The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

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

Here is a question that I received from Maria, and this is about a divorce. Hi, Dr. Kenner. After 20 years, my husband Jack wants out of our marriage. When we married, I had a great career with excellent income. He talked me into retiring at the age of 50 after being with my company for 25 years. He wanted me to live in new places with him. Now I realize that that cost me dearly. He has a high income. Now I get just Social Security, and although I own the house that I had before we were married, I don't have a car. He wants to give me $1,000 a month as a settlement. I am so conflicted. After all, he earned all this money; isn't it his? Why should he owe me anything? On the other hand, we mutually decided that I would stay home and care for the house and pets and him. I did lose out on my independent financial nest egg. So far, I have tried only to consider him. I do not want this divorce to become nasty. I now realize that I'm in my 60s with health issues because of Jack's request that I not work, including while we were married. I am in for a very bad time. Maria.

So, Maria, I do want to talk about the financial issues, even though I'm not a financial divorce expert. But before I do that, there are two things that you said that I just want to bring up and highlight for you. One is that you said, "So far, I have only tried to consider him," and my question is, why? You don't want to lose yourself in any relationship or in the breakup of a relationship. You want to be your own best friend, very supportive. It doesn't mean that you beat up on him or make it very unfair for him. You want to maintain your voice. So just keep that in mind. The second thing you said is, "I am in for a very bad time." Sometimes when we predict a negative future, we make it become a self-fulfilling prophecy. So I would consider playing around with that phrase. You could reframe it; that's what it's called in cognitive therapy—reframing. You can say something along the lines of, "You know, I'm in for a challenging time, and I am going to explore ways to enhance my life." So you want to ask yourself, what can you do that would bring some joy into your life, something that will make your days more interesting? I love that word interesting, and perhaps even make your financial security a little stronger. You might find a career. You could even be a counselor for people with whatever sort of illness you're dealing with, you know, become an expert on it, or maybe something completely different. Maybe you go off and away and become an artist in some sense, or you go back to your career and find some area that you still like in it, and bring yourself up to date online and just really enhance your life. Have an outlook that's more uplifting, and so you don't want to sell yourself short. So that's just what I wanted to say on those two comments that you made.

There is a resource that I'm going to recommend. It's a 1991 book, but I haven't seen anything that matches it. And it's called "The Divorce Decisions Workbook," and it's—I'll just read you the description of it. This book challenges the conventional views of divorce and presents instead the refreshingly sane view that getting organized, tackling practical matters, and giving priority to financial and legal decisions relieves much of the trauma and confusion. So the book is called "The Divorce Decisions Workbook." You can get it on Amazon, and it will talk in a lot of detail, more than I've seen elsewhere on a fair division of household belongings and other issues, which is what you're looking for. So whatever the decision, when you're making the decision, you want to make sure that it's fair in the context of your former agreements and the length of your marriage.

So here's a thought experiment that you could do. Hey, I got to 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.

So here's a thought experiment that you could do if the situation were reversed. Let's say that you were the main breadwinner, Maria, and you asked him to give up his career so he could travel around the world with you, wherever you lived. And what would you think if you decided to leave the relationship? What would be an equitable amount to give him each month? And what is your reasoning behind that amount? Sometimes it's a good thought experiment just to put the shoes on the other foot. The other thing that you can think about is, what reason is he leaving? The reasons matter. If he still loves you dearly yet wants to live alone or has found someone he loves even more but still feels very fond of you, you would think he'd want to make good and give you enough money or buy you a car as he's leaving, or help you make some connections to get your life back on a good path where you can earn some income. If he felt nagged for decades and he's reached a breaking point, then he might want to give you the minimum and feel like he's already given you so much. And so the fairness really depends on figuring out what the main factors are and how you will divide. In figuring out how to divide things, you can make a reasonable request of him using what's called "I language." You talk about yourself; you don't beat up on him. You made me leave work or whatnot. You could say, "You know, I realize that you're moving on, and I wish this were not the case, Jack. I know the reasons why you want to leave, both positive and negative. Would you be willing to consider giving me X amount and perhaps a bit more for our car? I would feel that this is an equitable way to respect the relationship we once had, recognizing that we're both moving on with our lives." So you could approach him and see if that works.

I do want to tell you that I have seen women who have robbed themselves of a career and of remarriage because they get a very lucrative divorce settlement based on their not working and not remarrying. And so they'll date, and then they know they can't get married. So the closer they get towards marriage, they realize that they will lose all of this money coming in. So they end up trapping themselves and becoming very dependent, and they feel guilty and resentful. I would recommend looking at our book, "The Selfish Path to Romance," the book that I wrote with Dr. Ed Locke. There's a free chapter one at DrKenner.com, d r, k, e, n, n, e, r.com, and we have an appendix in the book, "How to Part Ways and Start Over," when you cease being soulmates, and that will address not fundamentally the financial issues but a lot of the psychological issues that could help you, Maria.

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

We don't know if he's having an affair. I mean, he could just be involved with—I don't know—people who get together to invest things, and the place that they invest things is filled with potpourri, and that's why his shirt smells so sweet when he comes home.

It's possible.

Yeah, it's possible. It's possible we can find your husband neck-deep in potpourri, investing things.

And that's from the movie "Shall We Dance?" The woman is worrying that her husband is cheating on her, and she's hired someone to check it out. If you're going through that, the pain that that can cause if you just suspect a partner is cheating on you, and you start to look for evidence—sometimes you can be wrong. You can start collecting all this evidence while he was out later tonight, and he smells a little bit like perfume, and you don't know it was just the hand soap that he used in a bathroom at Walmart, but you start suspecting things. So sometimes you can let it grow into paranoia when your husband isn't cheating on you or your wife isn't cheating on you, and sometimes it's the real thing. You sense that things are different. He's working out more. He doesn't want intimacy with you. He's away from home a bit more. He has two cell phones, and you start to see all the signs of infidelity. It's really good to focus on that and not to blame yourself for being paranoid. So it's hard to differentiate sometimes at the beginning, but you definitely want to take it seriously because no one wants to be an ostrich, to stick their head in the sand and later discover that they've been tricked for sometimes a year, sometimes more than that. Sometimes we deceive ourselves that someone's being unfaithful, and sometimes they're very good at deceiving us.

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

Do you have a friend or relative who takes advantage of your inability to say no? Here is what you might say after being asked to babysit for the 1,000th time: "I need to do myself a favor and you a favor. I need to be honest with you. I want to enjoy your darling kids as an aunt, not as a perennial sitter. I felt obligated to help you out over the years at the expense of taking care of myself. I grew to resent it, and then I felt guilty about the resentment. Now I see the error I was making this weekend. I want some time with just Joe and our kids. My guess is you felt this way in your life too."

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