The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

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

Eric, you're wanting to learn how to communicate better with your wife.

No boyfriend, actually.

Oh, your boyfriend. Okay.

It's not necessarily to communicate better. We get into a lot of SPAC, if you will.

Okay, a lot of SPAC.

Yeah, we try a lot of proactive approaches, such as using "I feel" statements.

Oh, good.

Using the "I feel" statement, I've also tried extensively. I try not to say, "You should." It's hard because it's such a common word.

Oh, yeah, you should do this, right? You should do that because then it feels like he doesn't have an option in the matter.

Right, right.

And I've had moderate success with that. It feels safer because it removes that sense of, "Oh, he's blaming me for this," right?

Right.

But my boyfriend's had a rough time with his mother, and she was fairly abusive when he was younger, and it reflects in his emotional stability. He has a hard time trusting, and it's hard for him to communicate when he's feeling downtrodden. He gets very withdrawn, not necessarily introspective but very withdrawn, very internalizes a lot, and it creates a lot of strife between us. Because I feel like I want to be able to help him. I know I want to be able to help him, but he’s set up these walls around himself. At the same time, I have a pretty short temper.

Okay.

I can get frustrated. I will admit to that. I get frustrated. We've never hit each other, but we’ve gotten into yelling matches. I will admit this; we've gotten into a lot of yelling matches, but we've never laid hands on each other.

Okay, and you're wanting some tips on how to deal with this?

I'm curious about your suggestion for breaking through these walls he’s set up.

Okay. Well, the first wall, Eric, that you want to break through is your own, because your own coping strategies are partly serving you well. The fact that you have learned "I" statements, like "I feel angry," "I'm frustrated," instead of "You make me angry," "You should be doing this," "You shouldn't frustrate me"—you're exactly right. You are light years ahead of most people because they don't have that skill. So credit yourself where you are growing your strength.

It was a learned skill. As a doctor of psychology, I'm sure you're aware of therapeutic boarding schools, wilderness rehabilitation programs, and all that stuff, right?

Okay, in nature.

Okay, I did a lot of those when I was a kid, so I have an advantage over most people, yes, but at the same time, I find that these skills I learned don’t always apply in the same way now.

You know, I would learn some skills to parent my kids, and then I would be totally stumped and feel that strife that you're feeling. And what I would do is go back and learn more skills, which is what you're asking me. So let me get to those. The first wall you want to break down is your own, because if you have a short temper, that’s something that's in your control. The other part is not—his response to it, his shutting down. Now he anticipates that you’re going to have a short temper, and that may be why he shuts down. You want some skills for yourself to change, to reframe it. That’s what they call it in cognitive therapy: having a different mindset so that your goal is not to get through to him come hell or high water but instead—

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.

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.

Your goal is not to get through to him come hell or high water but instead to try to reach his mind in a way that’s open to you. That’s a different framing. If I say I want to reach my husband’s mind, and I can see he’s very busy right now or I can see he’s hurt, then I might ask, “Is this the time to reach his mind or not?” Asking yourself that question can go a long way.

I mean, also, I've tried, you know, the whole "remove yourself from the situation" approach and come back an hour or two later, right? Calm down. I'm pretty impulsive too; I can admit to that.

Then you want to change that within yourself. You know, I wrote the romance book with Dr. Ed Locke, The Selfish Path to Romance, and we talk about how, in order to have a loving relationship, guess whom you need to make lovable first.

Yourself.

Yes, yourself. So we don’t mean "selfish" in the traditional sense of running roughshod over somebody. We mean you need to learn how to make yourself lovable. And if one of your tendencies is to roll your eyes or to scream or yell or say, “I've had just about enough of this” or whatever your passive response is, whatever you do there, if you can instead journal your failings privately or give yourself some better role models or learn skills—wonderful skills for dealing with short tempers or anger—you basically need to have a different monologue inside your own head than the one you've been having. Because if you're saying, “I’m not going to let him do this to me anymore. He better open up. Listen, if he wants this relationship, it’s over. If he doesn’t open up, I can’t take it any longer”—you notice you're escalating, right? And he's going to read your body language too. The thing about communication is—and you know this, Eric—that we read body language much quicker, and we believe it much more than we believe the words. You’re right. If I say to you, “I'm sorry,” you already know just from hearing that I’m not sorry, right? So if you reframe it as, “I want to—he is a partner I’m investing in, possibly a lifetime with—is that the case? Is this a romantic partner?”

Yes, he is, okay. I've been dating him for two and a half years.

Okay.

I would like this to last 20 years, you know?

I would recommend my book, and you can go to selfishromance.com. I would recommend it even though it’s for heterosexual couples; we do put a note in it that it also applies to same-sex couples. You know, the principles of romance are the same. The principles of communication are the same; the sex may differ, but the principles don’t. So you need to ask yourself, "Is this a good time to reach my partner right now?" What do I want to tell him? What are the best ways to reach him? If I don’t know the best ways to reach him, can we, in a time when we're both feeling calmer, have a talk about what I do that’s irksome to him, what bothers him, and what he would prefer that I do? And can I let him know how I feel about his shutting down, when we're both calm, and discuss strategies he would like me to use? One of the keys with good communication is knowing the person you're talking to. One person may need silence for half an hour a day; another may need to talk right away. You need to work things out so that there's a good pacing in the relationship, and you can discuss each of your walls. You can discuss better strategies. You can talk about how you’ve coped with things better.

So I know we're just about at the end of time here. I wish we had more time, Eric.

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

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, who is world-famous for his theories in goal setting.

Sex, more than any other pleasure, involves the integration, the joining, the merging of both your mind and your body. There are pleasures that involve mainly the mind, such as intellectual achievements or contemplating a work of art, and there are pleasures that are primarily physical, such as a good workout, a massage, or a hot bath. But more than any other pleasure, sex involves you as a whole person, combining both conscious and physical sensations. Romantic sex is the most intense pleasure a human being can experience.

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