The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

The Selfish Path to Romance. Download Chapter One for free at DrKenner.com and Amazon.com.

Dear Dr. Kenner, I don't know what to do to win my husband back. He says, I'm the problem. Eight years ago, my husband and I were dating, and we got into a fight, which resulted in his leaving me at a music fest, and I did something really stupid. I cheated on him with Mac, an old friend of mine and an enemy of his. Last July, I finally admitted to cheating. My husband, Joe, contacted Mac after I told him. Mac denied it, which made my husband furious. He thinks Mac and I still have feelings for each other, but I haven't seen or talked to this guy since that night. Now, Joe wants me to contact this guy and tell him that he doesn’t mean anything to me and that having sex with him meant nothing to me. It didn’t, so I say, "Okay, you can give him a call and tell him that," even have your husband on the other end of the line.

But let's continue. He wants me, this is the husband now, he wants me to contact this guy’s wife, his parents, his sister, and his extended family and tell them that Mac and I slept together and that Mac’s denial is a lie. Joe says that he doesn’t want Mac’s family to be mad at him for accusing him of cheating. Now, why in the world is he worried about what Mac’s family, his enemy’s family, thinks about him or doesn’t think about him? I’m wondering if your husband, Joe, is using this as sweet revenge against a foe, against Mac, some justification. He had a one-night stand, but he was looking to get back at his friend Mac for a long-standing rivalry and hatred. I would say, don’t let him use your incident as a nuclear weapon against Mac.

So third, this continues, my husband insists that I loved the guy, that I lied for Mac, but I really lied because I didn’t want to believe that I was that terrible, that I could do what I did at all. I believe that. I believe that people will say, "I didn’t lie because I wanted to spare your feelings," but instead, they lie because they don’t want to recognize a bad choice that they themselves made. They don’t want to look in a psychological mirror for themselves. I believe you here. She continues, "My husband says he doesn’t need to attend counseling, only I do. How do I make our marriage better? I’ve already told my dad and mom and my best friend that I had this one-night stand. My husband, Joe, thinks everyone should know so that they understand his anger towards me. My husband lives it daily. He even tells me he doesn’t think we will be together in the next couple of years. I don’t want to lose him. He’s the father of our kids, and we had a good, not a perfect relationship, but a good relationship with each other. We truly loved each other. I miss that. How can I show him that I love him and that I am so sorry, that when I cry, it is because I am sorry, that when I say I am sorry, I mean it, that he is the man I dream about, crave, and who my heart yearns for?" Thank you for your time, Shauna.

Shauna, I think you need to get angry with him. I think you need to take pride in the character you have built since those years, since that one-night affair. I think you need to take pride in the fact that you told him. I think you need to take appropriate means to build amends with him, but you’ve already done that. I don’t think the fact that he’s blowing it all out of proportion, and the fact that it was his enemy, not a friend, is his issue. He needs to deal with that, and the fact that he’s escalated it to the point that he is, and he’s making a mountain out of a molehill, is not fully your problem. I mean, I think you do need to give him evidence that you’re not still in love with Mac. There are no love letters, you know, no big stash of love letters that he found a year's worth, or no phone bills that he’s paying for there. No absences, he probably will ask himself, "Have I missed anything else?" This is just the tip of the iceberg, and that’s a legitimate question from his perspective, but you need to be able to say, "Listen, enough is enough. I’ve told you about this. I don’t have any connection with him. It’s over. I’m not going to apologize ad nauseam for this. You know, it’s not like I’ve been sleeping with him for the past eight years, and we were not even married. We were dating. It was eight years ago. We had a fight. You contributed to this, not the fact that I slept with him, but the fact that I was angry with you. You left me at a music festival. So take ownership in your role in our problems." This may be the tip of the iceberg. Maybe your husband has had an affair, or maybe he’s hiding some disgruntled feelings about your relationship that have not yet come out. And I highly recommend therapy for yourself. If he’s not willing to go for it, refuse to see the world through his eyes. You make appropriate amends. Give him proof as much as possible that you don’t love this guy. I think you’ve done that. If he refuses to hear that, what can you do? You do not need to go through, it sounds like he wants you to if you were in the pilgrim days, he wants you to sit in the stockades publicly, out in public. You don’t need to do that. You don’t need to announce it to the world as if you’re some heinous person.

So what I recommend is speaking with him, seeing if he’ll go to therapy to rebuild the trust. You know why? Right now he’s throwing away the marriage, not you. So you want to go to therapy and see if he can come back to his senses and deal with the issues that are long-standing with his friend because you definitely hit a nerve with him.

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

Do you know what an obsession is?

Oh, sure, it’s like when a guy looks up girls' dresses.

Well, yeah, that’s one kind of obsession. But an obsession means that you get so wrapped up in one thing that you forget all the other important things in your life. Has that happened to you? You get so wrapped up in one thing, it may not even be an important thing in your life, but maybe you're dusting too much around the house, or your wife is so busy with the kids that she has zero time for your romantic life or for you. Or you’re so wrapped up with work that, whether you're male or female, you just don’t have time for your kids. Haha, you don’t have time for them. Well, obviously, the key is sitting down, writing down your priorities, what’s most important in your life. What would you like to look back on 60 years from now and say, "You know, I’m glad I made those decisions when I was younger. Things were out of whack. They were out of sync, but I’m glad I reprioritized and spent more time doing what’s most important to me," because that’s what counts in the long run: the things that are most important to you, assuming that they're rational, of course.

And here’s a little more from Dr. Kenner. Have you ever wondered what it was like to be a cop and to have someone point a gun at you? This is from a book, The Truth About Self-Protection by Massad Ayub. He said, "Whenever the subject of crime comes up among civilians at a gathering, I always hear stories of how responding police officers were cold and unfailing towards the victims." He said, "I used to take those stories seriously. Then I became a police officer. I was 23 years old with a college degree, one of what used to be called the new breed, really? Who really bought into the ideas that the Boys Town line goes, ‘There’s no such thing as a bad boy.’ In police work, I got a very quick education on the street. I think the turning point came the night an armed robbery suspect vehemently told me, as he was being led away, 'Pig, I would have blown your head off if I could have grabbed my gun the second you stepped out of that police car.' It was the first time in my life a human being ever told me that he wanted to kill me, and he meant it, and he would have, if he could have. And to my great horror, I heard myself answer, 'I know. That’s why I got out of that police car with this shotgun pointed at you.' I no longer believe that there is no such thing as a bad boy. I changed my mind after I met, interacted with, and interviewed human beings who were evil. There’s no other word for it, evil." That’s an important lesson from a police officer, Massad Ayub, actually, he's a trainer. He’s one of the top police officers in the country.

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 psychologists Dr. Kenner and Locke. There are books that offer particulars about dating online. However, don’t be deluded into thinking that you can really know someone just from communicating through a website or email. You cannot get a complete, accurate impression of someone unless you see them face to face over a long period of time. The person you meet online may turn out to be very different from the person you meet in the flesh. There are safe ways to meet potential partners in person so that your privacy and safety are protected. Meet in a public location, carry a cell phone, don’t give any personal information, such as your address, and let friends or family know where you plan to go. If you find yourself trusting the person on this first encounter, you can set up future meetings and gradually give out more personal information.

You can download Chapter One for free at DrKenner.com, and you can buy the book at Amazon.com.