The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

The Selfish Path to Romance. Download chapter one for free. DrKenner.com, mark your wife thinks that you're too controlling.

Well, I would say that it goes beyond that. And probably that's just a kind of a tagline to get the conversations going. Okay, more than that, and it has to do with the fact that she came down with brain cancer.

When was this? November, okay, and we went through all of the surgical stuff that goes along with that, and that came off pretty good, but the moment she was back home, I noticed that her attitude towards me was different.

What did you notice?

What did I notice? She felt that I was trying to control things by… Well, the big thing was the telephone, so she wasn't woken up all the time, and then if she slept too long, she would start having nightmares. And so we kind of settled on this pattern of less than two hours of sleep. So it was… I never… well, let me rephrase that. She never was kept away from the phone or people calling into her. There was always a notepad with "here's who called," and even my children felt that I was controlling the situation because they had to go through me to get to Mom. So that's pretty typical, but I noticed the shift too, in that, you know, I basically couldn't do anything right as well. And then…

What do you mean by that, Mark?

Well, no matter what I did, it wasn't the right way. And so a typical conversation would be something like, "Well, here, here's some muffins of this sprite," and she would say, "Well, why didn't you cook this kind?" Yeah, you know, it didn't matter what I did. There was always something wrong.

Okay, whenever I hear that, I say, there's something underlying it. If the stuff on the surface, Mark, doesn't make sense, what is the deeper thing that's going on?

I wish I knew, to be honest with you, because at that point in time, basically it was just taking care of her and trying to nurse that. And if you were to ask me, the only thing that I can think of is trying to deal with the idea that you're going to only live nine to 12 months.

Is that what's going on with the brain cancer?

Yeah, so yes and no.

Okay, go ahead, sorry.

And that's where I was going next, and that's that I did a lot of research, which is, you know, kind of my forte. I'm retired, but I did a lot of research.

How old is she?

How old is she? 68.

Okay, and you're how old?

I'm 65. I was retired. She was still working.

Okay. So basically, I found that clinical trials offer a great opportunity in that usually you get better standard of care, and secondly, overall doubles your prognosis or the benefits of a thin kind of… okay. And so I did a lot of work and found one that just worked perfectly as far as the markers she had for the cancer and everything else. And she was only the fifth one ever to get into this study.

Yeah, so to do that, we literally had to go live in another city for five months together.

How else will…

Go ahead.

… through stem cell transplant, which you know was just ugly—radiation, chemotherapy, stem cell transplant—all these things to give her high-dose chemotherapy, higher than would… you know, if they gave it to me today, I would be dead in two weeks.

Okay, so now we start getting the chemo brain type of thing going on too, at least in my estimation. You know, things aren't quite right, and the stories I hear from other caregivers is confusion, maybe a bit of paranoia. And again, everything I'm doing is wrong, you know, like you're being mean to me.

What am I doing?

Being… How am I being mean?

Well, you're waking me up. You get me going for the appointment.

Okay, let me… let me stop here and jump—unless there's something really important—let me jump in here.

Okay, what I hear is 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 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.

Let me jump in here.

Okay, what I hear is that both of you are going through significant trauma. You're dealing with loss on multiple levels. Your relationship is changing dramatically. She's got brain cancer. It may be time-limited, meaning she may not live another five years or so. And it's major for everyone. And in cases when you feel like you're out of control of brain cancer, guess what you most want?

What you had before.

You want what you had before, and if you feel out of control, what is it that you're hungry for?

Control?

Control, choice making. I might—when my grandfather was dying, this is decades ago now, I didn't know how to handle it, and I read a book that said that even in your dying moments, the dying person likes to be respected and to have choices. And so I went in and I said, "Hey, Grant, hey, Gramps, what would you like?" I think I called him Poppy Arthur. That's what we called him. I said, "What would you like? Would you like me to get you some water? Would you like me to put the clock on this side of the room or on this side?" I was within the limits of him being hooked up in bed on his, you know, last dying days. I was trying to give him some dignity, or help him keep his own dignity, not making all the choices for him. And he said to me, "I'd love to see you do a tango with your uncle."

So choice, choice can go in funny directions. So I think it's true for both of you. I think that both of you reasonably want control, and you're trying to do things out of the goodness of your heart that make life better for you and for her. Meaning, you don't want her to have nightmares. It's a mess for her. It's a mess for you. The telephone—she needs to sleep, so you respectfully take the phone calls, and then she's upset with you.

The problem with that is that you need to work together and come up with strategies that make sense. Now that gets complicated if part of the brain damage that's been done shows up in some confusion and some paranoia, because then no matter what you do, you know, damned if you do, damned if you don't.

And she may…

You just hit the nail on the head.

Go ahead.

What I was going to say next is, we finally get back home and you're looking forward to finally getting some sanity. Yeah, she used to go through chemo, and two days later, she files a restraining order against me, suicidal, a threat to myself.

Who's she?

Is she suicidal? Or she's saying you're suicidal?

I am suicidal.

But you're not.

You're not.

Well, if I was, I certainly wouldn't be calling you here now.

Okay, thank you. Thank you.

Okay, so I'm hearing…

Go ahead.

So basically trying to come out down, out of this decompression, and now all of a sudden, we're streaming water, and I can't even talk to her to find out what's going on.

Okay, I think that you need some supportive therapy for yourself. This is traumatizing. If I were in your shoes, and here I am trying to go out of my way to make life as sane as possible given the situation, it is typical that if somebody feels very dependent on another person, they typically bite the hand that feeds them. For example, look at, well, people who are on welfare—they don't thank the taxpayers who are giving, whose money they're getting. They want more. You know, they have that entitlement mentality, and it's also true in difficult situations like you're talking about—caretaker situations—where you can do a lot for another person, and they may not… they resent it because they wish they were doing it for themselves, because they earn some self-respect, but maybe they can't.

And so I would absolutely get some cognitive therapy or whatever supportive therapy is available for you, because you need some TLC, you need some help, and you need some good guidance.

So I am planning that too. I think the biggest question, Mark, in my mind is still, after all of this, that I love her very much, and yet…

You need to do some anticipatory grief work too. If you hold on, I'll talk with you during the break.

For more Dr. Kenner podcasts, go to DrKenner.com, and please listen to this. Ned.

Here's an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance, the serious romance guidebook by clinical psychologist Dr. Ellen Kenner and co-author, Dr. Edwin Locke.

Communication is not only verbal. Observe how your partner acts in different situations. How one acts is a form of communication, inadvertent or not, and it can reveal valuable clues to your partner's values and deepest feelings. For example, does your partner withdraw in the face of conflict? Is your partner easily angered or depressed by criticism? Does your lover get excited when you dress or undress in certain ways? Do your partner's moods change in predictable or unpredictable ways in response to people or events? Such observations set the stage for ongoing communication.

You can download chapter one for free by going to DrKenner.com, and you can buy The Selfish Path to Romance at Amazon.com.