74. Senior dating evokes many feelings but they're never caused by your partner

The emotions we feel in dating relationships have exactly not one thing to do with another person, and everything to do with ourselves. “But that can’t be,” you say. “She said this and it hurt my feelings.” Yet another person in the same situation may not be hurt at all. The wise ones over the years have told us we each live in a different world. That sounds crazy. We all know there’s only one world and we all see the same things in it. When it rains we all get wet, not just some. Go to a concert and everyone hears the same music. So we can’t live in different worlds, you say.

On a concrete level that’s all true. However, there’s another world we also each live in, and that’s the subjective or personal world. That’s the world of personal analysis, interpretation, judgment and opinion. We apply these qualities to nearly everything we experience, and most people live in that opinion world all the time. For example, two people hear the same music. One says she likes it, another says he hates it. Still, the music is just what it is. Two people see the same art. One thinks it’s exquisite, the other thinks it stinks. The art, however, is neither good nor bad; it’s just what it is. A rude comment is made. One person is hurt, another thinks the commentator has a problem. The real truth, though, is that, without interpretation, the comment is just sounds in the air.

So you can see that the world we live in is only what we see based on past observations and interpretations. When we’ve learned someone else can hurt us we live in a painful myth. We’re assigning others power they don’t have and relegating ourselves to the role of victim. “Victim”, in the way I’m using the word here, means someone whose happiness is controlled by someone else. No one has control over your feelings, only you. In dating relationships we take on the victim position all by ourselves by giving power to someone else to determine how we feel.

No one can hurt you emotionally unless you choose to be hurt. In the same way, you can’t hurt anyone either. In short, what I’m saying is that the world we each live in is always our own belief about it, and rarely what it really is. If we like the music we hear we’ve overlaid the sounds with our opinion. Is the music the cause of our feelings? No, it’s what we bring to the music that makes it “good” or “bad”. To the child whose mom makes her take a nap that’s bad. To the mom it’s good. In reality it’s neither good nor bad, except for someone’s opinion.

Next time dating is painful to you, instead of blaming someone else and feeling like a victim just notice that it takes a “you” to decide to suffer. Another person wouldn’t be suffering in the same situation. So it can’t be the situation or the other person that’s responsible for your hurt. Then ask yourself: Am I sure this incident should be my way? Or does the universe function quite clearly just the way it does, without asking my opinion? Seeing life as it truly is, is always freeing. Seeing it through our myths, dreams and projections will always mean pain because our ideas aren’t true when you match them up with “what is”. Remember the saying, “Know the truth and the truth will set you free.” And the truth is that our emotional world is always, entirely, 100% our own making.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer