91. Forget the meaning of dating and relationships and just relax into what is

As we’ve gotten a little older (notice I said a little!) we tend to think we’ve also gotten a lot wiser. As we date now in these mature years we have a better sense of what we want and what we can expect from people than we did when we were younger and less experienced. Unfortunately, it’s the very idea that we think we know, or should know, that often causes us the most pain in dating.

Some years ago I was friendly with a woman who was dating and falling much in love with a local dentist. Mary Ann was getting to know his children and family and saw a bright future for herself with him as her husband. He was bright, wealthy, handsome and just the right man. Then she discovered that he had also been dating other women. She was devastated. Why, she wanted to know, would this happen? Why would a man she trusted be so deceitful? She agonized over this for months. She wanted reasons. She wanted answers. She couldn’t let go of it.

But living life as it is doesn’t provide answers. We really have to learn to live in the “not knowing”, in the mystery of life as it shows up. That “why” question can be our downfall. We’ve been conditioned to think there’s got to be an answer. We think meaning would somehow bring us security. We’d have something stable to hang on to, a sense that we’re not just dangling, that we know how life works. We want all the pieces of the puzzle to fit. So we put in a lot of energy and struggle trying to find that meaning.

The reality of life, though, is that it doesn’t really have meaning except the meaning we give it. When we stop trying to find answers we may be able to relax and just see that life is what happens, and it doesn’t need to make sense to us. We can allow it to be just the way it is. It may look like chaos and we may feel bereft and beleaguered as though we’re hanging in space and not knowing what to do. When we just do the next logical thing in front of us though, the fear of insecurity is gone.

When you look you’ll see that life usually doesn’t turn out the way we expected. Many of us weren’t in the career we thought we’d be in, we didn’t expect to be single at this stage of our lives, we had more or fewer childen than we thought we’d have, and so on. As I’ve said before in these essays, life doesn’t ask for our opinion.

We think all should make sense to “us”, as though we could see from a large enough perspective. We think it should mean what we want it to mean. But think about this: We’re totally OK with life not having meaning in many ways. What meaning does music have? We don’t have to try to figure that out. What meaning is there in going dancing? Is there meaning to a mountain? Or a snow storm? Or the ebb and flow of the tides?

If everything is allowed to be just what it is, you’ll notice that its energy just moves and flows, as it will, whether we’re trying to figure it out or not.

I’m reminded of the children’s story:
Little Bo-peep has lost her sheep and doesn’t know where to find them.
Leave them alone and they’ll come home, wagging their tails behind them.

The pain of an ending relationship, if seen simply as “what is”, will take care of itself when we leave it alone and stop struggling with its meaning. We can be willing to simply rest in the unknowing (leave them alone) and see that life continues to unfold its own way. The struggle (that was only mind-made in the first place) is over.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer