The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

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

Rose, you're having difficulty in a romantic relationship.

Yes.

And tell me, you're wanting to break it off.

I'm sorry. You're wanting to break up.

Yes.

I've never been in a relationship with him. We've just been friends since high school, but we cannot date it. And while we were dating, I fell in love with him, but at the beginning I told him, "Don't fall for me. I want to fall for you," which was too good of me to say, and I ended up falling for him.

So when I expressed my feelings to him, he told me that he used to love me and he does not love me anymore, but he's still sticking around. And whenever I ask him why he wants me, he says nothing, just good friendship. But my feelings are growing and growing more and more.

Okay, let me stop you there, because it's a little difficult to hear you. So I want to make sure I heard you correctly. You've been dating this guy since high school, and he's grown on you. You've grown on him, and you dated a little bit, and now he's saying he only wants a friendship, but you're feeling like you're in love with him.

I am in love with him. You are my best friend. We've been best friends.

We've never been… how many years?

Nine years.

Nine years, and you're how old now, Rose?

Twenty-seven.

Twenty-seven years old. And have you ever been married?

No.

And has he been married?

No.

And so help me understand, does he love you?

He said he did before. Because while we were dating, I was dating other people, and he was dating other people also. But I don't know why he thought, like when we were dating, if we were boyfriend and girlfriend. He never asked me to be his girlfriend. We were best friends dating, so I don't even kind of… that's why he meant that when I'm Bucha. So I told him I'm very sorry, and I didn't really mean to hurt him, and I would like to take the relationship to the next level, but he's—

Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I'm losing it a little bit. The essence is that you want—

What I want to know is how to break it up, like get out of it. I don't want to be just a phone number, but it's so hard, because I love him. I try to date other people, but every time I go out with other people or I think about him, it's him.

What happens when you date other people?

I'm not happy.

Oh, you're not happy. Okay, so here's—if I understand you correctly, he's not wanting any long-term committed relationship. He's not wanting marriage, and you love him, but it feels like it's going nowhere with him. So you want to break up?

Yeah, because we're not even in a relationship. We're just best friends.

When you say best friends, I mean, that's a relationship. You say you're not sexually involved with him.

We were, like, sexually involved. We never, like—how do you say it—like when you ask somebody to be your girlfriend, and you know that someone is your boyfriend? We never reached that stage.

So you never made it explicit. You never put it in words that you're boyfriend and girlfriend, yet you were acting that way. At this point, you want to break up because it's too painful for you to stay with someone who doesn't want to make it into a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship commitment.

Okay, so how have you tried breaking it up? Where does he think? I mean, there's nothing to break up if you're just boyfriend and girlfriend, right?

Yeah, I stopped talking to him about a year ago. I cut him off from my life, but he came back. I apologized. You know, he really values my friendship. He wanted to try to make it work, and as soon as, okay, we can try that. And then he goes back to stage one, like he's not making that commitment to me.

He's just seeing other people.

He's seeing other people, yes, and he's dating other people right now.

Yes.

Okay, so if I… you're in the situation where you love him dearly. If he said, "I love you, Rose. You're the only person that I want in my life. You fulfill everything for me. I would love you to marry me," what would you say if he said that?

Hey, I gotta interrupt this, because we've got to pay some bills. Thirty seconds, that's it. A very quick ad, and then Alan will be back.

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.

I love you, Rose. You're the only person that I want in my life. You fulfill everything for me. I would love you to marry me. What would you say if…?

You would say yes, but since you can't squeeze that out of him, since you can't draw that out of him, he's not interested. He's still looking. He's still seeing what else is out there for a romantic partner. Then what you're wanting, then what I hear you're wanting from me is how do you mentally manage the pain that you go through when you grieve the loss of your hopes?

You hoped to be with him, to marry him, just talking. He would tell me, like, okay, he's not satisfied when he's with other people also, like, you know, I'm perfect, too perfect for him. And, you know, does he do like this? Everything about me has good and bad qualities, but at the same time, he says he's missing something. But it's the thing not there, you know, with those people that's not satisfying him.

Okay, what is it that you're not satisfying in him?

No, he said, other people. Other people.

But he's sending you mixed messages. So he's keeping you in… it sounds like you're an insurance policy in his life. He's got you on the side, so if anything else fails, he can always go back to you, because you're always there. But then it puts your life on hold. You can't move on.

Yeah, you're so emotionally attached to him. He sends you mixed messages, "I love you, but I don't want to be your boyfriend."

Yeah, I love you, but when he's talking, he turns on me. Like, you know, when we didn't talk, he dated other people. Yeah, I thought it was a sexual part, but he kind of is more than sexual with me. It's like he likes the complete person that I am.

So the one thing that you're not getting from him is exclusivity. You're not getting… you're not the top person in his life, and that's what a romantic partner is and should be. It should be the top. It's an exclusive place. One person fits there, and you share your lives together on an intimate level, sexual level that you don't do with anybody else.

So if you're trying to let go of him because it seems like it's going nowhere after nine years, then you need to be able to be willing to go through the grief, the pain, just as if he had died. Now he didn't die, but you can't keep torturing yourself by staying connected to him if he's already said no to you for the boyfriend-girlfriend part.

So what I recommend is not talking to him as frequently, cutting it off for you know. You can stay in the background, but you need to do what's necessary for yourself to move on, which may mean asking friends to fix you up to date other people. And you're going to find a bunch of people that you don't like and that don't come close to him, but all you need to do is find someone who matches his character or who is even better, who puts you on a pedestal.

And it'll be easier to detach from him. If you don't date, then all you'll be focused on is him, and you'll keep growing that fantasy that he won't let you fulfill.

Is that making sense? Did that make sense at all to you?

Right?

That makes sense. But I was thinking about, like, should I tell him, "Don't call me, whatever, call me"? Because that's the thing is, like, even though I stay away from him, yeah, you see, I don't call him, he will call.

But then you need to tell him, "This is not working. It's torturing me. I need to move on. I can't offer you this friendship because I want to preserve it for someone who will eventually be my husband, and that's not you. You've already made that clear, and I need to move on."

Listen, thank you so much for the call, Rose. I hope that helps.

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

I 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.

This is Dr. Ellen Kenner, and that's from an adorable movie, "Shall We Dance?" And you know, when your mind doesn't want to accept bad news—in this case, she thinks her husband's having an affair—it can do somersaults, trying to come up with, in quotes, possibilities.

And you know, on the surface, they don't make sense, but it's just that your mind is not ready to hear the truth. It's not ready to integrate it.

And I won't spoil any plots. If you haven't seen the movie, it's adorable. It's definitely worth seeing. "Shall We Dance?" It may even bring you into a dance studio, so beware. If you haven't, if you're not a dancer, you may discover that you enjoy it. We love it. We love ballroom dancing. My husband and I.

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

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

As you learn more about your romantic partner, it becomes easier to nourish your relationship each day. Ask yourself, "What can I do today to make my partner feel loved?"

Avoid the error of assuming that what makes you feel loved is exactly what makes your partner feel loved. In "The Five Love Languages," author Gary Chapman recommends that each couple know one another's most important love languages.

One category of love language includes positive encouragement. "I know you can do it," giving recognition, "Great work," and showing appreciation. "Hey, thanks for doing the dishes." We recommend that you show sincere appreciation to your partner every day. These positive gestures are great visibility enhancers.

You can download chapter one for free by going to DrKenner.com, and you can buy the book at Amazon.com.