The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

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

Here is a question that I received about evasion. We all like it when we're talking to someone and they focus on what we're saying, and we don’t like it when they push our thoughts out—when they go, “Nah, nah, nah, nah, I don’t want to hear you.” Well, many times we evade within our own mind. It’s not with someone else. So here’s a question about pushing important information out of your mind. It’s the refusal to face important facts, relevant facts in your life.

This is from Seri: “Hello, Dr. Kenner, I am ignorant about the word evasion. I don’t know if it’s healthy to evade or not. Take the example—” She's just, Sarah is going to give us two examples. This is what she thinks is an evasion. See what you think.

Take the example of a woman: her husband died, and a few days after he dies, she’s watching a comedy show, and in that moment, she stops crying and she’s laughing as if nothing had been wrong, as if her husband had not just died. Those emotions of grief have disappeared. Now I want to just stop on that example, Seri, because when you go through the grief process, it doesn’t mean that you are grieving 24/7, and people grieve very differently. If somebody has been ill for a very long time and they die, many times people aren’t that sad. They’ve gone through what’s called anticipatory grief. When the person, let’s say, gets cancer, and for the last five years they’ve been dying, the whole family has seen them decline. They’ve already cried; they’ve already mentally adjusted to the fact—the reality—that the person will soon die. And so, when the person actually dies, sometimes it’s sad, but it’s not that intense sadness of someone dying suddenly and unexpectedly. Say, if they go from healthy to, you know, being in a car accident, and they die. So sometimes people are relieved, but if she was very sad—let’s take the case of this woman—she is very sad. Her husband died, and then she watches the comedy. It is perfectly proper to take psychological breaks from grieving.

[Ad interruption] 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 Ellen will be back.

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.

[End of ad] It is perfectly proper to take psychological breaks from grieving. Grief work is called work because you do need to process the loss. What did that person mean to you? What did her husband mean to her? She won’t be with him anymore. Were there unresolved issues with him? She needs to do all of that hard thinking to get some mental closure for herself. So, given that, it’s perfectly fine to watch a comedy movie, and then she may be sad again. So, that is not evasion.

Now, here is your second example. Again, this is a question on evasion. What is evasion? Let me first give you a definition. Then I'll jump into the second example, which is a great example of evasion. This is a quote from my favorite book, Atlas Shrugged, and that was written by Ayn Rand, and she talks about evasion. Evasion is, quote, “the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one’s consciousness, the refusal to think; not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know.” Unquote.

So here is the example: take the example of a person who has to pay bills, which he knows are pressing, and he just turns on the TV to watch a tennis match. He doesn’t want to have to think about paying the bills. So, is that healthy? The answer is absolutely not. If it’s urgent that he needs to pay the bills, they need to get in the mail by five o’clock tonight. The tennis match is on now, and he has a choice. He can either watch the tennis match or tape it for later and pay the bills now. He needs to pay the bills now. The more he is focused, the better.

It is very important for you to know what evasion is, because if you’re putting stuff out of your mind that you know is important and just acting short-range, like, “I want to watch the tennis match, so I’ll watch it,” that’s not good. Or, “I want to have an affair. Who cares what my husband or wife thinks? Or who cares what the effect is on the kids? I don’t want to think about it. I just want to sleep with this man right now, with this gal right now.” That is evasion. You don’t want to push those thoughts out of awareness. You want to tend to them, because otherwise, that affair that you have—even though it might give you pleasure short-range—will turn around and bite you. Reality—you can’t win; you can’t run from reality. Evasion is putting important facts of reality out of awareness, and they will always come back to haunt you or bite you.

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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:

Here are more aspects of a romantic partner you’ll want to find out about. What does your romantic partner’s job or career mean to him or her personally? In what ways is it important? Knowing why a job or career is important is valuable to both of you, ensuring visibility. How does your partner view family and specific family members? How important is the extended family? What is your loved one’s self-concept? How does your partner see himself or herself? Does this contradict how you see your partner? If so, this could be a source of conflict. How much private time does your partner need? And when you…

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