe it. And I didn’t ask you to be here.” You have one of these very emotionally laden fights—that’s not healthy for either of you. If you wanted, you could get the book Difficult Conversations: How to Talk About What Matters Most. I may be paraphrasing the subtitle; I think it’s on my website, DrKenner.com, and that might help you. So I wish you the best with that. And it’s so important to evaluate friends, and I think it’s really important for you to evaluate what actually went on, blow by blow, so you do gain what you’re looking for—an understanding as to what went on in your particular situation, Bethany.

And here’s a little more from Dr. Kenner on Madison.

You have a question? Yes, yeah, what’s your question?

I would like to know when a person has DID. Okay.

Well, that’s dissociative identity disorder. It used to be called multiple personality disorder. Okay.

I’d like to know, how does one identity not find out about another?

Oh my gosh, you’re out of my territory. I worked with some people who are highly, highly traumatized early on in my career, and usually, it’s due to some pretty high trauma. Is this you you’re speaking about? Do you have—were you diagnosed with this, or a friend? This is research for a book. Oh, you’re researching for a book. Okay, I’m not going to be able to help you any more than you would be able to find out online. I know that when I worked with people who were disturbed, I worked with highly abused children. And I also worked with adults who had been highly abused in their childhood. Madison, are you there? Yeah, okay. And what they would tell me is that when they went in the process of being physically or sexually abused—let’s just stick to physical, though—they would cope by telling themselves that they weren’t who they were right then, that they were either a friend or that they were living in a different family. They had to escape in their own mind and train their minds to, in a sense, create a fantasy world that wasn’t their horrific life that they were living in.

What have you read about it?

I googled it. I read the web and the definition and basically all the pages they had on that. Okay.

And you’re doing a paper for school, for college, or high school? Actually, I’m writing a novel. Oh, you’re writing a novel, and it’s involving somebody who’s got DID, dissociative identity disorder. Are you going to have them travel in a dissociative fugue, where they just take off and travel for a while? No, it’s gonna keep them in one place. Okay, well, I wish you the best with your book.

Thank you.

For more Dr. Kenner podcast, go to DrKenner.com, and please listen to this ad.

Here’s an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance by clinical psychologist Dr. Ellen Kenner.

A romantic partner to avoid is someone who tries to fake their self-esteem by using defense values. People may use values that they possess or aspire to as substitutes for genuine self-esteem and to cover up self-doubt. Examples are money, looks, intelligence, popularity, fancy clothes, expensive cars, large homes in wealthy neighborhoods, social status, and sexual conquest. Not all these values are necessarily irrational. The problem is that they are held compulsively and even desperately. An expensive car can give you pleasure, but not if you just want to own it to show off. You are still the same person with or without the car. Whether others approve of you or not does not change who you are.

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