108. Do you scream and kick in “adult” forms when you don’t get your way?

Little kids will often go into a rant, scream, stomp their feet and generally make a ruckus when they don’t get their way. But have you ever considered that that’s also how many adults behave when we don’t get our way in the world of romance? For adults the result is called emotional suffering. Even as mature adults we often do the same thing as kids, but in a different form. Adults may also scream, or their expression of unhappiness may take a seemingly more sophisticated form such as silentseething, manipulating by not communicating, using unkind labels and names, and various other forms of emotional or even physical violence and blackmail.

Here’s an example of how it works. Carolyn thinks her date Jim is “too friendly” to Janey at a party. Carolyn doesn’t want him being friendly with another woman and she lets him know by sulking, blaming and pouting. Put another way, Carolyn doesn’t like not getting her way. “Her way” is to have Jim not being friendly to women. She’s telling him, in effect, “I don’t want you to live your life your way, I want you to drop that and start living your life the way I tell you to.”

When we hurt emotionally it’s virtually always because we’re resisting something. We’re arguing with “what is” and think it should be “what I want” instead. As a result we suffer all kinds of emotional turmoil and upset, including sadness, anger, jealousy, loneliness, etc. Life, on the other hand, just happens as it does, including our dating lives. Instead of holding onto our beliefs about how life should be and then getting upset when it isn’t that way, it’s much easier I’ve found to simply go along with life since it’s not going to change whether we’re upset or not. Have you noticed that?

In the example above, Jim has the right to talk or even flirt with anyone he wants to, just as Carolyn has. After all, would she want Jim telling her how she has to behave? Of course Carolyn also has the right to choose not to be with Jim too.

You may be thinking, “Yeah, but if she loves the guy she doesn’t want to lose him. No wonder she’d be jealous.” But again, when we think life has to be our way (Jim should be with me and not be friendly to other women) we’re going to hurt when it isn’t. Carolyn wouldn’t have to hurt if she weren’t attached to having things her way, and instead noticed that what’s happening is just what’s happening. Christ said “Know the truth and the truth will set you free.” It seems clear to me that he was talking about seeing the reality of life as it is, not as we think it should be. The reality in this case was that Jim was talking to Janey. What that meant to Carolyn was all her own story, based on her judgments and interpretations.

It’s easy for us to build dream castles of a life together with someone, and we don’t like to see them shattered. But when we let go of our attachment to having life be our way we can more easily just roll with what is. Then there’s room for adventure, playfulness and discovery in this mature dating world. Or… we can hold onto wanting life to be our way and figurately scream and kick and suffer. When the dust settles though we’ll see that “what is” is still just what is. It didn’t notice our kicking and screaming.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer