The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

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

I'm not mad at you.
I'm mad at me.
I've just been so lonely over the last year. I'm raising a child alone. I'm scared. I always thought of myself as a strong and independent person. But the truth is, I'm afraid.

When I think about when I was first having children, I can remember that my husband used to try to pull me away from the baby. And I would sit there—it was our daughter at the time—he would try to pull me away, and I would say, "You're crazy. I need to stay home." And I am so glad, looking back on that experience, that we took vacations with one another.

How do you stay connected to your spouse throughout your marital relationship? With me today to discuss this is Dr. Barry McCarthy. He's a professor of psychology at American University and a certified marital and sex therapist. He's presented many workshops nationally and internationally, and he also has co-authored eight books with his wife Emily, including Rekindling Desire.

What a pleasure to have you on the show today, Dr. McCarthy.
I'm very glad to be here.

In terms of staying connected, what advice do you give people to stay connected?
Well, two pieces of advice. The first is to remember that the most important bond in your family is the husband-wife bond—that you need to nurture that and reinforce that. And in the long run, that's the best investment you make in terms of your family and your children. Having parents who are a solid marital couple is a very good thing for kids.

The second is that I tell couples to stay away from the trap of "intercourse or nothing." So many people fall into that pattern where the woman says, "If I'm not ready to have intercourse, I'm going to avoid contact with my spouse. I don't have the energy for intercourse."

What I say to people is that touching is valuable in and of itself, and we use the analogies of five gears of touching or five dimensions of touching.

What are those?
Think about it like a stick-shift car.

The first gear is the affectionate gear. What you mean by that is hands-on touching, clothes-on touching—things like holding hands, kissing, hugging.
The fifth gear is the intercourse gear.

What happens with too many people is that they either get into intercourse or nothing—or the only gears they have are affection or intercourse.

And what I try to say to them is: you want to keep contact and make it a pleasure-oriented contact.

So the second gear is the sensual gear, and it's a non-genital gear. It can be clothed or unclothed—the kind of thing where you cuddle on the couch, cuddle before you go to sleep, or when you wake in the morning. You do non-genital massage.

It's a very important gear because I think that, again, sensuality is the underpinning of sexual response.

And then the third gear is the playful gear—mixing non-genital and genital touching. It can occur clothed, semi-clothed, or nude, inside or outside the bedroom.

That's the kind of thing where people take showers or baths together, where they dance together, where they play strip poker together.

And then the fourth gear, which is actually the most controversial gear for married couples, is genital stimulation to high arousal and orgasm for one or both of you that doesn't involve intercourse.

People are used to that gear from premarital sex, but they say, "Well, now that I'm married, I'm never going to use that gear again."

And in fact, for many couples, that can be a very important gear—especially when intercourse is impossible or one person is more into wanting a sexual experience than the other.

You know, I can hear some of my clients. If they were to hear this, the women would say, "You know, you're crazy, because you're mentioning all these gears. But my husband—"

Hey, I’ve 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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Hmm, The Selfish Path to Romance—that is interesting.

"You know, you're crazy because you're mentioning all these gears, but my husband only has one gear. It's gear number five. And if I just go to brush his hair, he expects that it's going to lead to intercourse. So I can't even touch him anymore. If I were to take a bath with him, if we didn't have intercourse, there’d be hell to pay."

I think that is the kind of battle that men and women can get into. And it's a bad battle—for both the man, the woman, and the couple relationship.

When they think of themselves as intimate sexual friends, each of them has a right to make a request. Each of them has a right to say, "No, I'm not into this right now."

So what we do is we have them have a date—whether it's once a month, once every other month—that's a sensual date, or they have a date that can be a sexual date, but there's a prohibition on intercourse.

Now, how would you set up that date? Like say you were advising that to me and my husband—not that I'm looking for personal therapy here. How would you advise a couple to set up a monthly date?
Well, the way I would advise them is when they have the time and privacy and they're awake and alert and alive—and often that means when the kids are asleep or the kids are out of the house—and where they're going to have a date where they’re going to play, where they're going to use touch as a way of being connected and playful.

Okay, so it would be more in the sense of saying, "Ellen, maybe make a date with Harris." You know, plan to go—Harris is my husband, for those listening—plan to go out to a hotel room. Or what we typically do—we do do this—we’ll go to a bed and breakfast.

Periodically we just take off to some charming, relatively local place, because I don’t like to spend a lot of my hours driving. And we’ll go to a charming bed and breakfast. And it feels like we’ve been away for a month—and we’ve only been away overnight.

That’s right. I think one of the best investments that couples make with each other is—whether it’s just once a year, or it’s a week away, or it’s two weekends away—where they go away without the kids.

Rather than it being selfish, which I think is what everybody worries about, it’s again a good emotional investment for yourself. It's a good emotional investment for your marriage. But in the long run, it’s also a really good emotional investment for your children.

We are now grandparents, and one of the things that we’re really looking forward to—we’re going to go to Germany, where my son and daughter-in-law are living, and we’re going to watch their two-year-old daughter, our granddaughter, for 211 days while they take a trip.

And I think they’re looking forward to it, we’re looking forward to it, and our granddaughter’s looking forward to it.

And so everybody wins. So that’s one of the gears of connection too—that even though they’re not taking the vacation yet, they can still live it. They can fantasize about it. They can imagine it. And that forms a nice bond for them—just that anticipatory excitement.

Absolutely true—that a lot of what goes into sexual desire is positive anticipation. You’re looking forward to sharing pleasure.

Which is totally the opposite of what you were talking about—well, the person who says, "I couldn’t suggest this because we’re going to get into a fight about it."

The opposite of getting into a fight—it really is both of you anticipating.

So it's both of you being self-valuing—which I would call selfish in a very healthy sense. And it’s not a "me only" view, where the guy only gets the satisfaction—which he'll never get that way, because if the woman’s performing dutifully, it’s a false victory that he’s won.

So listen, I want to thank you so much for your advice. This is Dr. Barry McCarthy, and he’s a marital and sex therapist, and he’s written and co-authored over eight books with his wife, Emily.

And Dr. McCarthy, where could somebody get your books, and what books would you recommend?
Well, the two books that I would recommend that Emily and I have written are Rekindling Desire, which talks about how to get out of the slump of a non-sexual relationship or fighting about sexual frequency.

And the second book that we recommend is a book that is a prevention book—it’s called Getting It Right the First Time: Creating a Healthy Marriage, which talks about the first two years of marriage.

Well, that sounds wonderful. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Glad to be here.

For more Dr. Kenner podcasts, go to DrKenner.com and please listen to this 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:

Do you have a friend or relative who takes advantage of your inability to say no?

Here is what you might say after being asked to babysit for the 1,000th time:
“I need to do myself a favor—and you a favor. I need to be honest with you. I want to enjoy your darling kids as an aunt, not as a perennial sitter. I felt obligated to help you out over the years at the expense of taking care of myself. I grew to resent it, and then I felt guilty about the resentment. Now I see the error I was making. This weekend, I want some time with just Joe and our kids. My guess is you’ve felt this way in your life too.”

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