183. She wants to date others but that’s not why he’s in so much pain

Mature dating can be an adventurous, interesting, pleasant experience or it can be disappointing, disheartening and disenchanting. Those two different experiences aren’t the result of what’s happening in a person’s dating life as much as they’re the result of a person’s opinions.

Our five senses are the tools we have to tell us about the world we live in. Our senses feed back to us what’s happening in the movement of the world. We call these happenings experiences. But when we use the word “experience” we’re not really talking about only the movements our senses record. No, we’ve added our interpretation or judgment to the raw sense data. With our thoughts we’ve apparently altered reality. Then we believe that mind-altered experience and often create pain for ourselves.

Let’s take a simple example. Kate and Arnie decide to go out for a walk. They step out the door and realize it’s raining softly. Kate is from the hot, desert south and bathes in the freshness of a cooling rain. It’s a wonderful experience for her. Arnie is from – where else could I say but Seattle? He’s had enough rain. For him a walk in the rain is not much fun. Without their opinions, however, the simple fact was they both walked in the rain. It wasn’t “wonderful” or “not wonderful” except in the opinion of each person. In the dating world, when we’re in emotional pain or agony, or any discomfort at all, it can only be because we’ve added our judgmental twist to what originally was simply a happening recorded by our senses.

For example, let’s say the woman you’ve been dating decides to move on. You’ve really fallen for her and you don’t want to lose her. You think she’s the perfect match for you. Of course you’re in agony. But it isn’t her words, “I want to date others,” that make you hurt. It’s your judgment that it shouldn’t be this way that causes you pain. In effect you’ve decided to play God and resist reality because you think you know better.

But do you? Do you really know life should be your way rather than the way it is? Realistically, just have a look. Can you remember times when you were so certain things should be your way and you later realized that what you resisted so fervently turned out to be your great blessing?

Seeing life as it is brings total relief from suffering! You could call it acceptance or surrender. I call it seeing life realistically. When you see life without wanting to modify it or change it your experiences soften. Resistance causes stress and suffering. Seeing reality as it is frees us from pain. We go along with life, as a leaf floating in a stream. Can you imagine how easy and problem-free life would be if we didn’t have ideas of how it should be?

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

182. How to skip concern, worry and stress so senior dating can be fun

Mature dating can be a scary experience. Even – after a divorce or widowhood – when you’ve gotten through the initial fear of just meeting someone new for the first time, there can still be that lingering, hovering background fear of rejection. And because we’re older the fears of not finding someone or of not looking as chic and svelte and perky as we used to look can loom large. Will this guy or gal we’re falling for stay around? Fear Stress. Worry. The painful emotions come tumbling in.

Worry is an insidious game we play with ourselves without realizing it most of the time. You’ve certainly experienced it: You can recall times when your partner or one of your kids didn’t come home on time. You begin wondering where they are. A few minutes go by and you know something bad has happened or they would have called. Soon you’re picturing an accident, and seconds later you’re dreading that phone call you know will come from the hospital or the police. By the time they walk in the door you’ve terrified yourself and you’re nearly ready to throw up.

All that worry – whether it starts with a fear of someone hurt or a fear of not finding, or losing a relationship – is simply a projection of the mind. It’s all just thought, the only source of our suffering. And it’s all unnecessary. Emotional suffering is totally optional and it ruins the joy and easy pleasure of just dating for fun. I’ve met many older singles who hate dating. They’re always on edge, always stressed, always frazzled by putting out so much energy to try to appear nonchalant and attractive. Does any of this sound like you?

The solution to all this stress and lack of peace in senior dating is simple though not always easy. The solution is to let thoughts come and go rather than being a slave to them. You can’t control your thoughts. You don’t even decide when to think or not think. No one I’ve ever heard of has found the “Thinking: off” switch. Thoughts bubble up. From where? Who knows! They appear, and they disappear in the same way.

The neat thing to know is that if we don’t latch onto them and make them our own they appear and disappear quite quickly as they pass through, and they don’t impact us. The simple part of the solution is to just watch them like you’d watch clouds in the sky, with no emotional attachment. The not-so-easy part is that we may have a long habit of worrying. It’s a bad habit with no payoff at all. We usually don’t even know it until we realize we’re suffering. But even that suffering is a gift because it’s the signal that tells us our thinking is off track. Time to question our thoughts and notice reality.

The Life Force that animates us and lives AS us is the source of all thoughts that spontaneously show up, just as that Life Force is the source of our birth in the first place. Why do we exist? Why does that thought appear? We can never know. But we can accept that this is reality.

So in our dating do we need to be hyper-sensitive with worry about what’s happening or what’s going to happen? Do we need to assess and evaluate every nuance, every word, every experience connected to dating? Does it really pay to try to guess at what someone is feeling and compare that to what we want them to be feeling? (He just said such-and-such, does that mean he’s starting to fall in love with me?)

When we see clearly that the Universe runs itself – and always has – without our worry, opinion and interpretation we may be able to just relax and enjoy life as it is. Spiritual masters have taught for centuries that when there’s no ego-me who thinks it’s in charge there are no problems. Something separate from worry and suffering tells you you’re suffering. Take your stand in that awareness that watches life, including your worry, without being touched by it. There, you can live life in the present moment and notice that life has no problems. And who knows, you might even find that dating is fun! What a concept, huh?

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

181. Forget what “they” think; be yourself and be happy

Dating, especially in our mature and senior years, seems to create a lot of pressure for many people. After all, we’re not as young and attractive as we once thought we were. The years are catching up with us and we don’t want to be alone. So, for many, there’s an urgency about dating that may not have been there in earlier years.

All this can make us feel pretty vulnerable if we’re not careful. In that state of vulnerability it’s pretty easy to assume that other people’s assessments of us are accurate. If those assessments aren’t what we’d like we can begin to get pretty down on ourselves.

For instance, we may have met someone for coffee, or had a couple of dates with a person. Then they don’t want to spend more time with us. Or we’re treated rudely. I met a woman once who was supposed to meet a man for a first coffee date. He never showed up. She later called him to ask if he’d forgotten and he told her he was there but didn’t make himself visible until he had sized her up. He didn’t like her physical appearance so he decided to leave. At least he told her the truth.

Almost everyone has had dating encounters that didn’t leave them feeling very good about themselves. But should we decide how to feel about ourselves based on other people’s views? Let’s say your name is Elizabeth. Can you think of any two people you know who feel they know the same Elizabeth? No, they each have a different view of who Elizabeth is. There are as many Elizabeths as there are people who know her. Who’s right? Who knows the real Elizabeth?

It doesn’t matter. The fact is that any description anyone gives of Elizabeth is simply their own idea. But – and here’s the rub – if you buy into some negative view of yourself that you’ve picked up from someone aren’t you just singling out one view of you from one person and taking that to be the truth?

Actually, in almost each moment of the day we’re a different person. One moment we’re satisfied, another moment we’re hurt, or jealous, or sad. So even we can’t say who we are because who we are is changing all the time. If we’re hurting because of the way we think someone else views us maybe we could see that anyone’s opinion is just one opinion. It doesn’t mean anything. Maybe we could just “be” and let ourselves live spontaneously and freely, knowing some will be attracted to us and some won’t. So be it. Live. Have fun. Be happy. Don’t get sucked up into your thoughts. They’ll pass soon if you let them.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

180. What do nature and babies have to do with mature dating?

“Freedom” is a word I’ve often used when discussing relationships. It seems to be the best word I can find to describe a truly loving partnership. When there’s freedom in a relationship there are no demands, no judgments. Each person is free to be just who they are, without having to work at pleasing their partner.

What I think we all like about nature and small children is that they’re free. They don’t expect anything other than what is and they don’t demand anything. They don’t rate things according to labels such as good and bad, or right and wrong. There’s unconditional love and acceptance in nature and babies that just sees life as it is. Babies and the natural world aren’t searching for something more; they’re happy with what’s given in the moment. It’s almost as though there’s a trust there that the Infinite knows what it’s doing so there’s no need to criticize reality and resist what is.

As we date in these senior years maybe there’s something to be learned from nature and babies. Could we just be happy with things as they are? Do we really know they should be different?

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

179. If your dating has a goal you’re creating your own suffering

Most of us, most of the time, are looking for something more. In the dating world that’s easy to see. Most of us don’t date freely, with the idea of just enjoying the moments when we’re together with someone, as we’d enjoy a pretty sunset. No, most of us are dating with a goal in mind. And we’re always checking to see if our goal is being met. We can put any name we want on that goal – marriage to the right person, getting compliments on how we look that night, or any other label. But those labeled goals all fall under the heading of “happiness”. We want more happiness. Of course more happiness implies a future doesn’t it? As we search for more happiness we’re really saying that this, right now, isn’t good enough. We’re saying, “I’m not happy now but if only I had this (put any name you want on it) I’d be happy.” So the very search for happiness is the creation of unhappiness.

When you stop to think about it, however, that idea, that thought, that there should be more happiness can only happen in the present moment. This moment is the only moment we ever live. Thoughts of “more” and thoughts of “future” only happen in this moment. There isn’t any other time. Or another way to say it: Time doesn’t really exist except as a thought.

So what do we do to ourselves when we focus on wanting more happiness, which could only happen at some projected future time? In simple terms, we suffer as we feed that thought that happiness is “out there”. Actually, what we’re doing is taking a memory and projecting it into an imaginary future. Anticipating or expecting something in the future can only be based on memories of the past. Without memory we’d have no idea what anything in the future could look like. So, in reality, thoughts of the future are just thoughts (memories) of the past projected forward, like a movie projected on a screen. The next scene, our futurizing thought, has already happened. It’s already on the film roll and just hasn’t gone past the light and the lens yet.

Since this imagined future we project is only a dressed-up memory it really has no life. Our picture of our imagined future was alive at one time, when it occurred, but now it’s dead. Meantime, when our heads are filled with those dead, past memories we see as a better future we’re missing the real life that’s right in front of our faces – animated, vital, vibrant, colorful, and full of energy in this moment, right now.

This present moment is home. Past and future bubble up as thoughts but if we simply let them show up and disappear again, as all thoughts do, they don’t cause us to suffer. Attach to them, however, and we hurt, while denying real life just as it is!

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer