160. Dating differences aren’t a problem when you come from love not judgment

Differences are natural in any relationship, and in many cases people simply agree to disagree and it’s no problem. In a romantic relationship that becomes a little harder though. It’s not so easy to just see that we have a different view of something and then go home. Dating differences often affect us directly – when they involve the kind of recreation we’ll pursue or other ways we spend time together, for instance. We want our partner with us but we want what we want, not what they want. What do you do?

“Compromise” is the word that probably comes most readily to mind. One dictionary defines the word as: “An accommodation in which both sides make concessions.” “Negotiate” is another word, defined as, “Confer with another in order to come to terms or reach an agreement.” I sometimes have a problem with the word “compromise” because it often means giving in just to achieve peace and stop the arguing. In that case the one who gives in often feels resentment. They feel they lost something and they gave away their rights. It creates a separation and division in the relationship, even when the concession is subtle.

In negotiating, however, I like the idea of conferring with your partner because that involves caring and love. When you confer you’re not just automatically assuming that your way is best and should be followed. Instead you’re open to questioning and listening. You confer to really learn what your partner wants and then match that against your own wants. The result may be that you give in to what your date or partner wants but you don’t do it to achieve peace, thus feeling you lost. Instead, you concede and agree to your partner’s wants out of authentic love, not expecting something in return. It’s not barter, it’s an unconditional giving that carries no resentment with it.

One simple way some use to understand each other’s wants is for each person to state, on a scale of 1 to 10, how important the thing they want is. If my desire to have it my way is a 7 and my partner’s desire for her way is a 9 or 10 it may not be hard at all to simply say, “Gosh I see that this is really important to you, let’s do it your way.” Another way to handle things is for each person to simply pursue their own interests and activities sometimes. Jane wants to go to a movie one night and Chet isn’t interested. So she goes and he stays home. No judgment, no problem.

However it’s done, when we get our egos out of the way differences with our date can be handled without judgment and criticism if we recognize that they’re natural and not wrong. It’s also critical to realize that it’s not up to your partner or date to make you feel good. You may badly want Joe to attend the symphony with you, and though he doesn’t care for the symphony he may go because he cares about you. At other times, however, he may feel that it’s just not something he wants to do. Doesn’t he have that right as much as you have the right to want him with you? Can you really say he doesn’t love you because he doesn’t do what you want?

If the differences are extreme you may decide to stop dating a person. But that doesn’t mean he’s bad, just different. Whenever you feel that you’re right and your date is wrong your judgments are going to make you suffer. At that point you’re thinking your date should be something she’s not. That’s what judgment is – thinking something should be “my” way rather than the way it is. How do you know Margaret should be the way she is? The same way you know it should be raining on a rainy day – that’s simply what is. When the judgment is gone the suffering is gone. When your behavior springs from caring and love differences aren’t a problem.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

159. Even mature daters must think anger works, but does it ever really help?

At this more mature stage of life, even though we feel we’ve learned some things about living, dating can often be a daunting experience. Feelings are often pretty intense; there seems to be a lot on the line. The problem can be that unless we examine old behavior patterns in dealing with people they don’t change. The way we behaved when we were emotionally hurt at four or five is the way we behave at 65 except that at 65 we don’t throw ourselves on the floor and scream. Instead, our tantrum is expressed in more adult terms such as with angry, cutting words or withdrawal. But it’s still a tantrum.

Wise spiritual teachers over the centuries, and today, have seen that the trouble is we’ve taken on the idea that the world (and the people in it, of course) should function according to our beliefs. When you apply that to dating it means that we think we know how people should act. When they don’t conform to our imagined standard we’re disappointed and hurt. Relationship issues are often quickly magnified when we’re dating because we’re often conspicuously vulnerable. We’re often wearing our hearts on our sleeves, as the saying goes. So it’s really easy to feel hurt.

Here’s an example. This happened to Glenda, a friend of mine a number of years ago. She was dating a dentist in his late 50s. He came down with the flu and Glenda offered to bring him soup. He declined so she took him at his word and visited him without soup in hand. He was instantly angry at her.

Apparently he felt if she really cared about him she’d have brought soup anyway, despite what he probably figured was a polite decline of her offer. In short, she didn’t meet his expectations. The pattern looks like this: We have our view of how our date should behave and we know we’re right: “If she loved me she’d do this,” we think. All is well when she happens to do what you wanted. But when she doesn’t there’s hurt.

And how does hurt usually show up? Just like the dentist, we very often get angry. Instead of investigating the situation our old childish habit springs forth and we throw our tantrum. How did Glenda feel when her dentist friend got mad at her? She told me she felt confused and pushed away. It didn’t make her feel closer to him. Instead, it made her question whether this was a healthy relationship. As it turns out his angry outbursts over the months continued to make her feel pushed away until eventually she realized it was time to stay away, and the relationship ended about 8 months later.

If you’re a person who gets angry and hurt at your date you don’t have to be a victim of that little-kid reaction within you. The solution is pretty simple - though not always easy at first - and it’s this. Suffering always shows up in the body somewhere. That’s why we call it suffering. The body suffers. It can be in the form of sadness, anger, jealousy, insecurity, sense of unworthiness, etc. That suffering may not be so easy to recognize for some of us because we’ved lived life with so much turmoil and inner hurt that we hardly notice when we’re suffering. But there’s always some sign of the judgmental thoughts – a churning stomach, an instant headache, a tension in the shoulders. There’s always something that doesn’t feel comfortable, peaceful and happy. And we know that. It doesn’t take thought to recognize it, we know.

That suffering, however, always comes because we believe something should be different. We think something shouldn’t be the way it is. (By the way, don’t just believe this. If you’re interested, check it out for yourself in your own life.) Thoughts about how to boil eggs or cook potatoes aren’t painful. They’re what you might call working thoughts, very different from judgmental thoughts. As soon as we make judgmental thoughts, thinking things should be our way, however, we hurt. So the suffering in our body is really a great reminder that our thinking is off track.

If the dentist had checked his own thinking when he got angry at Glenda he might have noticed that what happened didn’t need to be judged at all. He asked Glenda not to bring soup. She honored him by not bringing soup. That’s pretty simple isn’t it? Instead, he instantly tried to make her responsible for his hurt feelings, and in doing that he turned himself into an instant victim. Of what? His own thoughts, nothing more.

For any of us the circumstances will be different but the pattern is the same. Your guy, for instance, might show up late for a date. You might feel immediate hurt and anger: If he loved me he’d be on time. But without that judgment you could just notice that he’s late. Period. You might choose not to date him again because you like people who are on time. But where’s the need for judging him as wrong and feeling those hot, angry feelings you impose on yourself?

Our dentist friend might also have noticed that probably there’s not a single time in his life when his anger really worked, unless perhaps he was able to temporarily manipulate someone with it by beating them into submission. In the long run, though, we know it always backfires. Even when manipulation works for awhile can anyone say it brings two people closer together? And isn’t being close what we really have relationships for? Moral of the story: When we’re suffering we can investigate our beliefs and opinions or we can buy into our judgmental thoughts and hurt ourselves and our relationship.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

158. Surprise! The happiness we seek through dating is already ours

Do you want to be happy in these mature dating years? If so, bring happiness to your dating; don’t expect dating to bring happiness to you. “But that doesn’t make sense,” you may be saying to yourself. “The reason I’m dating is to find happiness and now you’re telling me to be happy first and then bring that with me. Sounds crazy.”

You’re right, it does sound crazy. But if you really look at life, as the sages and masters have been advising us for eons, you see that this is the way life works. There’s nothing magical about what I’m saying, and nothing miraculous or even spiritual. It’s just what is. Let me explain.

I know that most of us in the senior dating field are trying to find happiness. Over the more than 10 years that I’ve dated since my wife died I’ve talked to a lot of mature and senior folks who date. Many of them find dating a chore. They’d much rather just be settled down with the right person and live happily ever after. So even though it seems to be work in many cases, they continue dating to find the happiness they feel they’re missing without a partner.

But we really already are the happiness we seek, even when we don’t know it. Here’s why. In my last article I talked about how happiness is always short-lived. No matter what we get, it’s soon not enough and we’re back on the rat-wheel again, searching for the next thing to make us happy. We’ve done it all our lives. We know what it feels like and we even know down deep that it’s a fruitless search. Yet we haven’t known what else to do.

When I say we are happiness already I mean that when you look, you might notice that happiness is your true nature. It’s only been covered over by the self-centered “me” thoughts that are usually resisting something in our experience, whether it’s personal, such as being stood up for a date, or something broader such as the war in Iraq. But when we let life be just as it is, we discover that what’s always been there as our basic nature is simply peace and happiness.

Dating can be an interesting exploration and an adventure that’s fun. But when we’re dating because we think we’ll find happiness, we’re on a hopeless, endless path. If happiness can start it can end. But that never-ending awareness that registers all experiences – that sense of beingness or knowing that you are - is nothing but peace and joy and unconditional love.

Don’t believe what I’m saying; look in your own life. We’ve all had those times when, even for brief moments, we’re not conscious of wanting anything at all. We’re just flowing in harmony with life as it is – just being. There’s a relaxation in that, a contentedness, an ease. There are no problems. That’s the happiness we already are. We don’t have to look anywhere for it because we can’t look for what we are right now. When we give up judgments, when we give up opinions, when we stop thinking we know how the world and our circumstances should be, guess what’s left. Happiness.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

157. “Love yourself” they say, but how do you do that?

At this stage of life, in senior and mature dating, many of us know that when we expect someone else to love us and make us happy we’re always a victim. I’ve read personal ads online that say, “I want someone who will make me feel special and adored and loved.” But when we’re looking to someone else to do the job of making us feel loved aren’t we giving them an awfully big job? When they don’t succeed we get hurt and angry. When they love us according to what love looks like to us we feel great. Either way, though, we’re always reliant on them to provide our happiness. Not a good place to be.

Many relationship experts say, “Don’t rely on others, love yourself.” They’re nice words and they sound warm and fuzzy. But what do they really mean? How do we do it? Do we go out and get more massages, more new clothes, take more cruises or seek more sex? Lately there’s more research being published about what most of us have seen in our lives already – that acquiring more things, people and experiences doesn’t make for lasting happiness. Experientially we know this, yet we don’t know what else to do so we keep looking for the next thing that’ll help us feel loved and happy.

There’s nothing wrong with newness in our lives. In fact, life is always changing so it’s always new. But when we’re attached to something new, and think it will make us feel happy and loved, we’re lost. So what’s the answer? Here’s the key the ancients have been sharing for centuries, and I’ve seen in my own life: We don’t love ourselves by getting more. We love ourselves by giving something away – our false thoughts and beliefs.

For example, we believe that having a partner in our lives will give us love and happiness. But is that true? Is it ever possible that someone else can make us happy or cause us to suffer emotionally? It’s only what we think about their words or behavior that can make us happy or sad. Let’s say a couple is at a party. The woman has a nice conversation with another man. Her date may feel jealous and miserable. Another guy in the same situation, however, feels at ease and pleased, knowing his friend is engrossed in interesting conversation she enjoys. Does the conversation cause the pain, or is it the interpretation by each guy? Is it the woman who makes him happy or sad, or is it his own insecurities and therefore his own interpretations of what that means?

When we feel another person can give us the love we seek, we’ve automatically put ourselves in the position of seeking and searching. There’s no happiness in that because while we’re seeking we’re also feeling, “I’m not happy now but I will be when I get what I want.” One East Indian sage used to tell his students, “To crave is to slave.” Another way of saying that is this: Seeking is suffering. It’s stressful, we’re continually reminding ourselves we’re not happy, and even when we get the object of our desires we know from experience that the joy lasts only a short time.

So what’s the answer? How do we love ourselves? How can we be happy? If we see that “getting” hasn’t brought any lasting happiness let’s look and see when we actually are happy. Isn’t it in those times when we’re not looking for anything, not searching and seeking? It might be while watching a sunrise, or when we’re contentedly engrossed in a good book or a project we’re working on. Or the moments when we’re fully engaged in playing with the dog or holding a cooing baby. In those moments when we’re just totally lost in life as it is we later notice we were totally happy, not needing love, not needing anything.

With a little investigation you’ll see that exactly the same thing applies to getting something we’ve wanted – whether it’s that new gal in your life, the new car or a big-screen TV. The happiness we feel doesn’t come because we got something. If that were true we’d be happy as long as we had that thing. Instead, the happiness we feel comes from not wanting for that short time until the next desire pops up. Not wanting, even though it’s for only a short time, lets us relax and just be in the world without a problem.

Notice that we’re in the same relaxed, contented place we’re in while joyfully playing with that baby – not wanting or needing a thing. Wanting and seeking is always a problem because we’re on that stressful path of effort to get it. So self-love is really just about being, which means letting Life appear as it does and realizing that all our thoughts that it should be different have never worked and have only caused us pain. Finally we may just stop, and rest… and be happy! In that relaxed place of ease you really smell the flowers, maybe for the first time. You really see the green of the tree leaf, feel the texture of the knife in your hand as you cut vegetables for supper, hear that distant whistle of a train.

From this place of just being present you may experience a vitality of life you haven’t known, with no pressure to get anywhere, accomplish more or be better. Then taking steps to connect with a new date or partner just flows naturally. You're just on a fun adventure, not needing someone to make you happy. You get to simply share life with a date or partner, without expecting or demanding, without seeking, and without judgment, knowing your happiness doesn't depend on that person you're with. Total, unconditional acceptance of life just as it is… that would be my definition of self-love.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

156. Looking “out there” she couldn’t see reality and her own answers

In my last article, #155, I wrote about Muriel wanting more from her relationship with Jeff, when he simply wants to be friends. As it turns out, we later exchanged several emails about her situation since she was asking what I thought was wrong with Jeff - and men in general - because he doesn’t want to commit to a romance and marriage.

I suggested that to find peace she could simply see reality (Jeff wants only a friendship) and stop trying to figure out why Jeff does what he does. Obviously the reason she wants to figure him out is to counteract his reasoning and thereby change his mind. But if she simply sees that Jeff wants only a friendship, without adding her story and questions, she could then choose to have the friendship he wants, or she could choose to move on. Either way she wouldn’t be waiting for him to change so she could be happy.

As we dialogued by email, however, I saw again that it’s sometimes quite difficult for people to simply see reality and stop thinking about how life should be. It takes a willingness to let go of your old thinking. For example, when I suggested seeing Jeff just as he is she responded with things like, “He puts a lot of pressure on me. For instance, he says, ‘You can cure your diabetes yourself and get off medication. I can’t marry you til you do.’ And he has said several times, ‘I won’t marry a woman who drinks coffee. Have you stopped?’” She thinks it’s unfair for him to feel that way about her. But isn’t “unfair” just her judgment? Isn’t he, in fact, just being Jeff? Doesn’t he have the right to think and feel what he wants?

If she wanted to relieve her own suffering about this I again suggested she forget about what Jeff wants and just see the truth and deal with that in a way that serves her. Her response: “You seem to be saying, ‘I don’t care what happens to you as long as I am peaceful and happy.’” In fact, I’m saying just the opposite. I’m not saying “don’t care about the other person” I’m just saying when we see them as they are and stop trying to change them that is caring about them.

In the next email she wrote, “I still think it is a male thing to avoid relationships.” Again I realized we were talking about apples and oranges. Trying to figure out why men do what they do (and Jeff in particular) can never bring peace. But seeing that they behave or think in certain ways is again just seeing reality as it is. It may seem to be true that some men won’t commit, but if that were the case for all would there be men and woman getting married every day?

Our thoughts about what should be will always bring us pain because at the same time it’s saying that what is is not right. However, when we see what is as just the way it is and stop fighting it we can live in harmony with the world. We want others to change so we can be happy. But we could just skip the middle man (the person we want to change) and provide our own happiness. After all, it’s nobody else’s job.

When we clearly see life and other people’s action just as they are our actions will then flow effortlessly from that clear seeing. But when we’re putting all our energy into trying to guess or second-guess another person, who’s there for us? There is no clarity in swinging in the wind based on what someone else is doing or not doing.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

155. She suffers from her self-created “sweet and sour” relationship

I got an email today from Muriel, a woman in her mid-60s that I’ve written about before. She’s had an on and off relationship with Jeff for four or five years and lives in a lot of pain because she apparently doesn’t see reality.

Today she wrote that she and Jeff have many things in common, and she listed many of them. “But.” she says, “when we start talking seriously about a future together he freezes up and goes into his cave. He says he loves me, but why can’t we just be friends.” She adds that that doesn’t make sense to her, then goes on to ask my view.

Muriel is in what I’d call a self-created sweet and sour relationship – sweet in the pleasure she gets from being with him and sour in the suffering she endures because he won’t commit to the kind of relationship she wants.

To resolve her suffering Muriel puts a lot of energy into trying to understand why Jeff feels the way he does about her. Of course what she really wants is to be happy, and she feels that understanding will bring that happiness. But in trying to understand we put ourselves in the role of victim because we can never really fully understand why another thinks or feels as they do. So all the time that we’re waiting and agonizing over not understanding we’re a victim, suffering. When we drop the idea that we need to understand, and just see and accept reality instead, we can be out of our agony.

If Muriel would stop looking “out there” for the answer and instead check inside herself she might notice that without her story of what “should be” she could simply see what is: Jeff only wants to be friends – period. From that clear seeing, without judging him, she might notice that her actions would flow naturally and effortlessly.

One option would be to settle in with a friendship. Then she could probably spend time with him freely and without the longing for more. She could also stop nagging and manipulating him, which happens when they start “talking seriously about a future together.” Obviously if he wants only a friendship he isn’t the one who brings up that subject, which can only be Muriel’s attempt to pressure him to move forward when he doesn’t want to. There’s no love in that. That’s manipulation borne of self-interest.

Reality in this situation is to simply see that Jeff is just being who Jeff is. He’s not deceiving her. He’s not using her. He’s not trying to change her. And he’s not manipulating her. She, on the other hand, is trying to manipulate him, and in the process creating a lot of pain for herself by not living in harmony with what is. If she doesn’t want to be just a friend she could move out of the relationship. But she wouldn’t need to do it in anger; she could do it with love. Whether she stayed as a friend or moved away from him, in both cases she wouldn’t be trying to control him and she could be free of pain by just living in reality.

When we think we need a partner or date to change we’re the ones who need to change, and the change we need is to see that the loving thing to do in a relationship is to let the other be who they are. They have as much right to live their way as we have.

Any time – any time – we want another person to change it’s because we feel if they change we’ll be happier. In effect we’re saying, “I want you to change even when you don’t want to because I really don’t care about your happiness. I just want my happiness.” Now, I recognize that sounds pretty harsh and you may be saying to yourself, “No, I want her to be happy too and I know she’ll be happier if she does it my way.” But isn’t that justification for self-centered behavior that we may not have noticed about ourselves until we really look?

If you really want your dating partner to be happy you could just leave him alone. And if you really want to be happy yourself why not skip the middle man (the person you think should change and give you what you want) and give yourself happiness by just flowing with life the way it is rather than deciding how it should be and fighting it. After all, do you really know how life should be? Until you let your dating or romantic partner be who they are you’re starting a war with them. I don’t see love in starting a war. But I see total love in acceptance and nonjudgment.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

154. Hope keeps us forever spinning, its opposite is effortless and peaceful

Hope. The meaning behind that word is what drives most people to date in their mature or senior years. We hope that we can find the right lover or partner and life will be better than it is. We’re trying to get something we think we don’t have.

Haven’t we been doing that all our lives, though? Can you remember a time when you didn’t think, “This isn’t it, but over there and in the future will be it and then I’ll be happy.” So we look forward to Christmas, to being seven when we’re five, to dating that right boy in high school, to graduation, to marriage, to having children and on and on it goes. Happiness is always in the future. And the future never comes, have you noticed? Hope can never lead to “this is it” because all the time we’re thinking “this is not it” it is. Reality never lies. It just is what is.

“Well,” you might be saying, “if I think that way then everything is totally hopeless.” But isn’t that idea of hope based on the idea that we need something? And is that true? Nisargadatta Maharaj, the late, esteemed spiritual teacher of East India, sometimes said, “I don’t understand wanting what you don’t have. Why not want what you do have and be happy?” And doesn’t that make sense… except that it seems so, well, hopeless?

In many ways, life is like playing the slot machines. If we play long enough we’re bound to win sometimes. Usually it’s just enough to keep us playing. If we never won we’d quit. But sometimes we hit it right and that’s enough to make us forget all the many more times we didn’t hit it right.

In life it’s the same. Once in awhile life happens the way we wanted it to. So we think we did it, and all we have to do is try harder and work harder and we can make it happen our way again. But what’s the reality? Does it usually happen our way, or does it just happen? Look at just today, for example. Did it really turn out the way you thought it would? Doesn’t life just live itself without our input?

When we can’t even say that we create the thoughts that come to us, how can we say we create “our” life? When you look you can’t find any separate, independent individual inside that owns “my” body. Yes this false “me” idea wants dating to turn out a certain way and provide the right circumstances and partner.

There is awareness of life and there’s existence, certainly. But somehow “we” decided that a person exists that’s independent of the rest of nature. It’s a radical thought but have you considered that “we” are simply an expression of that Infinite Intelligence (God) just as is everything else? Does a tree think, or a flower? Yet they function perfectly don’t they, blooming when they’re meant to, sending out perfume and blossoms right on time. “We” function in the same way; we’re being functioned.

There is existence, and that existence is aware of life happening, without an opinion, without judgment, without comparison, without dividing everything into right and wrong, good and bad. In that pure awareness life is just seeing life unfold. The perfect example of that is a small child. A tiny child doesn’t need hope because there’s nothing she wants. She wants what is and that happens to be what she’s always got.

Can we really know we’d be better off having a partner, a lover, a husband or wife, a mate? What’s true instead (remember, reality reigns) is that we don’t need a husband or wife if we don’t have one because life is always exactly the way it should be. The One Intelligence can’t make a mistake because there’s nothing to compare it to since there is no second. There is just the One, showing up in all forms and as all circumstances.

“Then why do you date?” you could ask me. And the answer is, because that’s the way I’m being lived. To me, dating is a great adventure, usually interesting and fun. It would seem nice to have a partner, but I know that’s just a thought. Other times I have the thought that it’s nice to have the peace and contentment of being alone. Do I know what I need? Of course not. So I’m just happy with what is and I find life is contented and peaceful. Nothing can be wrong because there is no right. There is only this… only this, happening right now and in every moment. That’s it and that’s all there ever has been.
Without hope there’s no hopelessness. The only problem is, it’s too simple!

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

153. Thoughts cause suffering, whether it’s losing a daughter or a relationship

I have a friend I don’t see or talk to very often whose oldest daughter died about three weeks ago. This woman, in her early 40’s, had Lupus and other ailments and had been sickly most of her life. My friend, I’ll call her Lola, called to talk about ways to handle her grief. Most of the time she was doing well, she said. But other times she wallowed in suffering and pain. “I don’t know how to stay out of that pain when it comes,” she said.

Whether we’re dealing with the death of someone close or the loss of a relationship, the suffering can seem unbearable at times. Lola had done some questioning of life before this, and wasn’t new to seeing life honestly. But she got stuck sometimes, she realized. So basically I simply reminded her of what she appeared to have forgotten - that thought is always the cause of our suffering. When you’re in dreamless sleep at night there’s no pain. That’s simple proof.

What Lola noticed, as we talked, was that most of the time when she hurt it was when she thought about how her daughter was too young to die, and that she should have had a healthy life. Questions would come like, “Why did this happen to her? How could I have been more caring and helpful?”

But those are all thoughts that argue with reality. Reality is just what is. In this case, what is, is that her daughter lived exactly as long as she was meant to live. Her life wasn’t cut short unless we say so. Without that thought her life was just what it was, as is true for all of us. Lola felt it was helpful to be reminded that it was only her thoughts that were bringing her pain. None of her pain, she realized, was helping anyone, so why not live in reality instead?

It’s the same with the end of a relationship. You may have had plans to spend your life with someone you’re dating. And then it ends. We customarily tell ourselves it shouldn’t have ended. But can we really live clearly when we’re arguing with the facts? Besides the hurt and pain we cause ourselves, we can’t effectively move on with that kind of thinking. There’s no clarity because we’re starting with a muddled assumption. The assumption is that “I know how it should be”. And we say this staring in the face of how it is.

Always, always, always it’s our resistance to what is that brings on our suffering. No resistance, no pain. If you’re hurting in any way because of relationship turmoil ask yourself, “Do I really want to argue with what’s happening or do I want to simply see it as Life, unfolding as it does?” Which feels more peaceful? Isn’t that a clue as to which view is truthful and which is a lie we’ve created?

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

152. Which is it, keeping your word or living spontaneously and authentically?

Most of us have been taught to tell the truth and to live by our commitments. But have you ever thought that those two statements can easily be in opposition to each other? “If you say you’re going to do something, then do it,” is the message we’ve gotten. But is that always telling the truth? What if you change your mind? I knew a woman from Oregon once who said she married her first husband because she was at a party with him when they were dating, and suddenly he announced to the room that they were getting married.

This was a bright, educated woman, not given to stretching the truth. But what she said was that after he told everyone they were getting married, and she hadn’t denied it because she didn’t know what to say, she felt she’d made a tacit commitment. “I honestly didn’t know what to say or how to get out of it without hurting his feelings, so the marriage took place,” she told me. She had made a commitment she thought.

But what about this idea of always doing what you said you’d do? Can you always do that and still be true to yourself and honest? Probably not. No one I know can predict the future, including what they may feel like doing in the future. Let’s say you say you’ll go dancing with someone Saturday night, and later realize that that doesn’t really feel right for you at all. Do you call him and say you’re not going? What happens if you go and you really don’t want to be there? Do you think you or your partner will have a good time?

“But,” you say, “that doesn’t seem fair and I don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings.” I agree, you probably wouldn’t want to do that often because your dating friend would likely stop dating you. But is it true that you can really hurt someone’s feelings? They decide whether your words or actions hurt them don’t they? Instead of doing what you don’t want to do maybe letting yourself know your truth and then living that is more important.

The truth is always right now. For example, maybe you love chocolate ice cream. Then you and your friend order ice cream and you ask for strawberry. Are you being inconsistent? No, you’re really just being spontaneously honest. That moment you want strawberry.

Rather than feel trapped by a commitment you’ve made, you might find dating a lot less stressful and more fun if you just operate from the truth. It just isn’t true that you have to forecast what you’re going to want to do in the future and then stick with your forecast when it doesn’t feel right. Spontaneous living is just letting Life live through us as it will, without trying to control outcomes or make predictions.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

151. Is being “too nice” really being kind?

I read an interesting article recently about men who are always “too nice”. But the same thing applies to some women. And it applies in virtually any kind of relationship, from romance to relatives.

Since we’re talking about senior or mature dating here, however, let’s take a look at it from this perspective. Dating in these years can often take on a different flavor than it did in earlier years. There can be the feeling that life is passing me by and I’m not getting any younger. So a sense of desperation can set in. And that can easily lead to trying too hard to please a potential partner, or being too nice.

But is that kind of behavior really being nice? Or is it being dishonest and manipulative? Have you ever noticed that you’re angry when the person you’re dating doesn’t do what you want? What’s that anger about? Isn’t that manipulation, a childish way to try to get her to change? Being “too nice” is exactly the same thing – manipulation that shows up in a different form. Whether it’s anger or being extra nice, the aim is to get the other person to do what you want. You want to manipulate him so you can control the outcome of your relationship.

If you notice yourself being extra nice in your dating just notice your phoniness and see if you really do want to manipulate the other person. In the long run will this work? Will your date eventually see through it, especially when you start demanding things in return for all you’ve done? Have you ever heard someone say – or maybe you’ve said it yourself – “Why would you do that? I would never do that!” Or “That’s not fair; after all, look at all I’ve done for you.” Aren’t those words expecting that your partner should be giving back to you for all you’ve given?

If so, did you really give freely, without strings? Or were you being “extra nice” because you wanted something? We can live in that kind of manipulation if we want, but it usually had two painful consequences. One is that it feels stressful and phony, and the other is that it’s guaranteed not to work and you’ll hurt further in the long run. After all, how can you keep giving inauthentically and not begin to resent the other person? And when your resentment shows up, won’t the other person feel used and deceived?

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

150. When “you” aren’t running the show dating is easy and stress-free

Let’s face it. Most people in the mature or senior age bracket would rather not be dating. Most would rather have a partnership that feels secure and comfortable. Dating is often a stressful concern: Will I find someone to spend the rest of my years with? Will I be emotionally hurt? How do I look and what do I say to attract the right person? That’s what I’d call suffering.

Fortunately, a lot of the emotional suffering in mature dating, and in life, doesn’t need to happen when we see life in the reality that it is. Or if it does happen, it doesn’t need to last long. So this article is a bit of a tutorial.

We’ve been conditioned to see life in specific ways. What we picked up as a child is that we are independent entities who need to control life, to make it happen the way we want. When it doesn’t go our way, we suffer. But sometimes the pain and suffering of life makes us question our beliefs. In that questioning there can be great relief. What I’m suggesting is not that you believe what I’m saying but that you look inside for yourself. Check out your own real-life experience and see what you learn, if you have an interest in ending suffering.

For instance, when we start investigating our control over life we realize some interesting things that have been there all along, that we’ve overlooked. Consider the functioning of our bodies; we're not breathing ourselves, we're not beating our hearts, we're not moving our blood, healing our wounds, growing our hair, or digesting our food. Some power is doing it but it's not us. We can’t even stop those things if we want to. So we don’t seem to have a lot of control over our body functions do we?

Consider also that when we say, "I see" or "I hear" is that true? Do we activate hearing or seeing to make it happen or does it happen by itself, before we even have a thought about it? Does the eye have to say “I see” for seeing to happen? Do you have to think “I’m going to see now” for seeing to happen?

And then there’s the whole idea about the mind and thinking. Where is the mind? Don’t we have just one thought at a time? Maybe the “mind” is just a bundle of thought-memories from the past. And thoughts themselves – do “we” think? Do we decide when we wake up in the morning whether to think or not, or do thoughts just show up on their own? Have you ever been going through your day and all of a sudden you notice you're humming a tune in your head? Did you ask for that tune? Do you ask for your next thought?... or any thought? Can you stop your thoughts when you want to? “Oops, I can’t find the off-switch!” When we look we see that the reality is -- we're being thought.

“Well, what about doing?” you might ask. “I certainly ‘do’ things.” I suggest you take a look. When you walk, are you actually doing that? Do you tell each muscle when and how far to move? When you’re walking and talking with a friend, isn’t walking just happening without your conscious awareness? When you talk, and gestures happen, do you consciously make those gestures or do they happen by themselves? It appears that “doing” happens through us, not from us. Direct, present evidence is clear: We're not living this body. It's BEING LIVED.

And back to thinking, if thoughts are the forerunner of choices then are we making choices? Or is it possible that choices are being made but we're not the choice-makers? And doing is happening but we're not the doers? Maybe the One - that Infinite Intelligence - is just using a body we call “I” to express itself. Maybe “we” are just the One showing up in form, since “we” don’t seem to have any power.

But there’s still a sense of existence and awareness for all of us isn’t there? No one can deny they're not here, that they don't exist. So we know that we're present, and that “presence” is definitely aware isn't it? That pure presence-awareness is the one aspect of our lives that has never changed; it's the same when we're 6 as when we're 66. Body has changed, thoughts have changed, self-image has changed, circumstances have changed. But the space-like awareness that provides a place for all these things to show up has never been affected in the slightest by any thought or feeling or change that has occurred in "your" so-called life. That presene-awareness happens to be our true nature. That’s what we really are – just simply an awareness that’s present.

The "me" that we’ve taken ourselves to be has no independent existence at all. It has no power. It's not even an entity. When you look inside you can't find a "me" except for a thought that it exists. It's an incredibly funny game.

Now, what does all this have to do with mature dating? Here’s how it applies: all emotional suffering happens to this phantom “me” wants things to happen in certain ways. But have you noticed that life doesn’t ask for our input? Is it true the so-called “me” knows how things should be? Can we really know we have the right answers?

When we realize we’re being lived, judgments and opinions drop away. We’ve been like the small child in a kiddy car at the amusement park. She thinks she's steering the car as it snakes its way around the track. But her efforts are having no effect at all.

We "think" we're running our lives and we twist and turn the steering wheel like mad. But it's just a big joke. When that joke is understood life becomes incredibly simple and stress-free. Then you simply watch life unfold in each moment, knowing it’s happening exactly as it’s meant to happen. It will run itself just fine, as it always has, whether we thought we had control or not. When we don’t need to try to run the show, what’s left is peace and joy. You then realize that whatever happens in your dating is just what happens. Without expectations and judgments there’s no disappointment and no suffering. Sit back, take your hands off the wheel and watch where life takes you. That’s all there is. Really!

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

149. She felt like a victim but was she?

There’s a funny thing about reality, or you might call it truth. When you don’t live in reality it always hurts. Reality means just what is, as it is. And what is doesn’t set well with a lot of us a lot of the time. We think we know how it should be, and it sure as heck shouldn’t be the way it is. With that thought we suffer.

I was thinking recently about a conversation I once had with a woman in her early 50s. She was talking about a man she was just getting to know. Unplanned circumstances occurred that found her sharing a room, but not a bed, with this new acquaintenace during a short trip here in the Northwest. They had planned to be home that night but there were delays and they were forced to get a room. For financial reasons it made sense to share a room.

In summary, they went to bed in their separate beds and she said he was very respectful. Later, though, he suggested he join her in bed so they could talk more easily, and the result was that they eventually had sex. The problem for her was that she said she felt, “like I had been raped.” This was a woman who had been on a spiritual quest for years and seemed to be pretty emotionally mature so I was surprised.

I asked, “Did he threaten you?” “No.” “Did he force you?” “Well no, not really.” “Then how is it that you felt raped?” I asked. She said, “Well, I kept saying ‘I think this is too early,’ and ‘I don’t think we should be doing this right yet,’ and things like that. But he just kept on, yet he was never really forceful.”

So what’s the reality here? Was he to blame? Not in my book. Yet she was trying to make him responsible for the sex they shared that evening that she said she didn’t really want. There are two things going on here as far as I can see. One is that whenever we do something we say we don’t want to do, that’s not true. We do it because we want something. She’s not a little wallflower woman and she certainly knew how to say no. So reality is that she wanted something. Maybe something as subtle and simple as not wanting to be seen as a prude, who knows? But she wanted something.

The second thing I see here is that she wanted to make him responsible so she wouldn’t have to face her own participation. At first it often feels good to try to make someone else responsible for our feelings. But there’s a huge down side to that. The down side is that in doing that she automatically feels like a victim. And what does it feel like to be a victim? It feels terrible because we feel totally vulnerable, unprotected and unsafe. We feel that we’re being taken advantage of and there’s nothing we can do about it.

But where is victimhood when you take responsible for yourself? There is none. Reality is that unless someone chains you or locks you up you’re probably not really a victim of anyone very often if ever. As soon as you make someone else responsible for how you feel, though, bam! In that instant you’re an automatic victim in your mind: “They made me feel (whatever it is you feel).”

That applies equally well to when someone makes a sharp or negative comment about you as it does to this situation about sex. So unless you want to feel the suffering of being a victim you might want to question whether you really want to blame someone else for how you feel. You might just be dealing in fantasies rather than reality.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

148. Seeing life “as it is” makes dating happier and easier

The other day I was in a small retail store, talking to the cashier as she checked me out. She was describing her family’s plans for the Fourth of July. Another cashier overheard the conversation and immediately chimed in disapprovingly with, “You couldn’t catch me on the roads during the Fourth!” It wasn’t even her conversation yet she felt a need to weigh in from her point of view.

Often I hear people saying, “I would never do – such and such,” that they’re criticizing someone else for doing. Somehow we think we’re the reference center for life as it should be, according to us. In dating this can cause you a lot of suffering because you’re automatically judging anyone who doesn’t live life the way you live it. You make yourself unhappy with your judgments because others don’t measure up, and you know they should measure up.

It goes like this: “George said he’d call and he didn’t. I would never make a commitment like that and not follow through.” But George isn’t you. You may even think that everyone who’s decent or kind or loving, or whatever label you put on it, would say or behave like you do.

That’s a habitual way of thinking that most in our society have picked up as we've gone through life. It’s what we do best – judge others. Have you ever noticed, however, that your judging always hurts you? It never feels warm, open and free when you judge. Have you ever seen anyone smiling openly while they’re judging? More likely you see them scowling, tight-lipped and grim-faced. Isn’t that a clue to what judging feels like inside?

I don’t know about you but I was immediately repelled by the woman who jumped into our July 4th conversation with judgment and a scowling presence. I always tend to move away from people like that. I don’t need to judge her; she’s fine the way she is but I prefer not to be around her.

If you happen to catch yourself thinking or saying, “I would never do what so-and-so does,” you might want to notice that you’re using yourself as the reference point for how life should be. We each have our way of living and others have their way. Life just is that way; we’re not all the same, nor should we be expected to behave the same. If you judge by comparing others to yourself you may want to notice whether it feels peaceful or not. You might be more peaceful, and also more pleasant to be around as you date, by just asking yourself, “Is it true I know how that person should be? Just because I’d do it differently does that mean I’m right?” If you let go of “I’m right” and “my way” thinking and just see life as it is you might find yourself having a lot more fun too. When judgment is gone what’s left is simply observing life as it is. And seeing life as it is never makes us suffer.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

147. If you’re sensitive and easily hurt you’ll suffer in your relationships

If you’re a sensitive person, easily hurt, you’ll notice that in all your relationships – but especially in dating – you’ll suffer often. Sometimes it may be major suffering and in other cases it may be minor. But you’ll suffer, nonetheless.

When people are vulnerable to the slightest comment or incident that they think puts them down it’s not their fault. Somewhere in life they’ve picked up the idea that they’re somehow just not good enough. They live much of their lives, often without even realizing it, checking and comparing to see if they measure up. Their insecurity causes them to easily interpret the comments or behavior of others as directed to them and meant to hurt them. These are the people that take onto themselves statements that weren’t even referring to them.

For example, Randy, a friend of mine was telling another friend that he’d read something in a book about taste tests done on the quality of drinking water. In the blind test people rated New York City water from a fountain better in taste than most of the bottled water they taste-tested. Then lab tests were also done on the cleanliness of the water and much of the bottled water didn’t match up to the city water either. Randy was about to tell his friend he was going to quit filtering his water when she began to argue with the results of the taste test and defend her own use of bottled water. She had assumed Randy was criticizing her for her use of bottled water when he had no thought of what she was doing at all. He was simply referring to his own water filtering.

In another incident my friend Sally had made arrangements to see a movie with Del. Del checked movie times and they selected one that he said would start at 7 p.m. When they got to the theater the movie had started 30 minutes earlier. It turns out Del had read the wrong line in the paper. Sally wasn’t upset in the slightest, and saw clearly that they just weren’t meant to see the movie at that time. She suggested they have dinner instead. Del then offered to buy dinner at an expensive restaurant and Sally jokingly said, “You don’t have to buy my dinner just because you got the movie time wrong.”

Instantly Del was hurt, later telling Sally that she was poking fun at him just because he had made a mistake. He was making her responsible for his suffering. It’s impossible that she could have caused his hurt because none of us even has that power. We either choose to be hurt or not.

Sally explained that her comment was nothing more than a spontaneous joke, which she thought Del could see if he just noticed her reaction when they found out the time was wrong. She was totally at peace with the fact that it happened, she said, knowing that’s just a happening. Even the words “wrong” or “mistake” are not accurate because there is no such thing except in our heads. We label something as a mistake when actually all it’s ever been is a happening. Nothing more.

So what do you do if you’re a person who gets easily hurt emotionally? Are you stuck with that condition forever? No. The good news is that all we have to do is look to see whether our thoughts about ourselves are really true. It doesn’t even matter where we picked up such thoughts. It could have been from family, kids or teachers at school, or many other ways. We don’t have to go back and figure out how we got those thought habits.

All we need to do is recognize that our self-image is nothing more than a bundle of thoughts we call me. When we look at ourselves right now is it true we’re really deficient in some way? I used to be a person with poor self-esteem which I carried with me for years. Finally I realized that that apparently rock-solid statue of thoughts I created that looked so real was a total illusion. My seemingly-so-real image of me was just that, an image – an image that caused me a lot of suffering. And it was based on false concepts I thought were true at the time they were formed.

They were concepts, or thoughts, that I took on at various times in life. Seeing that there’s really no me inside who’s running this show called Chuck was the end to all that since there’s not even a person to build an image around. Seeing clearly can be the end of the suffering for you too if you’re sincere about looking inside and seeing false ideas as false. What’s left after that is just life happening. Without judgments that’s really fine. There’s nothing to defend or argue about. Life just is!

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

146. Desire is fixating on an idea that can make dating miserable

Our lives, the sages and masters tell us, are largely unhappy because of our attachment to our desires. That certainly used to be my life. It’s pretty easy, as we date in our mature years, to feel a lot of stress and anxiety over not having our desires met. Why? One reason may be because we see we’re not immortal. We’re not going to be here forever. And there’s the idea, for many, that “I don’t want to die before I experience…” whatever it is they want. We can end up putting a lot of pressure on ourselves. There’s often a sense of desperation.

But reality says we don’t really even know that our desire, for a relationship in this case, will bring the happiness we seek. You can check that out in your own experience. How many times have you wanted something and gotten it only to realize that it didn’t take long for a new desire to pop up? If what we wanted had been satisfying we’d be satisfied as long as that thing or condition continued in our lives.

Desire is simply the fixation of the mind on an idea. Let me say that again: Desire is the fixation on an idea. We’re putting a lot of time into futurizing, thinking we know what’s best for our lives. It all leads back to thinking there’s a ‘me’ who can control things. Yet a little investigation shows us that there is no such thing as a ‘me’ running this show. ‘Me’ is just a thought. Drop the idea that ‘you’ can control things and simply flow in the happening of right now and – what do you know? – there’s happiness. It’s been waiting in the wings all the time for us to stop long enough to know it. It’s simply that uncaused joy of life and living, unfolding moment by moment. You live in it the moment you’re in the moment – all those times when you’re not fixating on desires and futures.

Dating isn’t much fun when you’re seeking a result. Then we’re always measuring whether this date experience is getting us to our goal. But without a goal dating is just enjoying being with someone. If something develops and that someone becomes a romantic partner, wonderful! If not, it wasn’t meant to be. Either way, when you’re relaxed and without an agenda you can have fun in dating.

Next time you think you know what’ll make you happy, and you’re pushing hell-bent to get it (or him or her!), ask yourself if you’re really, really sure. Do you actually know what’s best for you? Or is it possible that the One Infinite Intelligence that is the power behind all things knows better? Could it even be possible that the One is expressing itself as our idea that there’s a ‘me-in-control-here’? Hmmm!

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

145. Psychological baggage will stop any chance you have for good new relationships

You can’t bring an open, fresh perspective to mature dating when you’re holding onto resentments and hurts from a past marriage or relationship. Those feelings will surely affect any new relationship you try to form. So obviously the solution is to get past those hurt and confused feelings. But how?

The most direct, straightforward way I’ve found is what the masters have been teaching for centuries – investigate and see reality as it is. The only reason we feel painful thoughts of any kind – and the painful feelings that clearly follow those thoughts – is that we hold onto the idea that something shouldn’t have happened. Investigating just means asking yourself, “Since this has already happened is it true it shouldn’t have?” The answer is pretty clear. How are you possibly going to change the past? It’s over. Done. Period.

“Yes,” you may be saying, “she did what she did but that doesn’t make it right. It wasn’t fair to me and now I’m hurting. And you’re telling me I’m causing my own hurt? Come on!” What I’m saying may not feel loving and caring at first, so asking a person to face that they’re responsible for their hurt doesn’t necessarily get applause. No rave reviews for that! But we’re not looking for quick and temporary fixes here. We’re looking for long-term peace and inner joy.

So let’s deal with truth here. The truth, any time we’re hurting psychologically – any time! – is that our own thoughts are the cause, never what someone else has done. Your partner or wife may have done something you consider wrong, let’s say she had affairs and now you’re divorced and bitter.

When we look realistically at life what do we see? Do people have affairs? Yes. Is it a fact of life? Yes. Did it happen? Yes. Can you change it? No. The reality is your partner had affairs. You know it was meant to happen that way because life just is. If it can happen to anyone anywhere it can happen to any of us can’t it?

Then you can ask yourself: How do I feel when I think it shouldn’t have happened? Usually the answer is: miserable. Another question: How would feel if I didn’t have that thought?” The consistent answer is: a lot more peaceful. So then take a look at that original thought: “My wife should not have had affairs” and turn it around: “She should have had affairs.” How do you know that? Because it happened. Simple as that. That’s dealing with reality isn’t it? You’re no longer dealing with false statements. Now you’re dealing with what is. You can ask yourself why she would do it until you have no more breath to ask but you’ll never get the answer. So forget trying to figure it out. Instead, you can put that energy into just dealing with life as it is now.

We’ve been taught all our lives to view life according to a lot of ‘shoulds’ and ‘oughts’ and therefore argue with it when it isn’t the way we want it. But that’s crazy when reality stares you in the face so unmistakably. In this universe what happens happens. Without our judgments and stories there’s no deep, lasting pain associated with it.

Sure, if your wife leaves you for another man there will be feelings of loss. But if you don’t mentally leave yourself over and over by playing that scene of your wife and her affairs you’ll soon see that life is about change and it’s obviously time for your life to change. Again, how do you know? Because it happened. Reality is reality. What is, is. Period. Stop arguing with it and be at peace and able to move on. Harbor judgment and feed it by playing it over and over again and you prolong your misery. Suffering is always optional.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

144. See life as it is and mature dating is guaranteed to be pain-free and contented

If you’ve read any of the articles here about senior dating you know that I’m saying dating can be pleasant and enjoyable just like any other part of life when we relax into reality and see how life really works. That means we let go of thinking we know how life should be, because how we think it should be just isn’t true. It’s our imagination telling us stories. Our shoulds and oughts are just fantasies.

This is one way to look at it: We don’t think the sun should come up in the north or the west, just for variety. We don’t think gravity should pull things up just for fun. We don’t think the wind shouldn’t blow. No, we accept these as just the way life happens, and we realize we have no control over the way nature works.

Same with our bodies. Nature takes care of all the functions – moving cells around, growing hair and nails, digesting food, breathing us – all of it. It’s also nature – or you could call it God if you want, a term I don’t often use because it has so many loaded messages – that produces what we call the mental part of us. We don’t control thoughts, for instance. They happen. When they’re painful we don’t know how to switch them off to give ourselves a rest. And we don’t start them in the morning after we wake up either. They just happen, like the wind, gravity and your heart beating.

Yet at a very early age we picked up the idea that there’s a “me” here who has control. And control means we know how things should go and by golly we’re going to have them go that way. But reality doesn’t care what thoughts show up in our heads. Thoughts in our heads are just part of the game, like beautiful weather and hurricanes. I know, that’s hard to get hold of. The mind thinks it knows answers, and people on spiritual paths that I personally know have sometimes been seeking Truth for 20 and 30 years.

But Truth isn’t so hard to see when you simply realize each of us is part of the functioning of life. Applied to dating in our mature years what this means is that when we simply observe life as it is it can be a content and happy experience. You meet people, you date, you may fall in love but you don’t have an agenda and you’re not locked into having things go your way. Instead, you see that it’s meant to go the way it goes. Why? No reason. It just is!

Next time you find yourself emotionally suffering you could stop and ask yourself, “What am I thinking should be different from the way it is?” In other words, what are you judging? It’s something, you can be sure. You’re either judging a situation, like the government or the price of gas, or you’re judging a person, like the woman you’re dating. Just notice that whenever you’re hurting emotionally you’re disagreeing with the way life is at the moment.

You think there’s an independent “you” who has some independent power. But “you” have no power at all. You exist strictly at the pleasure of that Power which manifests everything. One year ago today my dad died. He was 93 and my brothers and I were at his bedside. One moment there was life in his body, the next moment there was none. The same eyes and ears and lungs and heart were there but they weren’t functioning any more. Why? Because the apparent “he” was never really a separate entity with independent power. And obviously the Power that was expressing itself as Dad no longer needed that body on this earth.

Small children haven’t yet learned that they supposedly have control so they’re at ease and happy with whatever happens, as long as they’re not hurting physically. That’s their natural state, as it is ours. All we need to do to live a naturally happy and peaceful life, including our dating life, is to simply be without thinking “we” or any circumstance or person should be different. That’s it. This is life! To argue with it is just crazy, and sometimes really painful. Worse, we’ll never, ever win.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

143. The future shows up not a moment too soon or too late

What will show up in your future dating isn’t worth waiting for simply because you miss now when your focus is on the future. Every time you want something you’re saying, “I’m going to put off my happiness until I get my ‘want’.” On the other hand, the future will show up exactly when it’s meant to, not a moment too late or too soon.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

142. You are your own answer to happiness and peace in dating and life

I read a statement the other day where a guy said, “In most cases a well-cared-for dog is happier than its owner. All a dog needs is food, shelter and some loving. Look at our list of needs: love, money, power, recognition, and on and on and on. It never stops.” Of course, he’s right. If you just zoom in on one of the needs he mentions, love, our dating can take a couple of paths.

We can date with the idea that we want to share love, and then whatever happens we’ll be happy with. Or we can date with the idea that we need to have the love we’re seeking. In that case we’ll often be suffering and miserable because dating doesn’t usually give us exactly what we think we want. Understanding life clearly, in an enlightened way, means nothing more than realizing that life is just what it is. Some power and infinite intelligence expresses itself as universes and eternity and infinitude and it’s way beyond any intelligence we’ve been given.

Yet we think we know how things should be and we don’t easily accept them as they are. Dogs don’t have that ego-driven idea – that they know. They simply are. And they’re happy. Throughout the centuries awakened individuals have also seen that just by realizing life is they can be happy. Actually, we all have moments of just being every day. Those are the moments when we’re so fully engaged in something that we totally lose track of the idea of a ‘me’ who needs something. It can happen when we’re engrossed in a project we find fascinating, watching a humming bird or taking a walk. In short, it happens every time we have no judgments and opinions about anyone or anything.

How do you live that all the time? Just give some attention to your judgments. They’re easy to see; you never feel fully open and alive and peaceful when you’re judging. When that little “suffer bell” rings just ask yourself, “Do I know I’m right? Is it possible this should be just the way it is?” We haven’t learned to question life so we can see reality. Instead, we so often act on childish habits we picked up that just don’t work. How do we know they’re not working? We suffer – needlessly. All emotional suffering is only thought. Do you want proof of that? In dreamless sleep you have no thought and no suffering. You are your own answer.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

141. "The heart has its reasons which reason cannot know."

Most of us were raised in a culture of the West that almost genuflects to pay homage to the mind and thoughts. We believe we can analyze almost anything if we just give enough attention to it. We try our mightiest to figure everything out. But have you noticed that trusting our brains almost never works when it comes to dating? We figure it all out… and damn! it turns out in a way we never dreamed.

Some of the Eastern cultures see life differently. People in those countries have been more often taught to trust their gut, that intuitive part of them, the spiritual wisdom they just ‘know’. Pascal, the noted French philosopher and mathematical genius once said, "The heart has its reasons which reason cannot know."

When we consider that we’re ‘being thought’ rather than being the thinkers (look and you’ll see you don’t choose your thoughts) we might also get a clue that our great reasoning and analytical abilities may not be so trustworthy. But That which animates us and gives us life is what we could consider the intuitive or gut-knowing part of us. It knows what to do automatically and we can be guided by it if we’re willing to drop what we think we know and just listen.

The message here is simple: If something feels right, even though your head can’t make sense of it, why not relax and go with it? If it feels wrong, listen and back away. That God-essence that we are knows what it’s doing. We can relax and stop worrying about making the right decisions. Then we just do the obvious, and the obvious will show up for us when it’s needed, not a minute too soon nor a minute too late.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

140. It can’t be rejection unless you say so

I was at a dance for singles one night some years ago. People who weren’t on the floor were seated around tables. I’d been sitting out one number, then the DJ put on a great Big Band tune, the kind of music I can hardly resist dancing to. I saw a woman sitting a few tables away and went over to ask her to dance. She turned me down cold.

That doesn’t happen to me often but on the way back to my table I saw another woman sitting alone so I stopped and asked her if she’d like to dance. Again I got turned down. That was a first for me – getting turned down by two women within seconds. I actually went back to my table chuckling. It just seemed surprising and kind of funny to me.

Was I rejected twice? No. What happened would only have been rejection if I had said so. I have no idea why these women didn’t want to dance with me right then. Maybe they didn’t like my looks. Maybe they were tired. Maybe they were hoping someone else would ask. Maybe they were about to head for the bathroom. You see? I had no idea why they said no. What I did see is that they could have had dozens of reasons but none of them had anything to do with me.

Even if they didn’t like my looks, or they didn’t like the way I danced from having seen me previously, that would still have nothing to do with me. Why? Because to them I’m only the picture they formed in their own minds. Their picture isn’t me. They didn’t even know me. What I saw instead of rejection is that life simply happens as it happens. There’s no mystery to it and it doesn’t mean anything particularly. It just is.

My being turned down twice within 10 seconds was also just what happened. If I thought it should have been different I’d have been making a judgment and obviously I’d also have created some hurt for myself. Nothing should be different than it is. Our thoughts create a lot of suffering for us when our opinions, interpretations and judgments conclude that something should be ‘our’ way rather than the way it is.

If you feel rejected in your dating just notice that you’re the one who called a happening ‘rejection’. Without that label the experience was simply an experience. You can see it in a light-hearted, humorous way and just observe life moving along, or you can choose to feel disconnected, hurt and humiliated. The choice is pretty simple. If you’re not sure, investigate if you’re feeling hurt. Ask yourself if you really know that something should be different. If you see that you don’t know, then there’s just acceptance of life as it is. No problems, no suffering.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

139. Accepting ‘what is’ means sometimes compassionately sharing the other’s pain

If your dating is more than just seeing a person once or twice you’ll probably be sharing some things in greater depth as you get to know each other better. As mature and senior daters we’ve all experienced painful times in our lives, through divorce or loss of a spouse, or through disagreements and possible alienation from some of our adult children, or for many other reasons. It’s not unusual when we’re dating to want to share some of these painful experiences with our date or partner.

The other person, however, may not be so ready to hear as you are to share, and sometimes you may feel you haven’t really been understood. You feel pushed away and closed off. What could have been a bonding in your relationship can instead be a rift and a separation.

Years ago I was at a conference and heard a prominent Catholic priest and nationally-recognized author tell this story. He had a young woman friend who had been hospitalized with a serious medical condition. In the hospital she was frightened and suffering emotionally, and she later told the priest that there was one person out of all her visitors who really made a difference for her when she was feeling so hurt and vulnerable.

When the priest asked what this man did the woman replied, “He didn’t try to tell me it’ll be all right and he didn’t try to fix me,” she said. “He showed me he understood because he just got on the floor (figuratively) and cried with me.” The woman felt seen; she felt someone was willing to share where she was at the moment.

I think we so often shy away from just listening when the other person wants to share their feelings with us, probably because we don’t want to know they’re in so much pain or distress, and we don’t know what to do with our own feelings. So we try to steer people away from saying what they authentically feel. Instead we tell ourselves we’ll make them feel better by saying it’ll be over soon, or time heals all things, even when we know those papered-over comments don’t feel good when we’re in their situation.

Yes, time does heal. “But who’s going to be with me right now while I’m hurting? You obviously aren’t because you’re trying to get me to look at something else when what I want is not to feel so lonely in this deep hurt, fear and confusion I’m feeling. I want someone to be here with me, not trying to talk me out of my real experience at the moment.”

Telling someone things will be better in the future is something like hearing someone talk about their pain, then pointing out the pretty bird on the tree limb outside the window. They don’t want to talk about pretty birds right then. They want to be heard and seen and understood. They want someone to treat them with enough respect to honor their pain and feel it with them and cry with them, not ‘fix’ them and try to distract them in patronizing and condescending ways.

There are certainly situations where some people seem to wallow in their pain and they want someone to wallow with them. I’m not talking about that. That’s enabling them to stay stuck. I’m talking about times when genuine feelings just seem to need to be shared. After you’ve listened completely and with compassion your date or partner may feel great relief. Then there’s no need for them to continue to replay the painful times again and again. In the process you can’t help but develop a closer bond and a deeper appreciation for each other. It’s the love of real caring and support. And it happens when you’re able to simply be present to ‘what is’, without trying to control life and make it different than it is.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

138. Do you really feel happier when you’ve made sure you’re right and your date is wrong?

I ordered the Special, a sandwich with a bowl of soup, at a small deli a few months ago. One woman in this small restaurant was making and serving the sandwiches. When she brought my order to the table the soup was missing so I politely reminded her of that. When she said I hadn’t ordered soup I explained what I thought I had ordered from the reader board. It turns out that the hand-written board was a little confusing and I hadn’t ordered what I thought.

In the process of explaining what my order actually was this sweet but kind of crusty woman said, “I’m right, you’re wrong, get a clue.” I laughed out loud, as I’m chuckling now while I type this. She was right and she really wanted me to know that.

Unfortunately, in our dating relationships we often have a strong need to be right and prove the other person wrong. It could be about a conversation you had earlier that you’re sure you remember correctly, or any other incident. The point is some people really want to make sure you know they’re right.

If you have a tendency to do this ask yourself, does it work? Does it ever pay? Most likely your date or partner feels diminished or humiliated if you prove yourself right. Or at the very least they probably don’t appreciate your insistence on making them wrong. And if you look inside you’ll probably find you don’t feel so good yourself. Don’t you feel happier and more peaceful when you’ve made someone smile and feel worthwhile? Do you feel somewhat diminished yourself when you have to make someone small so you can feel worthwhile?

Just observing how we feel inside makes it pretty clear that our true nature is caring and compassion. It’s not ridicule, derision or unkindness. We probably don’t intend to be mean but we’re so intent on appearing superior – or at least being equal and worthy – that we belittle someone in the process. The funny/sad thing is that we don’t feel superior at all when we stop to look. We can actually feel pretty stupid.

You’ll notice that people who have a good sense of themselves don’t need to make anyone wrong. They see that we’re all human and sometimes we make mistakes in memory. So what? Once you’ve seen the reality of this you may not need to be “right” any longer. You’ll probably have a more pleasant time dating, wouldn’t you think?

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

137. Taking risks can be a way of loving yourself and delighting in a new adventure

Several years ago I went as a single to a ballroom dance. I was sitting through one number because it was Latin music I didn’t know how to dance to. A woman came up and asked me to dance. We’d never seen each other, and it felt good to have her ask. She wasn’t particularly pretty or a skilled dancer, but I said ‘yes’ and we had a good time, even though I didn’t really know what I was doing. It was a chance to meet a person I probably wouldn’t have met.

She was an attorney out to have fun and obviously she wasn’t going to sit around the sidelines hoping someone would ask her to get on the floor. No. She decided to take charge and control her own happiness. I can’t imagine any man at the dance who wouldn’t have wanted to dance with her, just because she asked.

Somewhere in our society we got the idea that a man can control his destiny by asking for what he wants, but a woman can’t. There may have been a reason why that made sense in the past. But I can’t think of any reason today, can you? Women want and deserve equal rights. Yet so many ‘mature’ or ‘senior’ women still don’t recognize they can assert their equal status by just changing their attitudes about old roles. Every man I know has been turned down for a dance or a date when he’s asked, at some time in his life, probably many times. I've sure had my share of turn-downs.

You might be surprised, though, at the women over the years who have told me they won’t ask a man to dance or to go out because they don’t want to be rejected. They say it’s scary to risk being turned down. But is that worse than not having the opportunity at all? Asking and being turned down doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you. In fact, it probably has nothing at all to do with you. No man who’s even a little bit caring about people is going to turn a woman down because she doesn’t look right for a dance. Come on now, it’s just a dance.

As for a date, it is possible that a person you ask to go out just doesn’t feel you’d be a fit together? In that case, honesty is the best policy. Being turned down doesn’t really have anything to do with you at all. I met a woman who I later called and asked about dating and she told me her daughters had recently moved away from home and she needed some space to herself, without being encumbered by anyone else. We had been introduced by a friend and had a first meeting with the idea that we might spend some time together.

Our coffee meeting went well I thought and she seemed like a nice person I’d like to get to know. I’m not sure whether she changed her mind because I didn’t strike her right, or whether in fact she just needed time alone. But it didn’t matter. I didn’t take it as a reflection on me at all, and you don’t need to either if it happens to you. It just means it wasn’t meant to be, and that’s all it means.

The sad thing about all this is that we limit ourselves by rules and roles imposed by others. “They” say it’s not the proper way. Who is “they”? And why should their voices be heard above our own? The key is to follow your heart. What would you like to do, ask someone to dance, or meet for dinner or a movie? Then ask.

Every day we fall into the old habits of limiting ourselves because of what others have told us or what we’ve come to believe about ourselves. But you can question those beliefs, including the belief that if I’m rejected I won’t be able to handle it. Is that really true? What’s the worst that could happen? Most of those old admonitions aren’t true and may never have been true for us. But we’ve unconsciously bought into them. And they leave us emotionally ragged and poverty-stricken when we live by them.

We go around saying we want love. But are we expecting that to come from someone else? Getting love is our job. Why not step in and love ourselves? We treat ourselves well by following our hearts, that intuitive voice that says, “Let’s do this.”

If you had a grown daughter would you tell her, “It’s okay to go to a dance, Honey, but I’d sure be disappointed if I knew you had asked a man to dance.” Or would you discourage her from asking a man out? Of course not. You’d encourage her to live to the fullest and have a good time. But for you, it may look different. “Oh, I couldn’t do that. I’ve never asked a man to dance before. It would just seem so odd.”

Sure, it might seem odd. But taking risks is a part of life for all of us. No one feels comfortable doing something they’ve never done before. But we can push out and do it anyway. What can you lose, except your fear of doing it? Chances are you’ll be delighted with the result. You’ll meet a new person, have a chance to dance or date when you would have been sitting on the sidelines, and best of all, boost your own self-esteem and self-confidence.

Every time we push out into new territory for ourselves, we win, even if the result doesn’t turn out to be what we expected. Why do we win? Because we’ve achieved one more thing in our lives, jumped one more hurdle, opened up to one more experience. And every experience is a new adventure.

Living is about flowing with life, not cutting off life. If your intuitive sense says asking someone to dance or date sounds interesting, why not go for it? Only memories of what has happened or what you ‘should’ do could cause you pain. Drop those wispy memory-thoughts and what’s left? Just the adventure of living spontaneously and freely. And maybe meeting the guy of your dreams.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

136. Can you truly say “I love you” when your actions are hurtful?

As we date in these later years of life what are we really seeking? Most mature daters I’ve talked to say they want to share love – to give it and feel it coming back from someone they’re close to. But what actually is this thing we call love? Is it a thought, an emotion? Do we know we love someone when we can’t get enough of them and love is new?

How do we actually measure love? The age-worn statement “Actions speak louder than words” may be a good way. Words are easy to say but they’re not a very good measuring stick. Another cliché: “What you are speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you say” also applies here I think. Both these statements refer to the fact that words that aren’t lived out in action aren’t worth much. So if we were to look at behavior to get a picture of love what would that look like?

You’d probably agree that the picture of loving behavior wouldn’t be a picture of someone purposely hurting another person, either in words or actions. We couldn’t expect people to believe us if we say we love someone then treat them badly. Yet that’s what happens in a lot of ‘love’ relationships. Sometimes there’s physical abuse but more often there’s emotional abuse, in the form of words and manipulative actions such as disapproving frowns, raised eyebrows, screaming voices, or no voice at all – withholding communication. All these ways are aimed at punishing our dating partner. The aim is to hurt. We think if they hurt enough they’ll do what we want, or stop doing what we don’t want.

But is that love? Isn’t love when we don’t judge our partner, when we’re not trying to force them to become who we want them to be? Aren’t the words, “I love you” meaningless if they’re not backed up with actions that, in fact, speak a lot louder? We may think that because this person is our partner we have the right to try to change them so the relationship will work better. After all, we’re not happy with the way they are. But is it someone else’s job to make us happy? Isn’t it their job just to be themselves?

Instead of trying to change someone, which is never caring and loving, maybe we could see the alternative, which is to accept them as they are even if we choose not to be with them. After all, we don’t have to stay in a relationship. We can find someone else better suited to us.

Realizing we’re free to leave can put a whole new angle on our relationship. When we don’t feel like a victim we might even be able to see that our partners are really just fine the way they are. We can be happy without the need for anyone else to change at all. All we need to do is stop thinking they have the power to make or break our happiness. When we’re not trying to change reality (in this case who another person is) we feel peaceful inside. We realize we don’t have to hurt someone so we can be happy.

When we’re not judging we feel relaxed and at ease. You can see in your own direct experience that nonjudgment is our natural state. It’s called just being. That’s how babies can be so serene and content. They’re just being. To me that’s love

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

135. You can’t solve dating problems by assigning blame and finding fault

At this stage of life we probably all know that having disagreements in a relationship is just what happens. Each partner comes from a different background so it’s natural we won’t always see things the same way. A disagreement, however, is not a conflict unless one or both people makes judgments about the other. Then there’s discomfort and unease, for whoever is making judgments. And someone definitely is, otherwise there wouldn’t be a conflict.

When conflict starts it’s not uncommon for someone to start talking about who’s wrong and who’s at fault. Generally, the idea is to pin blame; it’s a right/wrong game. Each partner often wants to be right and blame the other for being the cause of the problem. It’s unrealistic to talk about a problem as though it’s a problem with the relationship, though, because a relationship isn’t an entity and it can’t have a problem. ‘Relationship’ is just a word that describes the interaction between two people.

Yet if there’s a problem in a relationship what does that mean? Simply stated it just means that one or both people are suffering. So rather than try to assign right and wrong to someone it makes more sense to just ask yourself: Am I hurting? If so, I’ve got a problem. Does the other person have a problem too? That’s not our business and we couldn’t solve it even if we knew the answer.

No matter what we’re unhappy with in life – whether it’s about dating or feeling left out by our grown kids – the problem is always our problem. After all, we’re the one who’s hurting and we’re the only one who can fix the hurt. How do you do that? The answer is to look and see what we’re making judgments about. Emotional pain is always about judging, which is thinking something should be different from the way it is. You can check your own life to find out that’s true.

When you’re hurting emotionally investigate your beliefs. What are you sure you have the right answer for? Drop the judgments and let life be the way it is and immediately you’re free of pain. And Voila! All of a sudden there’s no problem in the relationship.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

134. In a conflict with your date do you deal in truth or lies?

Have you noticed that we know intuitively what’s the ‘right’ thing for us to do in our dating relationships? By ‘right’ I don’t mean morally right but what feels peaceful and gives us a sense of ease and serenity. In other words, we know the truth for ourselves.

Spiritual leaders with a clear understanding of life have been teaching for centuries that truth is love. Anything other than truth doesn’t feel peaceful. When we feel most relaxed, at ease and happy it’s pretty easy to know that must be our natural state. So non-truth is obviously not our real nature. When we have conflict in our dating life, however, how many times do we rely on what’s not true in our communication? It’s fairly common to say things that are cutting or hurtful that aren’t true. There’s no love in that, and we know it inside because immediately we feel tight and stressed. It’s pretty simple to see that in such situations not telling the truth doesn’t work for us.

Yet because we somehow have learned that hurting someone or putting them down will make us feel better, we tell lies that we know aren’t true for us. We might say things such as, “You’re the sorriest excuse for a man I’ve ever seen” or “You never communicate honestly.” Or we might throw in some real zingers such as, “I can’t stand you” or “Why don’t you just leave since you’re always flirting with other men?”

When those statements aren’t true do we really feel better? Investigation usually reveals we don’t. We feel miserable. Our habit of lashing out in anger over our hurt feelings isn’t dealing in truth. Truth might be to tell our partner that we’re feeling hurt right now. Not to make our partner responsible for our hurt but just to acknowledge the truth.

Then, if we want, we can investigate the thoughts that led to our hurt feelings and see where we made judgments – where we hold interpretations or opinions that caused us to hurt. Our emotional hurt is always about us. It’s never about the other person. When we realize our suffering has nothing to do with our partner we can be loving and nonjudgmental toward them. We don’t need to say and do hurtful, unkind things. The result is we havent added to our pain by telling lies, and we haven’t damaged the relationship.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

133. Is your relationship behavior based on what you know or what you believe?

When we believe anything that belief becomes our master, and we become its slave. In dating let’s say you’re a man who believes that women cry to get their way. The woman you’re dating may cry out of real hurt or frustration but if you believe her tears are always manipulation your actions will be colored by that. You’re a slave to that belief.

Or maybe you’re a woman who believes that all men are just after sex. You may treat a man who genuinely cares about you and shows warm affection as though he was some sort of degenerate because you ‘believe’ he only wants to use you. Beliefs like that may be almost unconscious but whatever you think is true will have to be true for you, and color your every word and action.

Not only do our beliefs become the foundation for our actions and reactions, we nearly always project something onto someone else based on our self-belief. For instance, if I think I’m unworthy I’ll be easily hurt by anything anyone says that feels like a put-down to me. Someone might say, “Isn’t she pretty?” and an unworthy-feeling person will immediately say, “Oh, so you think I’m not, huh!” Our beliefs become our self-reference point and all our thoughts then spring from that.

Just what is a belief? One dictionary defines it as “a vague idea in which some confidence is placed”. Yet most of us cling to our beliefs as though they were real and solid, not the made-up wisp of thought they really are. We give them center stage and build our lives around them.

Knowing, on the other hand, is a great deal different from a belief. Knowing is factual. Knowing is just what is, period. It’s what’s happening right now, without our story because ‘story’ is back to belief again. Let’s say your new date tells you he’ll call. Three days go by and you haven’t heard. Now you’re angry because you ‘know’ if he hasn’t called by now he’s a deceitful liar. That’s your belief, and it could be right. But maybe you find he had an emergency and didn’t have a chance to call. On the other hand if you just notice he isn’t calling, and don’t add your interpretations and beliefs you can be at ease.

Most of us live in a false world much of the time. It’s a world of our own creation, usually based on beliefs about life that aren’t true. We don’t see life as it is. We see our belief about it and then live from that. Usually that results in a lot of painful judgments. Instead, we can stop and ask ourselves if our beliefs and thoughts are actually true? How does the world really work? Do things happen the way we think they should happen or do they happen the way they do? Is it actually true men just want to use women for sex? Do we really know all women manipulate men with tears?

When we argue with ‘what is’ we never win – ever! When we build our lives on beliefs that have no more stability than shifting sand we’re always going to be confused and stressed. When we simply go with the knowing of life as it is our stress and pain can disappear.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

132. You’ll have fun mature dating adventures if you don’t need more, bigger, better experiences

Part of the fun of mature dating is the new experiences it brings us. Maybe we meet someone who kayaks and we’ve never kayaked before and here’s our chance. Or we simply have the experience of being with a person we’re getting to know or that we’ve dated for some time and just enjoy being with.

For most of us we’ve spent our lives looking for new, bigger or better experiences. There’s nothing wrong with that unless that becomes our driving force, as it does in subtle or gross ways for most of us. We think life isn’t good unless we have more, faster, newer or better experiences, and the search is never-ending and stressful. The interesting fact about experiences is that while they come, they also go. The newness and excitement wears off. So we can never rest. We’re always on the prowl, always unsatisfied.

Instead of wanting experiences what I’ve seen is that what we’re really looking for is peace or happiness, and we think new experiences will give it to us. Yet when we stop to look we realize they never have – only for a short time. There is a place where you can always find ease and happiness, however. That’s when we simply relax into the beingness that is the background for all experiences. We could call that beingness the experiencING that allows all experiences to happen.

As an explanation consider seeing. When we see something we unwittingly split that up into the seer (us) and the seen (the object). We focus on the seen and the seer but we forget that the unwavering background of seeING itself comes first. It’s what allows anything to be seen. The seer and the seen flow out of seeING itself. There’s the appearance of three but it’s actually one.

In the same way experiencING comes before the experiencer or the experienced. The experiences always happen because first there was experiencING. Not a single experience could happen without that experiencing essence, just like there could be no furniture in the room you’re sitting in right now without the space that allows anything to be.

So while experiences come and go, that experiencing essence is always there. It’s who we are, that simple beingness or presence that is aware of itself. If I ask if you are present and aware you automatically say yes. You don’t have to think about it and no one has to tell you. That being/essence is who you are and you know it without question.

All experiences or events are the content (the furniture) in that space-like beingness or experiencing. As we enjoy experiences without being attached to them or having a need for new and bigger ones we can simply focus on the experiencING that watches all experiences. In words, we start any description of ourselves with “I am….”

When we relax into that ‘I amness’, that experiencing essence, we feel one with that because it’s our true nature. There’s a subtle warmth and ease, or sense of well-being in that. That’s constantly with us, always stable, always without stress. So no matter how many unsettling dating experiences we may have that can feel painful we’re always able to just relax back into our real nature and see that it’s not affected by any experience, good or bad. It needs nothing. It’s the calm background of experiencing or pure, space-like awareness. It’s like the screen a movie appears on, never affected at all by the movie, no matter how sad or painful it is.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

131. Childish emotions can run you right out of a relationship you want

In many ways as we’ve grown older we’ve become wiser through our experiences. We know that even on a warm day there can be a cool breeze off the ocean, for instance, so we might bring along a light jacket. We don’t do the things kids do inadvertently that cause them to regularly knock over and spill things. We’ve learned a few things about living through the years.

Yet the programming we’ve had since we were small often stays with us and controls our behavior right into our 50s, 60s and beyond unless we challenge old beliefs and assumptions. Left uninvestigated that programming can cause us a huge pile of hurt in our dating. For instance you might have learned along the way as a kid that when you get angry you yell. We may have seen people say hurtful things to others in some wild emotion that they wouldn’t otherwise say.

But if you find yourself letting angry or jealous or hurtful emotions run right off the end of your tongue in words you later realize aren’t true there’s something you can do about it. Grow up! That’s kid stuff, after all. Childish behavior isn’t changed by will power. But it can drop by itself if we’ve got the courage to see the truth about life.

All we have to do is stop and take a look at our emotions and we can see how fickle they are. They’re up and down and sideways and backwards. One minute we feel this way, another moment we feel that way. How believable can our emotions be when they change so readily? One minute we say, “I can’t stand you” and five minutes later we say, “I love you.” Which one is it? The changes are so rapid, do we really want to be guided by that fickle nonsense? Yet we often live as though our emotions are solid and real. Our emotions bark silent orders to us and we jerk around like puppets – all because we’ve never looked at the lies those emotions tell.

We say something one night, for instance, that we clearly recognize the next morning isn’t true for us and never was. In a burst of anger we might say, “I hate you” or “You’re a liar” and even when you say the words you know deep down they’re not true. We don’t really believe that about this person we profess to care about. Yet the lies come sturtting off our tongues like cocky roosters.

Instead of letting feelings control our words we can investigate and see just how true are these emotions we make into little gods and then let them dictate our actions. If we continue to operate from the lies and conditioned responses that have run our lives we’ll probably find ourselves in a lot of pain. We might also find ourselves right flat out of a relationship we really wanted.

Yes, it’s true that we may feel really angry or jealous at our date at any moment, but is it true we really don’t love her at that time? Is love, after all, just an emotion that comes and goes? Have a look and see if you really want to believe the emotional lies that pop up when you’re feeling hurt or neglected. Our feelings may not feel very loving at the time but our deeper being will give us the truth if we just stop and take a minute to listen to it.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer