The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

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

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. And so, does looking at someone's body or looking up girls’ dresses mean you have an obsession?

Well, last week, I was waiting at the Stamford, Connecticut train station, and I had been listening to a book on tape, but I sat back for a little bit and just started to watch people. And it's fun to do people-watching. At times, you see the mom with the little kids or daddies with the little kids. Or you'd see the businesswomen with their briefcases and their very tailored outfits. Or sometimes you'd see these very sexy young women coming in with low-riding dungarees. And you wonder how they keep them on, and they've got these perilously pointed high-heel shoes. And you say, "Oh, but look at that other woman; she's got these comfy sneakers on, and I'll bet she's a lot more comfortable, but she doesn't look as sexy."

Well, as I was watching them, two young men dressed up in a clean hip-hop style sat down in the empty seats next to me, and they had magazines. They looked like they had just bought the magazines from the newsstand. And then I'm listening, and they're going, "Wow, look at her body. She's hot. Man, is she built! Boy, would I like to..." And I look over, and they each have magazines filled with pages of these petite, sexy models in swimsuits or less, not quite swimsuits. And this goes on for about five minutes.

And I tell you, they were very entertaining, partly because they were totally unashamed. They weren't looking at me; they weren't looking at us, at doing this as if it was something dirty. They were sincere, and they were looking at it as if they were two guys looking at a catalog, saying, "Hey, look at this subwoofer. Don't boy, I would love this," or, "This amp is really cool, man, I have got to have this." They were doing the same with gorgeous models.

So now, for a minute, let's switch. Imagine that it's not these two young men, but you sit down and two young women, or not, two young women. Let's picture two 50-year-old women opening up their magazines, and they're looking at hot men, maybe their own age too. When it was time for me to leave, you know, you never picture women doing this, but when it was time for me to leave, I wanted to look up at these men and say, "You know, you have very good taste in women." But instead, I just left quietly.

So, would you say that these men are oversexed, or they're just not ashamed of their sexual attraction to women?

Hey, I have 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.

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.

Would you say that these men are oversexed, or they're just not ashamed of their sexual attraction to women? If they were in a museum saying the same things to a tastefully done nude statue, we wouldn't call it shocking behavior. But many of us do get uncomfortable when we see glossy photos of sexy women who deliberately look seductive or pretty. We don't feel the same when we're in a museum. It's somehow okay when you're in a museum looking at a nude model or a masterful painting of a nude; we don't feel that same emotion. So, would you say that these guys are oversexed?

Let's take a closer look at that word "oversexed." Who comes to your mind in your life? What would it mean to be oversexed? How do you imagine that an oversexed guy would behave? Well, one listener, Max, labeled himself as over, oversexed. His girlfriend is very upset with him. She can't figure out why she's not enough because Max has to look at pictures of sexy women, sexy women in magazines or in movies, but he has to look at them, and he wants to know how he can stop doing that. He wonders if it's outside his control, maybe it's some obsessive behavior.

And now, let's turn to Max's happiness. Because Max is having girlfriend problems. He's wondering if he's oversexed because he's looking at pornography a lot, and his girlfriend doesn't like it. From the way he wrote the letter, I polished it a little in terms of the language; you know, he said, "I'm a..." He's looking at "porns." I said, "pornography." It sounds like he's relatively young, so I'm going to assume, Max, that you are either a young adult, maybe between 15 and 25, someplace in that range. And you're wondering, how do you get thoughts of wanting to see other girls naked out of your mind? How do you get that out of your mind?

Well, partly, I think a lot of women need to have thoughts of real sexy moments. I think men are trained to think sexually. It's permitted for them to do it, and women are trained to think about knitting and other things, but sex is not high up there on the agenda. So then, when they get into a marriage, a real healthy marriage with a partner, there's a problem. Men have had a lot of rehearsal and a lot of liberty experimenting and thinking sexy thoughts and thinking about erotic fantasies. And women typically—I'm not saying across the board, because the situation can obviously be reversed—but typically, women have not had that type of history, so it takes them longer to fantasize. They feel embarrassed and ashamed and mixed, or they just don't—they haven't built a habit of having a nice, clean sexual line so that they can have nice intimacy with a partner.

So I think that's a problem now, given that, am I for pornography, what's typically called pornography, and using it the way you're doing, using it the way you're doing? No, I would hate to be your girlfriend, Max, because I would feel that I'm not enough. He's always looking at other pictures; I can't satisfy him. He'd rather be—he gets more turned on by other people, by strangers, by people he doesn't even know, in a video or between the pages of Playboy or something maybe even more explicit, than by me. Are my breasts not big enough? Am I not good enough? Is this something that's lacking?

I would lack—here are the key words—the emotional intimacy with you, Max. If I were your girlfriend, it's a skill to know how to develop emotional intimacy, meaning to help your partner feel valued, feel cared for, feel like she's the most important person in your life, and you're the most important person in her life and in your sexual life. This is true too.

So if you are always turning to the magazines or to the internet or to videos—porn videos—then you're basically sending her a message that she doesn't really matter that much, and especially in this very weird area of sex, love. Now, it's true that people develop their preferred styles of sexuality, and if you're trying to change yours and learn what an intimate relationship is like, then you want to move away from the porn. You say you can't stop thinking about it. Well, what if you replace the thoughts with thoughts about your girlfriend? And it doesn't have to be sexy. It can be just cuddly thoughts or cherishing what you love in her, training your mind to identify what you love in her.

If you don't love her, then you don't belong being with her. If you're not a lovable person, then she deserves better than you; let her move on. So it's either-or. You cannot have your girlfriend in the type of sexual life that you're currently leading, which I know you know there's a problem with. Porn also has the issue that you'll see people doing things that your partner may never want to even try. Maybe it's a threesome, you know, gang rape, or who knows. And it can be a real turn-on for you. You know, repulsive as it is, it can be a turn-on for you, and you may desire that to happen in real life, or vanilla sex may no longer feel fun when you're just having regular sex with your partner.

So that, if that's a side issue with the internet, but a very important one, so I would say that if you value your girlfriend, and if you—or if you—value having a romantic life in the future with this woman or someone else, it is important to train your mind to learn how to develop an intimate relationship together. Now, can you fantasize together, or do you have to look in each other's eyes and say, "I really like your eyes. I really like your mind," all the time? You can have wonderful fantasies together. You can even get sexy magazines and look at them, provided that they're not crossing a line. But you can have fantasies with one another that are wonderful. You would never act on them in real life, and I wouldn't use people in those fantasies that you know, because it becomes very awkward.

But having a rich fantasy life with one another, coming back with stories—well, guess what I imagined today?