295. If you want painless dating in these mature years try this

Because dating, even in these mature years, is so personal and it so easily pin-pricks into our self-worth issues we can often have heart-wrenching pain and suffering as we go about meeting new people and attempting to find a new partner. In these articles I’m suggesting what is a radical idea to most people, and it’s this: All – and I stress the word all – of our emotional suffering comes only from our thoughts.

Nearly everyone thinks suffering comes from the outside. In dating we think it’s caused by what our date or partner says or does. But when we look closely we see that thoughts are the cause. We see what is, think it shouldn’t be that way, and suffer. In short, we make up our own stories, our own fairy tales and fantasies about how life should be. We believe our story, and since we can't get our way and change what is we hurt.

A simple example: You’re at a dance with Joe. Joe decides to dance with another woman and you’re hurt. It’s your thought, not Joe, that caused your pain because if you didn’t know Joe was dancing with another woman you wouldn’t hurt at all. So it’s not his act but your thought that makes you hurt.

“Yes,” you might say, “but when I find out he’s dancing with another woman it hurts because that obviously means he’s not very interested in me.” But if you didn’t believe your story that he’s not interested in you would you still be hurting? Maybe you find out that he felt sorry for a woman he’s seen sitting alone all evening. He cared and just wanted to give her a chance to dance. His dancing with her had nothing to do with you. You could still choose to hurt because you might feel he still shouldn’t have danced with her. You might still think if he really cared about you he wouldn’t do that. But that would be entirely your projection. Can you really be sure that Joe isn’t just caring about someone and that it has nothing to do with his lack of interest in you? If you turned it around you might even feel more love for Joe because you can see what a caring, thoughtful man he is.

To me, the simple proof that it’s always our own thoughts that cause us to suffer is this: When we go to sleep at night there’s no suffering, except possibly in a dream. We may be in the middle of horrendous heartache when we go to bed. But when we fall asleep where is the pain? The circumstance hasn’t changed but we’re not projecting our interpretations and judgments onto it during those sleep hours.

We think we know how life should be, and especially how our life should be. If someone we love leaves us we know they shouldn’t. We know we could be their perfect partner, and we feel the emptiness and craving for their love because we think we know how it should be. To relieve that pain ask yourself if you can be certain that your thoughts are true.

Can you absolutely know life should be your way? Is it possible that the Power behind your breathing and heartbeat, and that keeps the stars in place, knows what it’s doing? Are you 100% sure that this woman who left you would be your best life partner? How do you feel when you stop believing you know best and just see life as it really is? There is peace and simple happiness. Then dating is an interesting, fun adventure. And isn’t that what you really want? – happiness right now?

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

294. We shape our dating life like cookies from a cookie press

When you see a star-shaped cookie you know it’s been made with a cookie press. A lump of dough is placed in the back end of a tube, then squeezed out through a disk pattern in the front end that shapes it into a star to be baked as a cookie. The original lump of dough looks entirely different after it goes through the shaping disk of the press.

That’s how most of us deal with what we experience in life much of the time. We innocently and unconsciously shape it into a pattern, based on our own beliefs, without realizing that we’re no longer dealing with the fact of a situation. Our self-shaped story is painful to us because it argues with the facts. We’ve pressed “what is” through our cookie press.

For example, a friend of mine, in her 60s, told me recently that a man she’d been dating suddenly stopped calling. When she called him and left a message he didn’t respond. Immediately she began to feel that he wasn’t interested and that she was unworthy and had failed again as a desirable woman. She had shaped her own story and was no longer dealing with reality, which is that the man hadn’t called or responded to her calls.

Without realizing it she had put his action of not calling through her cookie press and it came out as “He doesn’t want to talk to me so I must not be okay.” But she didn’t know that for sure. Maybe instead he was injured and hospitalized, maybe he was sick, maybe he had a family emergency and had to suddenly leave town.

Even if she could confirm that he wasn’t interested in her any more does that need to be painful for her unless she puts that thought through her cookie press and comes out with an “unworthy cookie” story? Where does that “unworthy” idea come from except her own belief – her own self-created story? He could even say, “You’re not worthy of me,” and so what? That would be his perception, and he has a right to it. But if you push it through your cookie press and believe it means you’re worthless you’re now hurting because of your own fantasy. You’re no longer dealing with reality.

The mind is a wonderful slave but a terrible master. Every emotional pain we ever have occurs because we put facts through our cookie press and believe what comes out the other end. We forget that the star cookie isn’t really a star, it’s cookie dough.

This is why the sages have consistently said, “You’re not in the world; the world is in you.” We each create our own world, pressed out through our own cookie presses. If you want to live more happily and have more fun in these mature dating years just notice when you’re hurting emotionally – feeling disappointed, empty, worthless, jealous, angry. Then ask yourself, “Where have I taken what’s real and shaped it into my story?” It’s always the story that makes us hurt because it’s not true.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

293. She wanted an explanation she didn’t get, and was upset

“Will you tell me why you don’t want to come to dinner?” Kathleen asked. She had invited me to dinner after we had agreed to go for an afternoon walk. We’d met 6 weeks earlier and had gotten together several times. But I wasn’t ready then to come to dinner so I had thanked her and declined. I told her I didn’t want to explain any reasons but that I felt it was best not to do that right now.

“Well, I know I’m responsible for my feelings and you’re responsible for your feelings,” she said. “However, I do feel that sometimes people owe me an explanation. Are you saying you won’t explain? I’d just feel more comfortable if you told me why,” Kathleen said. “Yes,” I said, “I understand you’d like an explanation but as you said, I’m not responsible for your feelings and I’d prefer not to have to explain myself.”

Kathleen went on to say that this kind of response from me wouldn’t work for her and said if I held to my view we’d need to end further contact, which we did. In a conversation with her several weeks earlier she had told me about a married son of hers who lived some distance away who wouldn’t agree that her dog could come with her for a week-long visit in their home. She told me she was irritated and angry about that and that “it took me quite awhile to get over that.” So I wasn’t too surprised over her reaction to my lack of explaining things to her satisfaction.

In both these cases Kathleen obviously felt she had a right to get what she wanted, and was upset when it didn’t happen. Her reactions and responses were typical of many relationship problems that stem from expectations and rights people think they have over other people. But do we have rights over how others live their lives?

The actuality of real life tells us we like to be able to live our own lives without judgment and condemnation. So when we try to interfere with the way others live aren’t we trying to control them in ways we don't want to be controlled?

If you’re upset because your date or partner doesn’t explain his activities, you can relieve your stress by asking yourself, “Do I know how he should live his life and does he owe it to me to explain why he does what he does?” If you’re not happy with his behavior toward you it doesn’t mean you have to understand. You only have to see that this is reality and take whatever steps are right for you, accordingly.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer