The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

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

Here is a letter I received that kind of raised my eyebrows a bit.

Dear Dr. Kenner,

I am a 30-year-old. I recently joined a gym, and I have a decent job in the computer field. I have several problems now. I have to pause now as Ellen jumping in here, because this was written in very broken English, and I've just smoothed it out so that that will help you make sense of what follows.

So, he has several problems. One is that I self-pleasure twice a week and worry that I'm a porn addict. Second, I have to select a girl for an arranged marriage, and the women I like have a higher family status and are more affluent than my own. I know I should be attracted to someone of my own status, but the girls I can get easily don't make me feel happy. I feel that there should be a chase and a sense of achievement in pursuing a girl. I get stressed out when I try to meet these girls as potential marriage partners. I have a lot of pressure on me to select a girl for marriage. I have huge career expectations for myself, and that makes me, you can fill in the blank, anxious. I think I am poor and never good enough. I put a lot of pressure on myself to strive, and I always feel like I never have enough time. Thank you, Arun.

Arun, in one sense, I'm not sure what to say, because you obviously come from a different culture. I don't know whether it's Indian or I can't quite tell from your name, but it has different standards by which you judge yourself, and you're suffering because of those standards. And so here are some thoughts. The first one I would want to say, if you want to take a tip from this culture, is to focus on what's good about yourself. You have a good job. You're taking care of yourself physically by joining a gym.

Second, you're labeling yourself as a porn addict. But that really depends on what you're doing and what you consider porn. For example, in this culture, self-pleasuring, enjoying learning about your own body and sensuality in a normal context, is very, very healthy. So if one of your standards of being good is never to self-pleasure, you're going to feel tortured. Because human beings, that's one of our capacities, is to enjoy sensuality and eventually intimacy. And so, the second question is, what do you consider porn? If it's erotic pictures, well, what else is going to turn you on? Playboy magazines? Maybe it's fantasies that cause no one harm. They're not there. It's in your head. And if they're not really way out there—really scary, dangerous, or damaging—then by normal American standards, this would just be enjoying the capacity you have for self-pleasure and learning about your own body, so that then hopefully the woman you find will learn about her body, and you can enjoy intimacy together, because hopefully you'll communicate.

So let's go to the second problem you have. This is on marriage. Again, your cultural standards are causing you a lot of anxiety. I can't imagine if I was told—I mean, I'm a woman—but if I had to go out and find a guy for an arranged marriage, or if some guy was looking at me because we had to have an arranged marriage, and I didn't have a say in it. Our marriages should not be arranged by anybody. They’re a partnership of two equal individuals who mutually love and value one another and work to build a life together that they can both enjoy. So it's not "my way or the highway." It's not a one-way street.

Now I don't know how it is in your culture, so again, it may be your culture that's causing you a lot of anxiety. Also, when you say that you admire successful women, good for you. If you're doing it just to prove to other people that you're good, that's obviously not a healthy motivation. But if you're aspiring to be successful and you admire successful women and don't want to stay at whatever caste your family's in—that’s fine. We don’t have castes in our culture.

Also, the flirting and learning about one another and that little bit of a chase is fun, but the goal is not just to catch somebody that you think is better than you. Obviously, as I said, you should look for somebody who will be a good match, a mutual match for both of you in the long range.

So, if you want to know a little bit about a different culture and sexuality in America that could give you different standards, you could read the book that I wrote with Dr. Ed Locke. It's called The Selfish Path to Romance: How to Love with Passion and Reason. And if you see the word "selfish," don't cringe. It doesn't mean mean and rotten. It means self-esteem. You could put "The Self-Esteem Path to Romance" if you want.

The last point I want to make is on your career. So you've had some success already. Sit back and enjoy that success, and then notice what you enjoy in your career. You want to set your expectations reasonably. It's important to know how to motivate yourself. If you're telling yourself all the time, "I'm never good enough; I'm going to be poor," you're going to always feel pressure, and it's not a healthy pressure. It's an anxious pressure of never being good enough, because you'll achieve the next level, and that's not good enough, and not good enough, and it goes on and on.

Now, this isn’t unique to your culture. This goes across all cultures. But if you shift your motivation and just enjoy the doing and the learning in your career, and you celebrate the progress you're making, then you're not motivated by duty, fear, or guilt. Instead, you're motivated by loving your career and growing it, and you will find more success that way. So, the way you motivate yourself matters, and we talk about that too. We have a whole section in our book.

Again, you can go to SelfishRomance.com or The Selfish Path to Romance on Amazon, and it's by myself and Dr. Ed Locke. We have a whole section on making yourself lovable. Then we have a section on finding the right person for yourself, communicating, and sex—even making your life enjoyable and dealing with disagreements.

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

Here's an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance, the serious romance guidebook by Drs. Kenner and Locke.

The ability to compromise is essential when you become parents. The significant responsibility of caring for children throughout their growing years requires that partners have excellent communication skills, including methods of fairly dividing up child-rearing responsibilities. Otherwise, misunderstandings grow, small slights ignite large fires, and the soulmate relationship perishes. Wall Street Journal writer Sue Shellenbarger reported on this phenomenon in a 2004 article titled “And Baby Makes Stress: Why Kids are a Growing Obstacle to Marital Bliss.” Three reasons cited included debt, overspending on the baby, confusion over roles—who should be the stay-at-home parent and who is the breadwinner—and the inability of partners to talk without fighting.

Download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com and Amazon.com.