The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

Transcript

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

Alicia, am I pronouncing that correctly?

Yes, ma?am.

Okay, I?m pronouncing that right. Tell me what?s going on.

Okay. My husband and I were married in 2005. We were both soldiers, and I was raped by a soldier two weeks after we were married. It was a swept-under-the-rug issue, and so it was?

Swept under the rug. You mean just tried to brush it aside, not to make it a big deal?

Well, the military swept it under the rug.

Okay.

Yeah. So nothing ever happened to the guy. My husband, of course, felt like he should have done something, but his hands were tied by the Army for his career. So since then, his love for me has decreased. Now it?s at the point that he doesn?t know how to love me or his own two-year-old daughter, and he is going into recurring depressions that are getting longer and worsening each time. This last one has lasted six months.

Okay.

He?s seeing a counselor, but that doesn?t seem to help him.

It sounds like he doesn?t know how to make sense of his own actions, like he doesn?t love himself?unless there?s something more complicated. But if I saw that someone that I love dearly had been raped, and I want justice, and I can do nothing about it?but I still face a choice. Maybe I can do something about it. Maybe I can bring justice to this man?not as a vigilante, of course, but through the legal process?and they tie my hands and won?t let me. Maybe that just becomes an issue where I don?t know who I am anymore. I don?t, because I?m the type of person that would fight for justice. I?m a soldier.

Yep, that?s exactly what it is.

Yeah. So he needs to love himself first. He needs to come to terms with how that decision was made and not hold himself accountable for not protecting you.

I don?t know. I?m asking you.

Yeah, that?s his issue. He has become very self-doubting, and he feels helpless and worthless as a husband.

Okay.

And it?s transferred over into his soldier life as well.

Tell me about that.

Well, right now he?s not actually doing his normal MOS. He?s been thrown into something that he doesn?t know very well, and so he feels, basically?his words?like an idiot, and that?s how he?s being treated. He feels he?s become a lot more sensitive to how people look at him and misreads a lot of even what I?m saying anymore. He?s just only concentrating on the negative. Nothing is positive.

Okay. Does he have any other history that would explain some of this?

He said that when he was a kid, he got into a lot of fights and stuff like that, and he would lose fights and things like that. So he had dealt with a little bit of that when he was younger, but had kind of gotten past that. And this has kind of stirred up his old feelings as well.

Okay. So it dovetails with?he lost the fight. He couldn?t protect you.

Yeah.

How are you dealing with this?

Well, for me, the best way to deal with things is to write it out and to force myself to deal with issues.

Yeah.

So I realized that there?s nothing I could have done, that it wasn?t my fault. I have dealt with this to the best of my abilities, and I don?t let it?when I start thinking about negative things, I force myself to think about positive things. And that I did take a stand, and I did take it to somebody and talk to them about it. He?s the only reason I did that.

He meaning who?

My husband.

So when you say you took it to somebody, you brought the rape to somebody in the military?

Yeah.

CID?Criminal Investigations Division.

Okay.

And they did nothing. They won?t reopen it.

Well, the thing is, of course, it was a he-said, she-said situation, because I actually dropped my rape kit on the gurney and did not re-perform it. And it only went to brigade level?I mean, to battalion level. It didn?t go any higher, because they were all out of numbers, and it looked bad on their command. So they didn?t even move him. He lived right across the hall from me, and they didn?t even move him.

Okay. And it wasn?t a friendship situation at all. It was a pure rape situation, I?m assuming.

Well, he actually had started going to the gym with me and things like that. We actually were becoming friends.

Okay.

So it?s the whole?you?re supposed to be able to trust this person with your life, right?

Right.

And then they betray you like that. But the reality is soldiers are still human.

Right.

So the question is, how do you get yourself back? How do you get your husband back? And I?m assuming you still want that.

Oh yeah, I still love him very much. And I definitely have more emotion toward him than he does toward me. I want to help him come back to me because it hurts to see him go through these things and to know that he doesn?t know how to love me anymore.

So when he says he doesn?t know how to love you, what do you think goes through his mind if he were just to hug you or to kiss you or to want to make love with you?

He himself has even said he can?t even remember the last time we actually made love. When he kisses me and when he hugs me and things like that, there?s really no emotion behind it anymore.

Okay. So it?s sounding like he?s repressing his emotions. Because if you repress a negative one, the way emotional repression works is people will say to themselves?

Hey, I?ve got to interrupt this because we?ve got to pay some bills. Thirty seconds, that?s it. A very quick ad, and then I?ll be back.

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Okay. So it?s sounding like he?s repressing his emotions, because if you repress a negative one, the way emotional repression works is people will say to themselves, ?That is so much trauma.?

Oh, I hear you. Is that a daughter or a son?

That?s my daughter.

That?s your daughter. Oh, I want her to have her mommy and daddy happy and romantically engaged eventually. When you tell your subconscious?nobody thinks of it as telling their subconscious?but when you tell yourself, ?That pain I felt is so bad. My wife got raped right after we were married. Here I am a soldier, and I can?t protect her. How can I love me anymore? I don?t feel worthy of her anymore. I don?t value myself anymore. I feel helpless. I feel worthless. I feel like that little kid in a fight who could never get anywhere, who was losing. And I don?t want to feel anymore. I don?t want to feel that pain anymore. So I?m just not going there anymore. I don?t want to feel it.?

When you lop off all the painful feelings, it also lops off all of the joy?the joy of your daughter, the joy of yourself, your view.

So I would highly, highly, highly recommend getting cognitive therapy?that?s C-O-G-N-I-T-I-V-E therapy. There?s a book, Mind Over Mood, that you can get at my website, DrKenner.com?D-R-K-E-N-N-E-R.com. And he also needs to recapture the pronoun ?I.? He needs to value himself. He needs to be able to put it in context.

I worked with vets, and some of them had killed children in Vietnam to protect their own lives because the kids were strapped with bombs running after them. So they couldn?t connect with their families at all. I did a lot of family therapy, and what was fascinating was when they felt close enough, comfortable enough reopening up the injury and going back into the scene, they could see that they weren?t the killer of the child?that the person who strapped the bomb on the child was the killer. And it made all the difference in the world because they evaluated themselves differently.

So if your husband can see that, given the situation, his hands were tied, he couldn?t do anything?and that the best thing he can do is rebuild a relationship with you?that?s where his strength comes in. You can reframe it that way, and that may help.

So I want to thank you so much for your service and for your call, and I wish you the best.

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

?You ain?t going to school, are you, Annie??

?When I grow up.?

?You ain?t either, Annie. You?re going to stay here and take care of me.?

?I?m going to school when I grow up.?

?You said we?d be together forever and ever and ever.?

?I?m going to school when I grow up. Now leave me be.?

And how many of us can fight for our values that strongly? That?s from The Miracle Worker. That?s Annie Sullivan fighting for her values. She won?t give up her future. She won?t, even if somebody says, ?But I need you. But I want you. But you promised me you would be here and you wouldn?t move on in your own life.?

If nobody phrases it that way??You should do it for me??no. She wants to go to school. She wants to grow her mind. She wants to enjoy her life, her life her way, without stepping on other people?s feet and without letting herself be chained to someone else.

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 Drs. Kenner and Locke:

Understanding another person is not always easy. You come to understand your partner in layers. You see the obvious aspects first and gradually come to understand the deeper layers. This takes mental work. For example, you notice that your partner gets upset when you?re away on business, but you might not discover until much later that this is tied to fears of abandonment stemming from a traumatic childhood or a former cheating spouse. Your partner might not even be aware of such a fear if not much time has been spent introspecting. If you keep listening, observing, and talking, you will gradually come to know your partner more intimately, and assuming no surprising negatives are uncovered, you will feel much closer as a result.

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