198. What you see critically in others you’ll eventually see in your date too

I once met a woman who was attractive, literate, and bright, someone I thought I might like to get to know and possibly spend time with. We had met briefly by chance and later talked on the phone, with the idea of setting up a coffee date.

In that 20-minute phone conversation I had with her she talked almost entirely about what a bad guy her ex-husband had been. She had been married to him for about 12 years. According to her he was lazy, wouldn’t work regularly, criticized and demeaned her, was moody and foul, and more. I finally said, “You stayed in the marriage for a long time. Do you feel you were a participant in the marriage or just a total victim?” She was a victim she assured me; she took no responsibility for anything.

Immediately I knew I didn’t want to pursue getting to know her further. When you see life clearly you see that any time anyone blames others for their own lack of happiness they’re simply projecting their feelings on to that other person. With this woman I knew that if we spent time together and she got unhappy with me she’d be blaming me in the same way she blamed her former husband. If you see deception or anger in just one person you know that eventually you’ll see deception and anger in someone close to you who makes you unhappy.

Projection happens because we see everything through our own filters. If my filter is blue I see others as blue. Someone else has a red filter and sees the same person as red. In mature dating, when there’s no judgment about another person (no filter) we simply see them as they are – not right or wrong, good or bad. Then we naturally move toward or away from them because they’re either a fit for us or not. We place no blame “out there” and we remain happy and at peace “in here”.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

197. Dating in harmony with the way things are gives you nothing but ease, fun and adventure

The Tao Te Ching (pronounced pretty much as Dow Deh Jing according to one of the most respected of its translators, Stephen Mitchell) is regarded as one of the most revered and honored spiritual texts in the world. Its 81 verses or short chapters were thought to be written around the time of Confucius (551-479 B.C.E.). The book serves as a guide for living a peaceful, caring, loving life in a down-to-earth, practical way. Mitchell calls it the words of a Master who wants to share what he has learned about living in harmony with the way things are.

The words apply today just as powerfully as they did centuries ago, and to live in that peace and harmony all we have to do is trust the intelligence of the universe. We find that tough to do, especially in matters of romance, because love calls forth such strong emotions. But are we really served by believing that our thoughts about the love and romance we should have are accurate? Has that way of thinking ever worked; has it ever transformed anything? What makes us think we know? As I heard one spiritual teacher say, “Who are we to think we can give orders to that which creates and sustains us?” Yes, who do we think we are? Do we really know, absolutely, how life should be?

Whatever happens in our dating world that seems emotionally upsetting in any way is only upsetting because we think it should be different. But how would you feel if you simply trusted the intelligence of the universe and went along, harmoniously, with the way things are? Those who love what is have found peace, contentment, joy, and an ease of living they had never experienced. They’ve died to their beliefs, to live in happiness. And wasn’t happiness the goal of dating in the first place?

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

196. Dating is suffering if you’re mentally in your date's business

Happiness is an inside job. It’s always an inside job. Our happiness is never dependent on what someone else does or says. They have a right to live as they want as long as they’re not imposing on others. Our judgments about what they do or say are what cause us problems and hurt. The problem is in here, not out there. And it can never be fixed out there.

The author and teacher, Byron Katie (www.thework.com), talks about the three kinds of business in the world: mine, yours and God’s. A hurricane is God’s business. If your partner goes out with someone else, that’s his business. If you get angry and jealous because he went out with someone else that’s your business. Through investigation and seeing reality you can fix your pain. But you can’t fix him.

Everyone, including your partner, has a right to live their own way. You may feel crushed and heartbroken because he chose to date someone else. But your heartbreak is your only business. What he does is still his business. That’s reality. Only when we argue with reality do we hurt.

Are we sure he shouldn’t have chosen to spend time with someone else? Do we think we know how the universe should run? Just as the weather should obviously be what it is, your partner should have done what he did just because, you notice, it happened.

It’s hard to get used to the idea that we aren’t in control of life. Instead, life is living AS us, and moving and acting exactly as it wants to through each of us. We can go along peacefully and enjoy the adventure and the mystery, or we can kick and scream as we try to force it our way.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

195. Thoughts of your dating past or future create suffering and they’re never real, have you noticed?

As we’ve talked about a number of times here, dating can bring up a lot of emotions, many of them pretty painful when things aren’t going our way. Sometimes, for seniors, the emotions are poignantly agonizing because we may feel that our time is running out, so the pressure is on to find a mate, and it may not be happening.

Emotions are born of thoughts. They show up when we believe thoughts that appear before us. Those thoughts may be happy memories, and the associated emotions are calming and joyful. If the thoughts are stressful our emotions are painful.

When we’re dating it’s easy for the mind to work overtime – worrying about this, wondering about that. We want to try to control things. And we think our thoughts will help us do that. But in reality believing our thoughts only makes life miserable. Your dating experiences, as all of life, will be what they are.

Life only happens in this single instant – the one that’s over before you can name it. Thoughts, too, only appear in this instant. Thoughts of your dating past often bring up guilt, shame, and regret. Think of the future and you often feel fear. But either way we miss the immediacy of the only real moment there ever is, this moment. True, we’re living through the moment because we can’t live any other time, but because our focus is on the past or future we’re missing the experience of it. It’s like reading when your mind wanders somewhere else. You have to read the paragraph over again. When we replace this now, which never has a problem, with thoughts of another time we can be in a world of hurt, hurt that only we’ve created.

If you want your dating to be pleasureful and painless notice how often your thoughts are of past or future. You don’t have to try to stop thoughts since you can’t anyway. But when you notice them and investigate them you can see they’re not reality. Thoughts are nothing but a dream. Past and future can’t even exist except in thought. So why pay attention to thoughts? Let them pass and you’re left with this moment – happy, at ease, without problems. From this place you can watch life unfold as it always does, without asking for your input. Let the adventure begin, and welcome home!

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer