The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

Transcript

The Selfish Path to Romance. Download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com. This is from Joe.

Dear Dr. Kenner, I am a 30-year-old gay man. I have been in a relationship with a man for four months, and now we have broken up, and I cannot get him out of my mind. I found him to be a mix of very attractive traits. He was delicate and tender, an entrepreneur with adopted children, and very unattractive traits. He had a cold and aloof side of him, and he held irrational ideas. We broke up because I lost my temper often regarding his irrational ideas.

It?s been over a year now since we broke up. Yet I can?t forget his good qualities. I regret my own angry tirades. I have a lingering desire for him that causes me nothing but pain and heartache. In past relationships, I know I have scared my partners by my anger, and it really has done nothing but reinforce the notion that I am unfit for romance.

There?s more. I find it hard to connect to people. Growing up I was physically and sexually abused. It took its toll. I didn?t respect people or myself for a very long time. As a child, I was forced to lie at the penalty of beatings. I was asked to lie about my own feelings. In one really horrific event, I was being beaten by my mother until I proclaimed that I was happy and I put a smile on my face. I was five years old. I was hurting physically and emotionally. I was conflicted, and I was being told to lie and say that I was happy and to smile through the tears. I remember screaming so much that I lost my voice. I grew up feeling like an alien in a hostile world.

Given that background, what do I do? I feel so mixed. I deeply respect and admire many aspects of this man. Other aspects make me sick to my stomach. How can I work through this often debilitating longing for a man I no longer want to desire and I sometimes hate. Thank you in advance for your advice, Joe.

Joe, I think that you?re on the right track. You?re being honest about what?s gone on in your past. You can openly face it. You can openly tear open that wound of what your mother did to you, and I know you had more abuse. Your email was longer, and you can take a look at that and just have empathy for the child that didn?t get that love that you wanted and deserved from a mother and longed for some connections to human beings that were decent.

And then you?re hopeful. You?re hopeful, you?re able to somehow still keep that hope alive and not go into a cave, but still long for romantic relationships. And you find partners. You?re gay, so you find partners, and you admire many aspects of them. But then, like with the current relationship, when you find something that doesn?t meet your expectation or really doesn?t work, it?s almost like it confirms your childhood view that people will let you down, that they?re not to be trusted, or that they can?t be reached, or that they?re irrational, and it triggers the scream, that five-year-old scream. It triggers your anger, because that was your coping strategy as a child, and then that, in turn, makes you feel irrational, because your method of trying to reach out to them is the scream, which we understand came from abuse, but it doesn?t help you. And it?s not easy to turn that around.

How do you turn that around? I know even small habits. I used to pick my nails, and man, that took me over a decade to break that habit. Well, with the right therapy, you can turn around core premises, your views of other people that are damaging you, your coping strategies of being angry rather than a different coping strategy.

With this particular man, it sounds like you need to recognize that he?s a mix, that there were aspects that could have been relationship breakers. You didn?t match on your philosophical outlook on life. I know you said that in your longer email, and that can be a relationship breaker, even though you love many aspects of him.

But more profoundly, most of us hurt most when we feel like our own identity is shaken, when we feel like we?ve acted against our own best interests. So what I recommend is going to my website, DrKenner.com, getting the book Mind Over Mood, and also going to AcademyofCT.org, Academy of Cognitive Therapy.org, and getting a therapist in your neck of the woods.

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

Here is an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance by Dr. Ellen Kenner.

Here is an example of two people with a conflicting sense of life discovering each other. Alyssa met Daniel on a blind date. He was financially well off, but he wore an old T-shirt and his hair was dirty and unkempt. Alyssa asked him what he did for a living, and he replied, ?Computers and stuff.? She asked him why he liked his work. He didn?t know, except that it was fun sometimes. She asked him what he wanted in life. He had no long-range goals. She asked him what books he liked. He didn?t read books. He watched TV and played video games.

Instead of looking at her, he looked at the ceiling or at other people in the restaurant. Alyssa was an attractive, successful, and ambitious lawyer who loved reading and developing her mind. She couldn?t stand Daniel and felt totally invisible to him. Being with Daniel, she felt as though he was from an alien universe. His sense of life was opposite to hers.

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