The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

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

Michelle, you're having difficulty with your husband.

Yes, he has a lot of anger for years now.

How many years have you been with him?

Well, we went to high school together, and I'm 40 now, so it's been quite a few years. We're married, we have two children, but it's starting to affect the children.

How old are they?

My son is seven, and my daughter is three. Not so much my daughter, but my son, because he's at the age now where he started to play with the kids in the neighborhood. We moved to a new neighborhood, and my husband, you know, he's always like, everyone's afraid of him in the neighborhood now.

Everybody is?

Well, the kids that are right around us, and they tell their parents. So then we had to talk with the parents, and the parents, you know, sort of, you know, because he tells them, you know, he gets involved in when they're fighting, instead of just letting them work it out, yeah. And he just, I just, he doesn't get violent, but I'm afraid he's gonna might.

What are your indications that he might get violent?

He grabbed one of the other kids' neighbor's arms.

And why is that not violent?

No, but I'm saying he didn't, like hit him or anything. But yes, that is violent. You know, that's what I'm saying. Like, I don't want it to get any further. I don't want him touching anybody. And, yeah, that's reportable. I mean, they could call in on something like that, right?

And I wouldn't blame them if they did. And that's, but he doesn't see that he's wrong in this. And I don't. My problem is, I don't even I want him to get some kind of help, some anger management, a pill or whatever. Okay, calm him down. But I don't even know how to approach this with him without him getting angry.

Okay, the reason he's going to get angry is what's his current view of himself? You already told me. Is he wrong or right?

He thinks he's right.

He thinks he's right, right? So if you bring a very clear mirror up to him and say, "Uh, you're wrong," will he smile at that mirror and say, "Oh, thank you for the correction, honey"? Or will he want to break the mirror?

I want to break the man.

And you are the mirror, right? So when reality speaks, he wants to break reality, but he's at war with reality. If he is angry, then he knows on some level that he is messing up. He would not like anyone to treat him this way. And I will bet, if you go back into his past, someone did treat him this way, whether it's his mother, his father, somebody treated him this way. But that doesn't excuse him. That doesn't mean that, and it doesn't mean that a pill will take care of it. If he wants the value of living more peacefully with his neighbors, with fundamentally, with himself and with you, then he needs skills.

But the bigger question is, you've been married for how many years? I know you've known him since high school, but how many years?

Eight years.

Eight years you've been with him?

We've been married eight years, longer than that, probably 14 or 15 years.

Okay, so you're together for 14 or 15 years, and then you’ve been married for eight years, and you have two kids now, ages seven and three, right? When we were younger, he drank a lot, and I thought his anger was from his drinking, and he quit drinking, so I said better. And I thought that was, I thought the alcohol was the problem. But little by little, it's all, it's just like, it's like he's drinking. I know he's not, you know what I mean. So a lot of things happened to him when he was younger, and things like getting in trouble with the police and things like that, nothing really serious, nothing really violent, but always he thinks he was set up or like It's always somebody else the victim.

So he's used to his, in quotes, coping strategy, which is really his choice making, is that he rationalizes it, meaning, lies to himself and tells himself that he's the victim. The world is wrong, and it can't be any other way. You hear me, right? End of story. There's no argument, there's no discussion. That's it, right?

Michelle, yeah, so how did so?

Let me tell you a little bit about anger, and then I want to get right to your question is, what can you do? Can you reach him or not?

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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Hmm, the selfish path to romance. That is interesting.

Let me tell you a little bit about anger, and then I want to get right to your question is, what can you do? Can you reach him or not? Anger? The emotion of anger tells you that something is not fair. That's the theme of anger. If you said he was sad, he was crying all the time, he was holed up in his room, sleeping all the time, then the theme, depression or sadness is loss, but in the theme of anxiety is uncertainty, but the theme of anger is it's not fair. It's not fair. So if the kids aren't acting right, it's not fair that they're not acting right. It's not fair that my wife doesn't want to have sex now. It's not fair that the boss said this, it's not fair, like the whole world is perceived as not fair.

Now, sometimes our anger, many times our anger, is totally reality based. I mean, someone can cut you off on the road and you feel it's not fair.

Doesn't matter of fact, when we go out with the children, I drive only because we can never take even a one ride without him having a problem.

Good for you. You guys are all in prison with your husband, and that's the second thing I want to address. So he thinks things are not fair, sometimes things that sometimes things actually are not fair. But from what you're saying, your husband has deep-seated issues that are driving this. So the surface things, like someone cutting him off on the road, is not the real issue, and he needs to deal with the core issue.

And my guess is his not fairness is that his own self-betrayal. If he's made a series of bad choices in his life, like getting in trouble with the police and choosing to use alcohol rather than deal with his problems, then what's really not fair is he betrayed himself long ago, and he's angry at the world for work, and he should be angry with himself.

So how do you reach him?

So some things are just getting back to the unfair. Some things are based in reality, and some things are totally unconnected. It's an irrational feel emotion, meaning you feel the emotion, but it's not based in fact. He can get real angry with the kids, but it's an out-of-context emotion. He's angry at something, and he's taking it out on you or the kids.

So the next question is, do you want to stay with him for life?

I do, but not, not if he's going to be like the...

Well, then you need to let him know that, and you need to be firm. You don't need to be, if you're wimpy, people who are angry, who learn how to manipulate others, look for their sources of vulnerability. So if he sees you hedging, he will use whatever insecurities you have because he knows he's known you for 14 or 15 years, right since high school.

So you need to learn assertiveness skills. I would recommend therapy for you.

Yeah, and I would strengthen yourself. I would go to my website, and there are wonderful parenting books there, so you can see how he should be treating the kids, as opposed to what he's not doing well.

That's the other thing too. Like he's constantly, he's good with my kids. He plays baseball, you know? I mean, like he's always...

He's not good. If he's rational, rational, rational, irrational, rational...

No, but kids live in fear when that's the situation.

So you need to get the books on my website, the parenting books on my website, DrKenner.com, and then you need to get therapy for yourself so you can learn assertiveness skills. There are plenty of books. I'm holding one in my hand now, Dr. Weisinger's Anger Workout Book that he could get if he were willing to work on it. If he sees that the marriage is at stake, it may be a wake-up call for him, but that takes some work for you. And I'm not saying you can do that just from this phone call. You should get your own therapy so that you get a lot of wonderful skills under your belt so that you can go up to him and say, "Honey, this is not working. We both know you have an anger management problem. You can deal with it or not. I'm willing to go to couples therapy with you. You can get individual help."

Thank you so much for your call.

Thank you for your time. For more Dr. Kenner podcasts, go to DrKenner.com.

And please listen to this:

Here's an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance by Dr. Kenner and Locke to discover if your intimacy technique is working. Good questions for both partners to privately ask themselves after an intimate encounter are, was this enjoyable for me? Did we share feelings of intimacy? If the answers are no, it is important to understand what aspects can be improved and how to improve them.

For many women, intimacy feels like a chore when they don't achieve satisfaction. Why is this pattern so common? Many women feel self-doubt, guilt, frustration, and annoyance, wondering why their partners don't pay attention to their needs and why they themselves are too embarrassed to explain what helps them achieve satisfaction. Sometimes they may not know when intimacy feels like a duty; resentment escalates, and the result is often a frustrating partnership.

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