42. Do you demean yourself to get what you think you need from your date?

How often do you give yourself away thinking that’s how you’ll be loved and approved of by a date or partner? For example, your date invites you to a party you don’t really want to attend and you go, not out of love for her but because you’re afraid you’ll lose something if you don’t. He asks if he can spend the night and you’re not ready to be that close, but you say yes because you’re afraid you’ll lose something if you don’t.

I’ve known two women who agreed to have sex with a man they were dating, not because they felt that close to him but because they were afraid he’d move on if they said no. The result is both women felt they had betrayed themselves, and it didn’t feel good.. It’s easy to fall into the “give in” trap because we’ve been steeped by society to feel we have to give people what they want so we can get what we want. So instead of living fully and honestly and spontaneously, we’re always making business deals. That’s not love. So it’s no wonder we don’t enjoy dating in these senior years when we walk away feeling that we lied to our date (doing what we didn’t really want to do) and belittled ourselves. When we demean ourselves is it any wonder that we don’t feel self-love and we’re constantly looking to someone else to show us the love we’ve failed to show ourselves?

Even smiling when it’s forced is a form of degrading yourself. And why are we doing that? Because we believe we have to in order to get our needs filled. Yet we all know that empty feeling in the gut, or that hot flash in the head that tells us we’re not being true to ourselves. That’s a clear signal telling us our thoughts are out of kilter. Because when our thoughts mesh with what is (listening to that gut feeling in this case, and acting on it) we feel peaceful, not stressful.

When the suffering feelings come instead of giving in and being false you could ask yourself a few simple questions: Is it true I won’t find love if I don’t wear a mask and play the phony game? How does it feel to live this way? How would it feel to live honestly instead? If I really need to give myself away to please her is that the kind of relationship I want?

If you’ve been pretending and acting and wearing a costume to try to please someone, you might also ask yourself, has it ever really worked? If being honest with yourself and your date sounds more peaceful you could just take the risk and see what happens. It’s possible – even likely – that your date or partner will be able to start being more honest too. Then you’ve got a relation based on care and love, for your date or partner and also for yourself. And then you might find dating a lot more fun and a lot less stressful.

Copyright © 2005 Chuck Custer