🎤 PODCAST • Teen Fantasies; How to tell my wife that her son has taboo fantasies.
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The Selfish Path to Romance. Download Chapter 1 for free at drkenner.com and at amazon.com. Mike, you're having some difficulty with your stepson?

Hi, Dr. Kinner. Thank you for taking my call. It's kind of a sensitive issue, but I appreciate it. Okay. Very briefly, my wife and I have been together almost 12 years. Our 9-year-old is our biological son together. Our 16-year-old was almost 5 when I met her. So I'd be very, very conscious to treat them equally, and I love him, and I think of him as my own son. But my wife does think that

I treat him a little bit differently. And we've had normal parent-step-parent, parent-step-child difficulties. So my wife does kind of treat him favorably, and several of our friends over the last couple of years have noticed and mentioned it to me innocently on the side that she does treat him differently than she treats me. The 16-year-old. Yes, yes. Treats him favorably to myself and my 9-year-old. And I've mentioned that to her, so...

Of course that rubbed her wrong, no matter how carefully I tried to mention that. And she's very defensive to the point now where we can't really have a constructive conversation about him because she immediately thinks that I'm on the attack. And she will quickly move it towards an argument and shift, you know, whatever the conversation is to shutting it down, you know.

Okay, let me slow you down a bit. You have two kids, a nine-year-old that's your biological child together. You guys have been together for 12 years, and it's the 16-year-old that is not your biological child. It's your stepson? Yes. And your nine-year-old is a daughter or a son? They're both boys. Boys. They're both wonderful boys. Okay. And you've tried to treat them equally, right?

Absolutely. And she is definitely favoring the 16-year-old, which is not alone by your observation, not only your observation, but friends and other people have said, hey, look what she's doing. Can you just give me a quick snapshot of, and you're saying you can't have a conversation with her, so you're wanting some help as to how to breach that gap, how to be able to bridge that gap, to have a conversation with her.

Sure. See, that's not even the problem. Here's where the real problem is. What had happened was I picked up his PlayStation Portable mobile device yesterday and turned it on because our nine-year-old's PlayStation mobile device could not access the Internet, and I could not figure out how to make it do that. So I know my 16-year-old does on his all the time.

They were out of the house, the wife and the 16-year-old. I picked up the 16-year-old's mobile device and powered it up, and immediately appeared a story on the front screen of an incestuous, erotic nature. And I was a little bit shocked, so I went to the browsing history and immediately found that there were several more erotic, incestuous stories.

Ant what?

I'm sorry? Oh, you said, this is what I'm hearing, is that it's your 16-year-old, your stepson, that seems to... Hey, I gotta interrupt this, because we've gotta pay some bills. 30 seconds, that's it. A very quick ad, and then Alan will be back. Romance. I wish I knew more about what girls want from a relationship. Boy, 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.

And then, as well, there were half a dozen searches of mom on a couple of pornographic websites, you know, along with various other searches of mom and... And what?

I'm sorry? Oh, you said, this is what I'm hearing, is that it's your 16-year-old, your stepson, that seems to be turned on by incestuous images with his mother? Is that what you're saying? It would appear to me from the searches that I found in the internet sites, the pornographic internet sites he's been browsing on his mobile device are quite a few things about moms and mothers, the

So this has to have gone through you like an electric, like a lightning bolt or a shock. I was floored. Yeah. I don't know how to approach it with either of you. Go ahead. It's going to be a battle. My wife will be unbelievably defensive, and she will come at me with the, I'm trying to get him in trouble, or I was just trying to find pornography on his mobile device.

We've been together for 12 years. Okay, can I be your wife for a second? Sure. Just in role play. Sure. If you said to me, this is what we found, an alternative way she could respond is the following. She could say, oh my God, let's look at this together. And it's more like your parent partners at this moment.

Where do we go from here? You know, maybe I have been favoring him too much. And maybe he's grown up with, you know, a love map around me. And that's not where I want to go. So what am I showing? An alternative is that she could reasonably look at the facts that you identified and work with you.

That would be fabulous. The chances of that are slim from my experience in marriage, but that would be fabulous. Then that's why you're bringing this up. You want to have in mind how you would respond, let's say, if something similar happened to you. If someone similar said, you know, Ellen, I don't want to say it about myself, but your daughter or your son is having sexual impressions about you, I'd say, oh my God, how do I stop this? Where do I go? What do I do? Right?

You know, I want some help with this. I want to figure out how to maintain a good relationship but know that there are boundaries. And where did I go wrong? What misleading messages might I have sent? Or maybe it's nothing with me but just puberty kicking in. You know, how do you deal with this? So it's a problem to solve. But if the problem to solve is her denial, that's a different issue. That's telling you something. Right.

Yes. And have you observed her being more romantically involved with him? Huggy? No. See, and here's the thing. My wife is absolutely gorgeous. She's tall, beautiful, kind of large-chested. Sometimes she can wear revealing kind of tops and tops.

You know, she's very aware of her sexuality, but we are not overtly sexual in front of the kids. We try to set a good example. She's not overly affectionate with him, and I really feel that she does not portray herself in a sexual way to him. So you don't think that she's deliberately trying to entice him? Absolutely not. Then you could just say to her, listen, I want to work with you on this. Phrases like that help.

I want to work with you on this. We have a problem. Notice we have a problem. I love it when you dress sexy. You may want to reconsider around our son. This is what's starting to happen. She doesn't know about it yet, right?

No. And you'd show her the evidence. Then observe her. And you can try to re-guide her back on path by saying, listen, it's not between you and me. These are the facts that now exist. Let's move forward from here. What do we need to do?

And I want to just pause for a second, too, just to add that when you treat both kids equally, you do neither of them a favor. You want to treat them each uniquely. You don't want to obviously treat one as a bad kid and one as a good kid, but value what's good in both of them.

and call them on the carpet for the things set out. 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, The Serious Romance Guidebook by clinical psychologist Dr. Ellen Kenner and co-author Dr. Edwin Locke, who's world famous for his theories in goal setting.

Self-sacrifice doesn't lead to happiness and romance. But what is the alternative? Would it be doing whatever you feel like doing and treating your partner and others as servants? Is a me-only policy any better than a them-only policy? Aren't these two sides of the same sacrificial coin?

In both cases, someone plays the role of victim. Me-only people are no better off than them-only people. Neither approach leads to happiness. Neither approach leads to an enduring, flourishing, and resentment-free romantic relationship. You can download Chapter 1 for free by going to drkenner.com. And you can buy The Selfish Path to Romance at Amazon.com.