123. True dating happiness may not be what you think it is

If you asked most mature daters why they date they’d probably tell you they date because they hope to find a mate and be happier. So dating is a means to an end, and that end is always in the future of course. When you look at it, a lot of our life energy goes into activities aimed at helping us be happier in some future time.

So if future happiness is the bottom line for our dating, maybe it would help to examine just what do we mean when we speak of happiness. Happiness isn’t really the opposite of unhappiness. But that’s the way we often look at it. We think we want the happiness side of happy/unhappy full time. First, that would be impossible because we’d have to have some unhappiness to even know what happiness is. Besides that, we’d burn out if we had the “high” most people think of as happiness all the time.

Maybe if we looked more closely at our lives we’d say we really want to be content rather than happy. We live in a society that’s hooked on loud, busy, wide-eyed, active events that we often call happiness. That’s really a myth. Lasting, steady happiness is much more faint and subtle. At first we may have to look a bit to notice it.

Consider a small baby. Aren’t they happy just being, without needing to be bombarded with busy activity all the time? Events can happen that bring a smile or laughter to a baby, but when the event is over they’re not looking for their next “happiness” fix. Events or no events, it’s all just part of the mosaic to a baby. Instead a baby is just pure presence and awareness, without an opinion, interpretation or judgment about the world. Babies are simply interested – curious, fully engaged with all their senses, and content.

Where we sometimes have trouble in our dating is that we don’t want to just be in life. No, we want it to be exciting, thrilling, and knock-your-socks-off romantic. We want highlights. Based on just our own thought-pictures of dating we tend to make judgments about how it should look and feel instead of just seeing it as it is. As long as we’re looking for those highs we’re going to be disappointed and discouraged much of the time.

Instead of seeing dating as a way to get something in the future – a partner and happiness – we could just see dating as an activity that takes place as a part of our lives. It can be a pleasant and interesting event without an agenda. Without expectations and judgments the time we spend dating could be ordinary and spectacular just in its simplicity. When your focus is without seeking happiness in the future there can be happiness right now, just by being where you are with your senses wide open and fully engaged. To me, that’s true happiness.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

122. Questions about my statement: “People don’t love, they want something”

I was questioned about my meaning when I wrote in a recent article about romantic relationships that, “People don’t love, they want something.” The person who questioned me said she felt that even though people sometimes have problems in the best of relationships they don’t stop loving their partner, even when they’re angry.

So let me clarify a bit. When I said “People don’t love, they want something” I was speaking of unconditional love. No strings attached. Not wanting anything back. Having strings means to me that you love but that love is only acted out when your partner meets your conditions and demands.

To me it’s easy to say the words, “I love you”. But the actions of love are what count, not the words. When we love someone it seems to me that means we honor them by letting them freely be who they are. We treat them in kind and respectful ways even if they’re not living life the way we would live it.

When our partner is doing what we want, it’s easy to behave in loving ways. However, when we withdraw or get angry and punishing toward our partner if we don’t get what we want, that’s not what I call love in action. That’s “give me what I want” in action. That’s why I say people don’t love, they want something. What they want can be anything from, “I don’t want you talking to another man at a party” to “I want you to agree with my political views”. When the partner doesn’t toe the line we let them know by yelling, withdrawing, being sullen, etc. The range of manipulative actions anyone can take toward another is almost endless. Often our action toward our partner is designed to hurt them where we know they’re most vulnerable.

To me, any time we let our partner know we don’t like their behavior by not speaking, withholding touch, being sarcastic, saying hurtful things, etc., we’re not loving. We’re trying to control and get our way instead. Conditional love is a power play. It says, “I’ll be caring toward you if you give me what I want.”

As I look at relationships, including my own behavior in the past, I notice that most people don’t really love openly and without strings. We “love” when we get what we want and withdraw “love” when we don’t. The question is, does it work? Most of us use this behavior innocently. It’s what we learned to do as a means of survival in the past, usually in our childhood. It’s become a habit because we haven’t learned to investigate our beliefs.

By questioning ourselves the manipulation we felt we needed drops away by itself when we see that our basic assumptions are probably not correct. Is it true that our lady is cheating on us when she enjoys conversation with another man? Do we really know our partner should behave the way we would behave in the same situation? Is it really true that we always know best what should happen and how anyone else should act? Or is it more true that our partner just does what she does and that’s the way it is because the universe operates as it’s obviously meant to?

We don’t need to judge ourselves if we see we’ve been manipulating, and we don’t need to judge others for that behavior. We’re just seeing people do the best they knew how. Now, however, they may notice it hasn’t worked in the long run to make their relationships more loving and warm so maybe they’d want to question.

What I see is that manipulative, controlling, unloving actions drive a wedge in relationships. Does your woman really want to love you more when you get mad and yell at her because she danced with a guy at the wedding? Probably not. Judgment and manipulation is nearly always more painful for the one who judges. Freedom for both partners to be who they are leaves both in a feeling of openness, warmth, respect and caring. That’s what I call love. St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians says it pretty well.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

121. I want what I want and to hell with what you want

Isn’t it interesting how so many of the feelings we had as teenagers in romance come up again now as we’re dating in our mature, more senior years? In my experience, jealousy is one that seems to show up often. Somehow when we’re jealous we think we’re going to lose something we want. It’s an entirely self-centered feeling.

Yet people sometimes call it love. They say things like, “I love him so much that I just ache to think of losing him.” Men are more likely to say something like, “If that guy goes over to talk to her one more time I’m going to deck him.” Then we tell our date or partner that we can’t help our strong feeling because we love so much.

But is that love? Doesn’t love want for the other person what that person wants for herself? If she wants to talk to another man shouldn’t she have the freedom to do that? Wouldn’t allowing her to be free actually be the loving behavior?

No, jealousy and the anger that usually accompanies it isn’t love, it’s a power play. It’s controlling. It’s saying, “I want my way and to hell with what you want,” if I can put it in blunt terms. Where’s the care and consideration and freedom in that?

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

120. Relax into “now”, disregard thought and mature dating is delightful and fun

Our thoughts create a great deal of suffering for most of us, especially in our dating and romantic relationships. Because these are among the most meaningful human connections we have we’re easily hurt in dating, especially at this mature stage of life when we really want a partner in our older years. It’s easy to feel pretty vulnerable.

The reason thoughts are so painful much of the time is simple: We pay attention to them. We give them validity. We think they’re true. Yet, if we look at our own experience we can see that’s not real. Thoughts aren’t valid; they’re not true. They’re not even ours. They come and go all by themselves. We have no control over them.

Maryanne has been dating David for a few months and finds he has a lot of qualities she admires. However, when he talks about women he’s dated in the past few years since his wife died she’s miserable and full of jealousy and pain. That was David’s life before he even knew Maryanne existed, yet she feels threatened. Instead of enjoying David in the present, in the time she spends with him, her thoughts race to the past and she’s in a world of hurt. The hurt is only in her thoughts and has nothing to do with reality.

So thoughts can be a big problem if we attach to them. There are two kinds of thoughts we can discuss here. We can call them working thoughts and fantasy thoughts. Working thoughts are natural for everyday living. They’re thoughts like “two and two is four” or “you need to add oil to the pan before you put in the onions”. Working thoughts are thoughts dealing with the present. Since the present is reality they’re not a problem. They show up when they’re needed.

Fantasy thoughts, on the other hand, are basically thoughts about the past or the future. They’re only based on memory and imagination and since the events we think of are not actually happening now they’re not real. When we indulge in past/future thinking we’re not present to the only reality there is – now! In the “now” there’s never a problem. It’s only thinking about past and future while “now” is happening that’s a problem.

Some people get the idea that since thinking is the problem we have to learn to stop thinking. But that’s a mistake. First, it’s impossible. No one knows where their “off” switch for thought is, and second, it’s unnecessary since thoughts aren’t a problem if we just disregard them. When working thoughts are needed they appear, and they’re in the “now” and not a problem. Fantasy thoughts of past and future are not needed because Life always takes care of itself without our input. Have you noticed that what we think should happen usually doesn’t, no matter how insistent our thoughts have been?

There’s a simple key to all this which dissolves painful thinking and emotions instantly: We can simply watch life as it appears, without forming judgments about it. There’s an awareness or a seeing of thought that’s separate from the thoughts. That simple, pure awareness is what we are. It doesn’t take any thinking to know we are, we just know it. Before thought comes in with its evaluations and judgments that sense of pure existence and awareness just sees life as it is. There’s no “little me” there that wants to condemn or change anything.

But thoughts appear in that open, pure, nonjudgmental awareness like clouds in a blue sky. Somehow these thoughts get hooked up with the idea of a “me” and suddenly we try to impose “my way” on the world. Since the world pays no attention to what this trivial, dependent “fantasy-me” idea thinks we’ve automatically got a problem. We think we know how the world should be and when the world doesn’t conform we feel betrayed, confused, lost and hurt.

Going back to Maryanne and David, Maryanne wouldn’t be hurting if she simply enjoyed David for who he is right now. If thoughts show up about past women in his life she could just watch them pass, like those clouds in the sky. She doesn’t need to feed them and feel jealousy or anger over something that’s just not her business and not even real. Those thoughts are about a dead past. That was then. This is now. And this is where the aliveness and mystery of life take place – right now.

Actual livingness only happens in each moment. It’s vital and full of life and real. Thoughts come up but we don’t need to invite them in, give them a home and pamper them with excessive indulgence. If we do, when will they leave? When we stay in our own business, leave other people to their own lives, and let God run this show the way it’s being run, our mature dating takes on a whole new flavor of ease and joy.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer