The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

(this is raw unedited text transcribed directly from the audio)

Dr. Kenner:      Here’s a question I received from Jason. See what you think. I would actually like to have his wife’s problem. “My wife and I have been married for 19 years with four great kids.” See, you get the picture – it’s a long-term marriage, they have four kids, it’s an established marriage. Jason continues, “Seven years ago, we went through a difficult time. A short two-month separation. Admittedly, our relationship has never fully recovered.” Okay, there are big question marks there – why? He says, “For many years, I’ve been awoken in the night by my wife having some type of sexual experience in her sleep. I’ve tried to discuss this with her, but she is in total denial. If I wake her up, it simply leads to an argument. I generally go to another room to sleep.” My guess is you don’t get much sleep, Jason. “Is this a sign of an affair? Should I accept this as normal behavior? Should I try to prove to her what she’s doing?” Video it? “I’m concerned that the wounds are still so deep that I’ve been replaced.”

What do you do about this? Well, you’ve got a few questions here. Have you been replaced? That is the most important one. If you have been replaced, you know, people can be in a very long-term marriage and not have a marriage, an emotional connection. So they can be married for 50 years. They can go out and invite all their family and friends to celebrate their 50^th anniversary, but they know they don’t care for each other. There’s a coldness. There’s an emotional distance. They may fake it in front of other people. That's not romance. That’s faked romance, if you want. But what we value in romance is that squeezing of the hands, the sparkle in the eye with one another, maybe the husband brushing the hair off the wife’s face gently and caressing her, the wife just giving him a nice hug. We love that emotional intimacy. Being able to feel vulnerable with one another, where we don’t feel like someone is going to turn on you.

So what can a long-term almost 20-year-marriage with four kids, what can cause wounds in that? When you feel like things have gone off track and you don’t know where, what, why or how. You don’t communicate. The communication has broken down. So not only have you lost that emotional connection, but you don’t have a method to fix it. You can’t communicate. So what do you do? You start imagining, “Did my wife have an affair? She’s having sex in her dreams and I can hear her groaning and moaning and enjoying it.” That’s the part I wish I would have! I don’t like having the dreams where I know I’m having a test and I don’t know what room it’s in and I’m not prepared. I went to school for so many years that I still have those reoccurring dreams. I’d much rather have orgasms in my sleep. But anyway! Apart from that, is that a sign of an affair, that she’s had an affair?

My guess is, you have a lot more evidence than just that one piece that she is emotionally disconnected. Whether or not there was an affair in that two-month separation – granted, it’s a separation, so you’re both free, if you agree, to date other people. There may have been something there. The question is, can you open up the communication with her? Can you go to counseling together? Can you read a book? One book I’ve recommended is Difficult Conversations. Can you read a book that would help you learn how to connect again? If she has had an affair, do some thinking in advance before you find out. Would you be willing to try to mend the relationship? Let’s say during that two-month period, or someplace in the marriage, she had an overnight affair or a longer-term affair. Sometimes the integrity of the relationship is absolutely shattered. Most people implode when they discover an affair. It’s like, “How could you do this to me? I thought you were the person that was closest to me. I thought you were supposed to be my best friend and to be betrayed by my best friend hurts so deeply.” But, how do you manage an affair? And, there is a book, Getting Past the Affair, another book After the Affair, that tells you how to manage the initial blow of finding out an affair, how to communicate with one another in ways that don’t exacerbate things, especially if you have four kids. How to deal with it so you don’t mess up their lives, maybe for life? How do you set boundaries? How do you learn more about yourself and develop an even richer relationship? And build confidence in yourself.

If it’s a sexual problem, you might want to read The Great Sex Secret and learn more about women so maybe you can rebuild a sexual connection with her. I don’t know if it’s an affair or not. I think you guys need to communicate. It also could have been that she had a history of some sexual experiences in the past that are coming through in dreams.

I am Dr. Ellen Kenner and my show is The Rational Basis of Happiness. And of course that means what? The rational basis of happiness means that when you learn to use your mind well, to understand your emotions, not to be at the mercy of them, not to be kicked and thrown about by your anger, your depression, your guilt, your anxiety, but to figure out what those negative emotions mean, whether they’re reality-based, and how to go after your dreams, goals, reasonably, with a nice action plan so that you can achieve your happiness. Your happiness in several areas, in romance maybe, in a job, a career or maybe even finding a job, with your kids, better relationships with your kids or maybe with your in-laws or family members, with maybe having a hobby life. Maybe you’re someone who says, “I’m bored with what I do. I’ve been playing tennis my whole life and I’m bored with it. I want to try something new, but I don’t know what.” You don’t want to leave it as an “I don’t know what.” You want to be able to say, “What would I enjoy?” And perk up your life a bit. Think about how to perk up your life, even if you’re going through down times. It’s even more important to have that life preserver of the important things in your life.