The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

Amy, the selfish path to romance. Download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com and at Amazon.com.

Dear Dr. Kenner, I am a 36-year-old mother of three who has been married for 13 years, and I think I hate my husband. He is never home, and when he is, he's watching sports and isolating himself from my children and me. I have no one to talk to. Don, my husband, hates my whole family, and he's trying to stop me from dealing with them. He doesn't take me out, he doesn't give me any money, and he's always bad-mouthing me to his friends and family. He’s got a 17-year-old daughter from another relationship who I hate with a passion. He gives her everything she wants but ignores me and our children. How do I get my husband to see how much he's hurting me so that I can save my family and have a life? Please help me. I feel so depressed. Thank you. Amy.

Okay, what would be your gut response to Amy?

Amy, here's my gut response. You are assuming that if only you get your husband Don to wake up, like if you could go over there and just shake him, and if he could see the pain he's causing you, he'd feel remorseful and become the loving husband you’ve always wanted and a lovable father. He would be so good, he would stay home, he would throw the TV out the window—no more sports. He wouldn’t visit his buddies.

I think something else is going on behind the scenes. I'll give you my suspicions in a minute, but you want to ask yourself, what are the chances of that happening on a scale of one to 100%? What are the chances that Don will become a loving, wonderful father? My guess is you've tried that. You haven't just sat back for 13 years without yelling at him, without talking, trying to reason with him, without suggesting counseling. And I do suggest counseling. I think that would be good—individual counseling if he wouldn’t go to couples counseling. Individual for you.

Given the 13 years of his well-ingrained habits, assuming they've been going on for at least 10 or 12, however many—even if it’s three years—I suspect the chances are low to non-existent. So think about what are the top benefits of being married? I'll tell you my suspicions coming up in a moment. One of the top benefits of being married is that you feel completely at home in the relationship, comfortable. You feel valued, you feel cared for, you feel totally visible to the person that you love in yourself. The traits that you have that you adore—taking care of your kids, keeping house, or working on the side to supplement the family income—you value yourself, and that person sees that value in you. They would never take away friends or family, or they would never try to rob you of those pleasures unless, of course, it's interfering with the intimate bond that you have.

But I'm hearing that you're feeling totally invisible—invisible for the good character traits you may have, invisible as in the co-parenting area, and you feel lonely and trapped, just like the Cinderella story, living with a stepmother and stepsisters who absolutely refuse to see the good in you. They treat you, as they treated Cinderella, as invisible. He ignores you. You've got no one to talk to. He isolates you from family and friends. Notice he can't do that. You're actually doing that to yourself. He showers attention on his daughter from another marriage but ignores your children, which makes me question—he’s got the capacity for this passion. What’s going on?

So, one of my suspicions is that there’s a lot of guilt going on from having left his other family—the wife and the daughter. And that's one suspicion. Another suspicion is…

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.

That’s one suspicion. Another suspicion is he’s got an affair. Because many times, when men have an affair, they really, really attack the wives—not necessarily abusively in words, domestic violence, the hitting, the punching, and the kicking, but the ignoring. You want to hold their hand, and they brush you away. You want to give them a kiss, and they say, “Oh, God.” That nauseates them, like it would a young kid and a little boy who says, “Girls, ick.” I suspect there’s a possibility he’s got another woman on the side. It may be his ex-wife—if not her, someone else on the side. Because if he's sustaining it, he may still want all the trappings of a family life, all the trappings of the money he’s earned to build a house. He may not want to go through a divorce, and this is easier to keep it this way. So you may want to just keep your antenna up and see if you suspect anything.

Another question I have is, what has kept you with a man you hate? What's kept you in that relationship? Ask yourself that—do some really clean introspective work. If you write it down, shred the papers afterward so he doesn’t find them and use them in a divorce settlement. You could go to a therapist and talk with a therapist about this. Are you staying for financial reasons? For the sake of the kids? Often, it’s more traumatic to stay in a bad relationship because the kids sense that hostility on a day-to-day basis. Are you staying for religious reasons—that divorce is somehow bad? I say challenge that. Any religion that tells you you have to stay with someone that you hate for life is a hateful religion. What about shoveling the snow? Are you afraid you won’t have someone to shovel the snow? Hire someone. You don’t need this husband around.

So imagine living with him for another 13 years. If you're already depressed now, Amy, imagine how you’ll feel at the age of 49. Will you kick yourself for not having left today? So start thinking of alternatives, of parting ways. Again, you can try couples counseling with him. It can be either marital or divorce counseling. You can read some divorce books. There are some on my website, DrKenner.com. You want to look at Couple Skills, a book that would set some standards of what's appropriate in a marital relationship. And if you see he’s not meeting it and never will, that encourages you to leave. If you're very depressed, you can try a book on the website, Mind Over Mood. If you think there's a way to reconnect, again, you can read The Sex-Starved Marriage. I would definitely try to get yourself an individual therapist.

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

"I'm not going to have your promise you won’t cook up any more schemes at school."

"No cadets. I promise, no more schemes at school."

Okay, that’s from a very, very cute but older movie, Kidco. The kids are adorable in it. It’s a family flick, and it’s a healthy one. So I recommend getting it if you can find it. It’s a hard one to find. But this kid is saying, “Okay, Dad, no more schemes at school.” That’s the cute part, because he doesn’t have any more schemes at school, but you better believe this kid has a lot more schemes up his sleeve. And notice how much kids are aware. Kids are aware of what they’re doing. That’s what amazes me as a therapist. I used to think, anyway, and you probably might have too, that, “Well, kids really don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t know all the implications, and they don’t really mean what they say, and they’re not manipulative.” You wouldn’t… Kids will tell me, “I know what I’m doing to my mother, and it drives her crazy, and I keep doing it because I’m angry with her.” And they know, but she thinks, “I can’t help it.” They know what they’re doing. So if you think your kid doesn’t know what he or she is doing, think again.

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 Drs. Kenner and Locke:

Feeling invisible implies that you are not important or perhaps not well-matched with your partner. One important type of visibility is intellectual visibility. Intellectual visibility means showing respect for your partner’s mind. It is helpful if partners possess roughly the same degree of mental ability and education. If there is a huge discrepancy, it will be difficult to have interesting conversations about topics that you both enjoy. Another important type of visibility is sexual visibility. Sexual visibility means appreciating your partner’s body and his or her ability to give and receive sexual pleasure. It means feeling more masculine or feminine in one another's presence.

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