The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

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

This is a woman whose husband is very interested in her. He's basically chasing her around the house for sex. And she is going through menopause. She's got the kids, she's working. She's just way too stressed out, and so she just makes a throwaway comment and he acts on it. So see how you might manage this.

How do I get my husband back?

Fifty-three years old and going through the menopause stage, and my husband is full of all sexual activity, same age as me. I guess, an in-life crisis. He kept following me and hounding me and hounding me about sex, sex, sex, sex, along with kids and work and stress and everything else that goes along with it. I made a couple statements that he needed to find a girlfriend. That was about a year ago. Well now here recently, he found himself a girlfriend, and he had an affair with her, and I found out about it. He says he wouldn't have done it if I hadn't told him to, but I didn't mean it. He told this girl that we were divorced, but we're still together, that he cared for me and that he would always take care of me. This is my home for the past 10 years, and I want the love and sex. I want my husband to fall in love with me all over again. Yes, I let myself go. I recently dyed my hair, started to wear makeup, and I've tried to make advances to him, and have gotten no reaction. I need help. How do I get him back? He won't stay home long enough. He comes in and goes out, comes in and goes out, and I'm in the house, 24/7, while I'm not at work. Due to the affair, it has opened my eyes that I really do love my husband, and I want him back. I want that love that we used to have when we first got married, that passion. How do I do this? I'm running out of options here. Thank you.

So you're asking how to do this, and truly, you cannot force another mind. You cannot force your husband to be on the same page with you. You're doing what you can do—you are making a lot of changes in your life—to see if he is interested in coming back. But it's a very complicated situation that you're facing. So the first thing I would say is to have empathy for yourself, to really see how difficult this is. On one hand, he has betrayed you. He knows that when you said go out and have an affair, you didn't mean it, and he acted on it, and he did it in secret. You found out about it after the fact, and this has been going on for a year. So you have tons of questions. Of course, you are injured from so many directions, because it rips apart the fabric of your life. It rips apart your family life with the kids at home; it rips apart your work, because how can you focus on anything else? Where are we going with this? What's your life going to look like? So do have empathy for yourself. You could get some supportive therapy for yourself if you want. There are some books that are very good out there: Dr. Janice Abrams Spring’s book on how to rebuild your relationship after it's been broken by an affair, or Not "Just Friends", rebuilding trust and recovering your sanity after infidelity by Shirley Glass. Those are two possible books you could look at.

Now I want to look at the past, and then I'm going to go to the present and then to the future, because you have choices to make for yourself.

[Ad break] I got to 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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Now, I want to look at the past, and then I'm going to go to the present and then to the future, because you have choices to make for yourself. In the past, it sounds like you fell into a pattern that many couples fall into, where the woman has the kids at home, the housework, the work stress, and so sex becomes a duty, something on a to-do list that you just check off. It ceases to be that delicious passion that you talked about having rediscovered now that he's not in the picture; it becomes a duty. And then if there's a discrepancy where he's wanting it a lot more frequently, or he's wanting it and you're not at all because he's chasing you, then that's just a very common pattern. So don't beat up on yourself for falling into that pattern.

Now let's bring it to the present. What's going on? Well, he did betray you, and you're dealing with that currently, and you have to make choices. You're in a very unstable situation right now. He's lied to you. He lied to this woman. He said he's divorced, but he still cares for you. He's trying to live a double life, to stay at home and still have all the benefits of family life with the kids and with you, taking care of the house and still working and bringing in an income, and yet he wants to have his cake and eat it too. He wants the woman on the side. And it's really hard to compete against a new lover in a person's life, because when you meet somebody, there's that joy of discovery, that deliciousness, that passion of a newfound relationship. So you're competing against something that you actually have a lot of questions about. There are a lot of fill-in-the-blanks. You don't know who she is, or a lot of information about her, or if there's only one woman. And you currently do not have what's called emotional intimacy—forget about the sexual intimacy. He's in and out of that house now. So the emotional intimacy is broken.

So let's look to the future now. Do you want to repair this relationship? That would be great if you could get some supportive therapy and talk with a therapist about whether it makes sense for you to try to chase after him. Typically, that doesn't work. Does he show any indication of wanting to connect with you? You're making yourself much more appealing, and I hope you're doing that for yourself, not just to bring him back in. But you can ask him, say, is it possible to rebuild our relationship? Instead of you going through all of this effort desperately trying to get him back, because you also have some anger towards him, I'm assuming. You want to ask him, is he open to rebuilding the relationship, or are you on a trajectory of separation and divorce? And if so, you really want to get some support for yourself.

And also, I want to add one more thing—be so attentive to the kids, because they're going through trauma too. They smell a difference in the house, they sense it, they pick up on the emotions going on, and they don't know whether mommy and daddy are going to stay together. Be really good to them.

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

[Ad] 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.

If you find yourself chronically complaining or moping, work to solve your problems and shift your focus to what's going well in your life. If you can't do it alone, get help. You may legitimately be in a bad mood because of something your romantic partner did or didn't do. If so, clearly name to yourself which of your partner's words or actions are the source of your moodiness, so that the two of you can take steps to remedy the situation. The chances for romantic happiness are better if both partners are typically in a good mood. Having a genuinely pleasant, benevolent demeanor makes you obviously more lovable and more joyful to be around.

You can download chapter one for free by going to DrKenner.com, and you can buy The Selfish Path to Romance at Amazon.com.

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