228. It's hopeless to want someone to like what we like, yet we do it all the time

When we’re feeling hurt about our romantic relationship we naturally want to tell our partners. Actually, we usually want to blame our partners. If they would just be the way we think they should be everything would be fine.

But they are who they are, just as we are who we are. To expect them to change to meet our demands is hopeless. Let’s say you want them to like going to the symphony with you and they don’t. They have natural preferences for life just as you do. What if they asked you to like going to the fights and you don’t? Can you change what you like? Well, they can't either.

Freedom in a relationship means we’re free to be as we are, without getting verbally pummeled by a partner who thinks we should like what we don’t. In freedom, he goes off to the fights, alone or with a friend, and she heads for the symphony the same way, each wishing the other a happy time.

Reality always wins, and when we see that the real world is just the way it is, our hopes, dreams and fantasies naturally disappear, They were just wispy, misguided thoughts in the first place. Seeing life as it is, is happiness. It's also love... wanting your partner to want what he wants, and being at peace yourself when you don't argue with reality. That's called self-love.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

227. Questoning your thoughts can bring relief from mature dating pain

“Is that true?” “Can I absolutely know that it’s true?” Those are the first of four questions Byron Katie offers in the simple process of investigating our thoughts that she calls The Work. Those questions, or any other deep questioning of your thoughts, will prove almost magical when you’re feeling stuck or hurting as you’re dating in these senior and mature years of life.

The reason a few simple questions are so powerful is that they make us stop and see reality, which is just the way things are. We’ve all heard of people who express thoughts like:

• I really need a partner.
• If he loved me he’d do what I want.
• It’s better to settle for him than to be alone.
• Love never lasts anyway.
• If I tell him how I truly feel he’ll be mad (or hurt).
• I don’t want to hurt her.
• If he really cared he’d know what I want.
• If I get angry enough she won’t do that again.
• If I do what he wants, even when I don’t want to, he’ll do what I want too.
• This bothers me but I won’t say anything because I don’t want to cause trouble.

Maybe you’ve even believed thoughts like this yourself. But are any of them, or a thousand more you could ask, really true? Is it really true you need a partner, for instance? I once knew a woman who said she got into one unhappy relationship after another simply because she believed that thought. She was unable to see that the relationship wasn’t right for her because she thought she needed to have a man. Eventually, though, each connection unraveled anyway, she told me, and she’d be off desperately grasping at the next wrong man because she thought she needed someone.

Every belief we have about relationships can be questioned. Many times you realize that, even though you’ve believed it all your life, what you think just isn’t true. With questioning you don’t have to try to use will power to change yourself. All you do is see reality and change happens automatically. It’s no different than walking down the road to get water from a mirage. You only have to see once that there’s no water there, and never again will you pick up a bucket and head for a mirage. It doesn’t take will power. It simply takes seeing what is.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

226. Can real love include molding someone to fit our needs?

When you say you love someone in a romantic relationship what does that mean to you? Most of us can say we love someone when things are going our way. When we don’t like something about that person and we feel hurt, that “love” often turns to bitterness and anger, maybe even hate, at least in the moments when we’re feeling disappointed and hurt. That’s when the angry, cutting words blurt out. Divorce courts are filled with love turned sour. But was it really love in the first place?

The love that can turn sour so quickly can’t really be love, yet it’s the most common in relationships. It passes for love but it’s really a trade-off that looks like this: “I love you when you give me what I want and I’m angry at you when you don’t.” True love, however, isn’t an emotional connection based on want and need. How could it be true when it turns from affection to anger in an instant?

When we look we can see that true love must be unconditional because it leaves us in peace. It doesn’t need the partner to be or do anything so I can be happy. Trade-off love is always expecting the other person to make us feel good. That’s why we can be so instantly angry when we think they’ve made us feel bad.

Unconditional love accepts and allows everything, the way space allows everything that appears in it. True love could only be when we’re willing to let our partner be exactly who they are, just as we want to be. If I really love you do I want you to stop living life your way and come over to my side and do it my way? Can I really know how you should live your life?

We always suffer when we think someone should do life our way… and they don’t. And we suffer further as we try to manipulate them and put them under our control with our anger and threats. Wouldn’t it be easier and more loving to allow another person to be just as they are? Then we can either stay with them or move on and find someone we’re more suited to. Either way we can love them without judgment and in peace.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

225. Pain-free mature dating is about seeing life clearly, without our stories

When you see life as it is, dating in these senior and mature years is a lot more pleasant and pain-free. It’s when we want life to be our way that we have problems and hurt. Wanting life to be our way means telling ourselves stories, such as:

1. She should have called.
2. He could do better than that.
3. A thoughtful woman wouldn’t say that.

Seeing reality, or life as it is, however, turns those statements into:

1. She shouldn’t call until she does.
2. He did the best he could do. (In the moment don’t we all do the best we can to make ourselves happy? Isn’t happiness the result all actions are aimed at?)
3. This woman said that.

In the first three statements there are judgments we can’t prove. Those judgments are always stressful and painful because we’re fighting the way life actually is.

The second set of three are just statements of the way things are. How do you know they should be that way? They are. Isness is the built-in proof and when we live in harmony with isness we’re happy and peaceful.

When we see life clearly, without our judgmental stories, we don’t have to be in a war with our partners. They are who they are, doing what they do, and they have every right to be just that. All we need to do is see them as they are, and then either naturally move toward them or away from them just as any animal naturally moves toward pleasant surroundings and away from unpleasant ones.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

224. Make-believe isn’t just for children, it’s rampant in mature dating too

Expectations in a mature dating relationship can kill the relationship – and hurt like hell. Expecting is laying our imaginary picture on an imaginary future. For example, you meet someone and you begin to fantasize who they are and how they’ll make you happy. I know of a man in his later 70s who recently met a woman after having been widowed about three years ago. He’d been deeply mourning the loss of his life-long companion and then a new woman comes into his life and suddenly life turns for him.

He begins to feel young and alive and within weeks he’s planning trips with her and giving her all kinds of gifts, some very intimate and romantic. He tells her how much she means to him and it’s clear he’s fallen in love. But without realizing it, he’s fallen in love with his image of this woman and his make-believe picture of their future together. No matter how wonderful she is, he couldn’t have fallen in love with her because he doesn’t know her. He only knows his picture of her after being with her a short few weeks.

The mind is tricky and can run all sorts of games of fantasy and illusion, as when you work yourself into a frenzy worrying that someone hasn’t come home on time. Thoughts come on their own and we can’t stop them. But we don’t have to pay attention to them either. Instead, we can step back into the pure, simple awareness that sees thoughts come and go. That awareness is never affected by the thoughts that show up, any more than the sun is affected by clouds appearing in the sky.

Clear awareness just sees life as it is. That’s reality. Without our made-up stories reality is never painful. It just is. But let the fairy tales run and you’re probably in for a world of hurt because reality eventually becomes clear and our dreamy expectations rarely match it. Reality always wins because it’s simply what is. When we don't add our fantasies life is smooth.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer