The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

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

Robin, what's on your mind?
Hi,
hi.
How are you doing? Dr. Kenner, Oh,
very good. You're having problems with a friend,
actually, two friends, or two female friends.
Okay. How old are you? Robin, 46.
46 and they're in the same age range, yes.
Okay, tell me what's going on.
Okay, one of both, mostly one of my friends. Her name is Alicia. She and I have known each other since around the age of 12, wow. And even back then, she was just somebody I hung out with from time to time, but really didn't want to hang around her too much because she, to this day, is still very controlling type of personality.

Okay, give me one visual of Alicia controlling you.
Okay, she's always wanted to go out to the club, and to this day, she still likes to go out to bars and things like that. She's an attorney, but I really didn't want to go to certain places with her at that time. Of course, I was well underage, and she would say, Okay, let's go out. And I'd say, No, then she would go into a childlike voice to basically make me feel bad.

Can you imitate it so I get a feel for it?
Okay, oh, Robin, please come on. You know, I really don't want to do this alone. You know, I don't want to go to a club, and what would she do?
You know, come on, come on. You know, you really wanted, I really need the company. You know, there's nobody else there. You know that I really want to be with, but I don't think you're hearing me. I have no interest in going. I hear how much you'd love my company, but I'm let's do something else. I don't want to go to a bar. I don't want to go to a club.

You know, next thing I knew, she was going to slam the phone down on my ear.
Oh, really? Yeah, really. So she goes from kind of taking frosting on the cake and saying, poor me, please accompany me. I need you the pity Christmas. And if you don't do anything, you get the cold shoulder.

Yeah, so that is that her it. So tell me that's Alicia who would tell me a little bit about or is there anything else I need to know about Alicia? She doesn't take no for an answer, as you know, given into one example, yeah, even today, when I tell her when I go to visit, yeah, well, she will offer me some kind of refreshment or food. And I'll say, Well, no, I, you know, don't want to eat that, but thanks for offering.

What does she give me a visual?
Okay, there for a while I was trying to get off of pork. Yeah. She'll say, Well, you know, you used to like pork, and you know, my mother, she's gone through all this trouble to fix it, guilt.

Okay, that is caught. That is a beautiful, beautiful example of something called unearned guilt. She's totally disrespectful of your values, of your mind, of your choice making, and she's trying to impose her choice making on you because her mother went out of her way to make it. Well, then her mother shouldn't sacrifice. If her mother doesn't want to make pork, she shouldn't make pork.

And if go ahead, if you'll say, Well, you know, you know, I'm not going to eat it. And she goes, I know you like this kind of stuff, but I just told you I'm not interested in eating the pork. Yeah. And she said, Well, you know, you've always been like a daughter to my mother.

You know what my guess is, if that's the case, your mother will understand that sometimes daughters don't like to eat the food that they make. Yeah. So you could, you could. It sounds like you could use some stronger skills to hold your own because every time you give in to her, you are betraying yourself, Robin, and you don't want to do that because that's where the damage is done. You can't control the pressure that someone else puts on you, such as Alicia or this other woman that you said, that you alluded to, you can control holding your own.

There's no way in the world that if Alicia tried to get me to go to the bar with her that she could, and I don't have to be mean about it. She could use the pity. Oh, Ellen, won't you come? I'll be so lonely. And I'll say,
Hey, I gotta 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.

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She could use the pity. Oh, Ellen, won't you come? I'll be so lonely. And I'll say, you know, I understand that this is important to you, and I hope that you value me enough as a friend that I don't that. I that you don't try to force me to go. It won't work. I'm not interested in going, and I would like for you to really hear that.

Oh, come on, it's not going to hurt you. What's there? You're not doing anything tonight. Anyway, it's my night, and I want to do what I would enjoy doing. This is not something I would enjoy doing going clubbing tonight, but you enjoy it in the past, and I can't go all alone. You know, it sounds more like you're looking for companionship, not necessarily me. You know, maybe you can call a few other people.

There's no one else to call. Says, Well, that sounds like something that you'd want to give some thought to so that you can have some companionship doing that, that's not something that interests me, and I start resenting it when I feel pressured to do something that I don't like, and I do like it when I feel heard, when you do listen to me, and you have done that like I might remember one or two times when she's listened to me, and I've respected, you know, I've enjoyed that.

So what did I do there?
Okay, you basically reinforced you know your you from what you felt very strongly about, that you what you that you didn't want to do, right? I was 100% self-valuing. I wasn't being mean to her. I let her know that my choices matter, and I wasn't afraid to say that, and her methods wouldn't work on me, whether it's an appeal to pity or whether it's the cold shoulder or whether she screams at me or whether she pouts. You know, there can be a whole range of manipulative behaviors, and I don't have I can just name them.

I can say, you know, I noticed that when I speak my own mind, that you hang up on me. I'm uncomfortable with that, and I've been screamed at in the past.
Oh, then say, you know, if you scream at me, are you thinking of breaking off with her entirely?

Yes, she really doesn't listen like you.
Okay, she doesn't value my opinion.
Then absolutely, and we, I know we don't have time for the other woman, but this is a template for it. If you're looking you want to look at the people who are currently in your life with the title that you've given them as friend, and figure out how many have earned their place. How many in which cases does it feel like a genuine trade Robin that that they listen to you and you feel like you share the airwaves with them? You can talk about your day, they talk about theirs, and you don't feel this game playing with you.

Want to find friends who are respectful of your mind and of your values, and you don't want to feel like a wimp around them, and you don't want to be a bully, and that doesn't sound like you're the bully. It sounds like you would be more of a doormat and go along and then feel resentful of them, right?
That would off the other woman I was going to mention, yeah, go ahead, there's a similarity in personality to some degree.

Then figure out why you're attracted to two women who have a similar personality. Was your mother like that, her grandmother?
Just a little bit, but not. Okay. Okay.
Sometimes we just we're comfortable, even though we don't like it, we're comfortable gravitating towards people that give us that familiar feel. You know, we're used to living with that, but you want to find better friends.

So think of someone in your life who's a better friend and spend much more time with that person, and you can easily just keep telling Robin, no, I'm not going to the club and no, I don't want the pork that your mother's cooking.

Listen, thank you. Wish we had more time. Thank you so much for the call, Robin.
Thank you. Oh, you back with me.
Okay, 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, the serious romance guidebook by clinical psychologist Ellen Kenner and co-author Edwin Locke.
When your tone of voice and body language contradict your words, your partner will react to the non-verbal cues. If your partner says, but you really seem upset, and you answer, there you go again. You're always reading into things. I'm just fine. Communication has been choked, faking your feelings only masks and compounds the problem and delays any resolution, stifling your legitimate feelings, suspending your thinking, ignoring your own values and nodding okay to please or appease your partner is a self-defeating tactic. Stand up for what you want. Then, instead of feeling what's the use, you feel we can manage this difference.

You can download chapter one for free by going to DrKenner.com and buy it @amazon.com.