🎤 PODCAST ~ 1-Selfishness is not being a bully 2-My flip flopping boyfriend suddenly wants to
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The Selfish Path to Romance. Download Chapter 1 for free at drkenner.com. Dear Dr. Kenner, I thought I was over my ex-boyfriend John, but that's not the case. I don't understand why he left me and the way in which he did it.

He was crazy over me. Then his roommates kept bringing a girl over that was flirting with him. I asked them not to do it. Two days before our anniversary, he tells me that he doesn't like me anymore and that he can't live a lie and he's not ready for a relationship. He even tells me that I can be with whomever I want, whatever guy I want.

He ignores my phone calls. I was crushed because I did so much for him. I invested so much in this relationship. I helped him with his low self-esteem and his weight issues. Weeks later, I saw him, John, at a party given by mutual friends. And he says, I can't stop thinking of you, Marissa. I can't get you off my mind.

Two weeks later, he says, you know, I left you because I didn't like you. This is online. A month later, he called me to tell me that he now works near me as if he's reaching out to me. What's with this guy?

Marissa, it is exquisitely painful to have someone whom you trust, whom you love, whom you've chosen as a potential partner or long-term partner suddenly up and leave.

and you don't have any reason why now i'm assuming that's the case i'm assuming that you guys weren't fighting every day or you don't have alcohol problems i'm assuming that you were just sideswiped you were hit out of the blue with a guy you know you think you think he loves you you think you love him you're ready to celebrate an anniversary you're not married i know that you're dating this was a longer email so there was more detail in it i needed to cut it cut it back a bit um

And suddenly he just up and leaves you. So how do you mentally manage that type of a situation? How do you internally manage what's going on within you? You have a three-letter word that's screaming at you. Hey, I got to interrupt this because we've got to pay some bills. 30 seconds. That's it. A very quick ad and then Alan will be back.

Many romantic partners have complaints like, I live in the shadow of my husband's life, or I feel invisible to my girlfriend. These are common complaints, but you never want to betray yourself in a romantic partnership. When both partners value themselves and are lovingly honest with one another, romance flourishes. Discover the secrets to lasting love in this liberating book, The Selfish Path to Romance.

by Drs. Edwin Locke and Ellen Kenner. That's The Selfish Path to Romance on Amazon or SelfishRomance.com. How do you internally manage what's going on within you? You have a three-letter word that's screaming at you, why? Why did he do this? Now, why is that why so important? You're wanting closure. The why is important because you need to know that things are causal, that the world is causal, and that people's behavior is causal.

It doesn't mean rational. He obviously acted irrationally. If he loved this other girl, he could have said, Listen, this is very sad for me to tell you. There's a lot I like about you. We've had a really nice relationship. And I'm really attracted to Betty Sue. I would like to date her. Okay, painful, yes. You might be real angry with him that you invested so much time. Yes, but you will feel really good about Betty.

the fact that it makes sense. He's in love with another woman, or whatever it is, he's attracted to another woman. But with just him abruptly leaving and going from hot to cold, loving you to suddenly not liking your character at all, leaves open a lot of questions. Can I trust other people? Will other people do this to me? Is this the norm in relationships if you're early on in the dating, if you're still young? I'm assuming you are. You may not be.

you know, will other men just leave me like this? Can I go through this type of pain again? Was it me? Was there something that he saw in me over the course of time that he disliked? Was I helping him too much? Or was I getting too close to his character? Maybe there were things in him that would be alarming and would make me not love him. And the closer I got to him, the more afraid he was

that I would discover these things, whether they were reality-based or not. It doesn't matter if he was afraid of it. He might have jumped ship. So all of those questions need answers. You can ask his friends. If you've got mutual friends, ask, is he dating anybody else? What's up? Not because you want to get back to him. Not because you're chasing him. Because it does not sound like he's a good choice for your life. A man that acts this erratically is not good for your long-range happiness, especially one who doesn't explain himself when he could have.

It sounds like you want a good relationship. You have the capacity to be supportive and loving. Maybe you want to pick someone with a little higher self-esteem that matches your own next time. And here's a little more from Dr. Kenner. I am Dr. Ellen Kenner, and my show is The Rational Basis of Happiness. I'm a clinical psychologist, and my goal is to help you fight the ideas in your own soul that tell you

You can't be happy that the goal in your life is to sacrifice, to give up, to not enjoy the things that you personally choose, to do what others want of you, to be a martyr, to be a doormat. I want you to be able to identify those ideas. That is a lethal, lethal philosophy that guides that. There are many variations on a theme.

of that philosophy that tells you you don't own your own life and if you do anything for yourself you can fill in the blank. You're selfish. Well what if that's not the case? That you're a brute, that you're running roughshod over other people, that you're out to hurt them. You just want to enjoy your life and not hurt anybody else and not step on anyone else.

If you want to recapture the view that you may have had as a kid or maybe as a teenager that, oh my gosh, I have such wonderful ambitions for myself, and to be able to do that with moral certainty that it's proper for you to lead your own life.

then you can go to my website, drkenner.com. You can listen to the show. You can ask me questions on my website at drkenner.com. I have podcasts of former shows that you can listen to. You can also pick up a book that may sound shocking, absolutely shocking, especially in this culture, a book called The Virtue of Selfishness.

And that may surprise you because selfishness is not what you think. Self-valuing, self-esteem, self-respect, that's what you want if you want to be happy. Many people are just confused. Their mind is battered. And I would love for you to be happy rationally without ever taking advantage of another person.

And that's not what we typically think of as selfish. We typically think of selfish as the person that's the me-only person. I'll get what I want. I'll do what I want. And I don't care about you. I can manipulate. I can defraud you. That's not the selfishness that Ayn Rand talks about. It's

A-Y-N-R-A-N-D. You can look at my website, drkenner.com, or you can go to einrandbookstore.com and pick up that book. 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 by Dr. Ellen Kenner.

a major source of friction is when partners violate the trade a relationship the refusal of a partner or partners to trade even in everyday actions will be perceived as unfair a breakdown of the give and take in the relationship

and the trade involves more than just love. It also applies to character and to everyday relations between partners. Let's say that partners need two incomes to pay the bills. Both have agreed to work, but one partner now refuses to seriously look for a job, preferring to live off the efforts of the other. In addition to being unjust, the partner's refusal to work after promising to do so lacks integrity.

When the trait of principle is violated, tensions quickly rise. There is a feeling of betrayal and injustice by the partner who is getting the raw end of the deal. You can download Chapter 1 for free at drkenner.com. And you can buy the book at Amazon.com.