The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

The Selfish Path to Romance

Download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com and Amazon.com.

Here is a woman who calls in who is having problems with both her… she's got one daughter, she's got two stepchildren, and the husband is favoring—guess who?—the stepchildren. And this, if I had to title this one, is: life is a guilt trap.

Caller: "How do I deal with my husband's teenage daughters—children from a previous marriage—who use guilt to take advantage of my husband and try to get him back with their mother? They try to cause friction between us. He feels guilt in getting on to them. This weekend, we will have them once again, where our daughter… her clothes come from resale shops and yard sales. We’re getting ready to take them on yet another shopping spree, where they'll be getting $30 pair of jeans, $60 shoes, and so on, which my husband has no problem with because he feels it’s justified since he lives under the same roof with our daughter and our family and not with them. Yet, our family struggles to get by, and these girls gloat as they get their materialistic ways and cause fights between me and my husband when I see our daughter being deprived and barely getting by while we splurge on these teenagers."

Dr. Kenner: Okay, so you can hear the unfairness going on. The theme for the husband would be, "Oh boy. Life is just a guilt trap because I feel so badly for my two teenage daughters because I divorced their mother. I just feel like I have to take any money that would be spent on me or my current family and pay them off—pay ransom money." So, he's always paying his teenage daughters, and that makes him feel good because, at least, he thinks he’s doing something to make up for the damage he feels he caused. His way of paying them back is through $30 jeans, $60 shoes, or whatever they’re buying, and his wife just has to deal with it.

But then he looks at his wife, feels guilty, because she and their child are buying clothes at resale shops. They can't go out to eat; they can't do much because their scope of living is limited by siphoning off money to his ex’s kids. The teenage daughters are there on weekends, but he's treating them like he has to buy their love.

From the kids' point of view… let’s take the teenage kids’ point of view. Are they playing "Parent Trap"—the movie "Parent Trap" with Hayley Mills from long ago—where the goal is to get the parents back together? Is it their goal to cause friction with the new wife and reunite Mommy and Daddy? You can’t let that happen if you truly, truly want your own long-term happiness. Now, I’m talking to the husband here, not to the woman who called. If you want long-term happiness, then you need to focus on what is fair all around, and you need clarity. It is not fair for your teenagers to tear you apart by using the method of buying them extra goods, trying to pay them off. Kids see through that.

I've had many kids tell me, "You know, my dad buys me a lot of things. He tries to pay me off, and I let him. Why not take the stuff if it’s free? But I'm angry with him anyway because he divorced Mom. So, let him pay ransom." They don’t say "ransom," but you know. As the parent, you need to set limits and say, "Listen, I love you dearly, but things are going to be different. They’re going to be fair. I know you're upset that Mommy and I divorced, and I don't know how to help you with that. If you want me to go to counseling with you, we can talk about it." Notice, you’ll use words. You’ll listen to them, listen to the pain they've gone through, which is one way of gaining forgiveness and repairing any damage you actually inflicted on them.

Throwing money at them isn’t going to help. So, you can talk with them and say, "Listen, this is the budget I'll give both of you for the year." My dad put me on a budget, and it was great. "You can buy whatever you want with that, but I’m not going to be an open wallet. I just won’t play that." You don't say, "Don’t play that game," but say, "I think this is damaging our relationship." That will mend things on the home front, too, with your child at home—assuming it’s your daughter. You could go out and buy her something nice, maybe for her birthday or for Christmas—not as a rule, but also let her take pride in becoming a good shopper.

We had plenty of money. I could have bought my daughter $60 jeans if I wanted to, but my daughter shops in resale shops, at TJ Maxx, and wonderful stores where you get bargains because you get value for your money. So, you can be fair there, too. Now, I’ll speak to you, the wife who called. Speak with your husband—don’t yell at him, don’t berate him. Speak from the heart. Just say, "This is how I'm feeling. This is how our daughter is feeling. Let’s sit down and come up with better solutions."

If you use good communication skills, what's called "I language" (you can go to books on my website, DrKenner.com, to see how that works), rather than "finger-pointing language"—"You're always doing for them, you're never doing for our daughter"—that ruptures a relationship. If you learn "I language," saying, "I am feeling so frustrated, it’s not fair. Let’s come up with a new solution," you keep it solution-focused. You’re much more likely to have success, and it earns you peace of mind, too, because you don’t want to go through life carrying the heavy weight of guilt on your shoulders as the dad or the mom. You don’t want to feel that chronic bitterness and resentment. Boy, I hate to ask what your sex life is like if this has been going on for a while and maybe the stepchildren have been successful in ripping the relationship apart. Don’t let that happen. Save some of that money and take a mini vacation for you, even if it’s an inexpensive day trip for you and your husband.

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

"It’s all right, it'll be okay."

"No, it won’t."

"Sure it will. You’ll see."

"No, I promised him I’d never let anything happen to him."

"That’s a funny thing to promise. Well, you can’t never let anything happen to him, then nothing would ever happen to him. Not much fun for little Harpo."

Okay, that's Ellen DeGeneres in Finding Nemo. The whole point there is, as parents, we don’t want anything bad to happen to our kids. I mean, my son skis, and I take a deep breath before he goes skiing. I don’t want to hear about it. I hear he does something called 360s and takes air, and my uncle says he’s a very good skier. My uncle has been skiing a lifetime, in the Alps and more, and he said, "I’d never do the things your son does." So, I don’t want to know. But you know what? My son loves his life because what he brings to skiing, he brings to other areas of his life, and I have to let things possibly happen to him. I have to let go as a parent. Things can happen, but if I try to be overprotective and suffocate him—keep him home, not let him go skiing or on long car rides because he could get in an accident, not let him make his own decisions—then something did happen to him. I killed his spirit, and I don’t want to do that ever.

So, think about your own relationship with your parents. Can you think of times when they suffocated you and didn’t let things happen? If they had let things happen, you might have been way ahead. Maybe they didn’t let you go to college because they didn’t want you to fail. They didn’t let you try out for the team because you might fail. You never want to let anybody do that to you, and if you’re doing it to your kids, lighten up. You’ll like yourself much better, they’ll like you much better, and you’ll have much better long-term relationships with them.

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Excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance by Drs. Kenner and Locke:

A successful romantic relationship requires a warm, loving atmosphere. Anger is a big romance destroyer. You cannot simultaneously be warm and angry toward a person. Occasional anger is not uncommon, but it cannot be the prevailing mood of a happy relationship. Anger comes in many forms—belittlement, sarcasm, insults, criticism. One of the most common forms is resentment for real or imagined slights or injustices. Partners who hold grudges for days, weeks, months, or even years without expressing them keep their loved ones in a state of bewilderment. Eventually, the victim of anger withdraws emotionally from the relationship, which leads to more resentment and a downward love trajectory.

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