Mature Dating: From Despair and Disappointment to Delight, Adventure, Ease, and Joy

298. Let the outcome of your dating be as it is and you’ll find joy in the adventure

2007-10-19T08:56:00.000-07:00

When we feel heartache and disappointment in dating it’s always our own thoughts that cause us to hurt. But that’s hard to see. We’ve been conditioned to believe that it’s what someone else says or does that causes our emotional pain. We think it’s because they’ve deceived us or lied to us or rejected us that we’re hurting.

Karl Renz, a spiritual teacher from Germany, who shares his understanding with people in many European countries, says it this way: The mind itself creates the problems it struggles to solve.

“But how is it possible,” you might ask, “that our own minds create the hurt we feel, when we can prove, for instance, that our date or partner deceived us?” Obviously, we think, it’s their deceit that makes us hurt. But in reality their deceit doesn’t make us hurt. It’s only when we think they should not deceive us that we hurt. In other words, it’s our story or our belief about their action that makes us hurt, not the action itself.

So the mind creates our suffering by believing that “what is” should be different. Then the mind struggles to relieve the pain by trying to change the other person, make them wrong, etc.

As we date in these mature and senior years it’s natural there will be times when things don’t go the way we expected. Your date loses interest in you, or you find she’s not the person you thought she was. You might be lied to or cheated on. You may begin to see that your date is trying to control you. A woman I know was dating a man who wanted to marry her. He told her, “If we were together I’d still let you continue the volunteer work you now do.” Clearly, she knew that kind of control wouldn’t work for her.

These incidents may be disappointing or painful. But if they are it’s because we want life to go the way we think it should go rather than simply seeing that it always goes the way it goes. It’s always our own mind that creates our problems by resisting “what is”. Then the same mind tries to solve the problem that never existed except in our thought-story.

But without our stories we can see and accept that life is just what it is. We can begin to trust that what happens is meant to happen because the Energy that powers everything must know what it’s doing, even if it seems to our limited minds that it doesn’t. Then dating takes on a whole new look. It becomes an interesting exploration and adventure, a chance for new and exciting experiences. And we don’t have to own or worry about the outcome. Let the outcome take care of itself and just have fun living.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

297. See which way the wind blows with your dating and you can be happily content

2007-10-11T11:50:00.000-07:00

Did you know that baby wolves in the far north live or die depending on the wind? Literally. I saw it on a nature program on TV the other night. (And you won’t believe how this ties into mature dating! ) Here’s how it works.

The wolves are born in the spring and nurse from their mothers until early summer. Then they need solid food, which for the wolves are the caribou that inhabit the same terrain. The problem is the baby wolves can’t travel far and if the caribou herds don’t travel near them there’s no food for the young ‘uns.

What causes the herds to travel in a certain direction? Mosquitoes, believe it or not. They’re so fierce in the summer months that the caribou herds travel into the wind to keep the mosquitoes away from their faces. So their direction of travel is determined by which way the wind blows. If that takes them away from the wolf dens there’s no food for the wolves and the young ones don’t survive.

So it’s a story that reads like this: Baby wolves can’t live without solid food after a couple of months. Why is there no solid food? Because there are no caribou. Why aren’t there caribou? Because the herds are moving in other areas. Why don’t the wolves follow them? Because the babies are too small. Why do the caribou travel in other directions? Because of swarms of mosquitoes. Why do mosquitoes dictate which way the caribou travel? Because caribou travel into the wind to keep mosquitoes away from their faces. Why does the wind blow in a certain direction? Who knows? If you were a meteorologist you could probably trace this back further but eventually you’d come to “I don’t know.”

Now, how the heck does this relate to mature dating? This way: I know from experience that a lot of seniors I’ve dated and know spend a lot of time in anguish, trying to figure out why something happened. They think if they can figure out why, they may be able to come up with a solution: “Oh, he didn’t call me after two dates. Why? I revealed too much about myself too soon. Obviously that was the wrong thing to do.” Solution: “Make sure I hold back and try to say only what I think men want to hear.” You get the idea I’m sure.

The point is this: The question “Why?” is wasted effort. Everything causes everything. In other words, you can try to trace any happening back to its cause and you’ll never find one. We could even get back to, “Why is there a world or a universe?” When you give up questioning why, you also give up the need to try to manipulate circumstances to control the outcome you want. So much effort and turmoil!

It’s much more natural in life and in dating to simply be an observer rather than a questioner. Life is the way it is. How can we know it shouldn’t be another way? It isn’t, that’s all. Should that guy have called again? No, because he didn’t. End of story. End of anguish and effort and suffering. Life obviously has other plans for you.

As that ancient Chinese spiritual text, the Hsin-hsin Ming (The Mind of Absolute Trust) says, “When one is free from attachment all things are as they are, and there is neither coming nor going. When in harmony with the nature of things, your own fundamental nature, you will walk freely and undisturbed.”

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

296. When we stop believing our thoughts dating can be another simple phase of life

2007-10-09T21:50:00.000-07:00

Have you known people who get lost in their worries at times and just go deeper and deeper into pain and confusion? We sometimes hear people say they need to get hold of themselves. We can see their thoughts have taken them for a deeply painful ride.

It’s easy to do. About a year ago I was with Pete, a friend of mine, when he got a call from his daughter-in-law, Julie. She had just returned from an overseas trip and was to be met at the airport by her husband, Pete’s son. But the guy wasn’t there to meet her and Julie wondered if Pete knew where he was.

Within minutes Pete was almost a nervous wreck. His son always carried a cell phone and was very responsible. He’d certainly have been there to pick up his wife who had been gone for several weeks, Pete assured me. The next thing I knew Pete was in real turmoil as he worried about what happened to his son. About an hour later he got another call. His son had arrived and was just fine.

A few weeks ago this same Pete talked to me about another matter, this one involving a woman he’s been dating. He had tried to set up something with her and hadn’t gotten any response from her for several days. “This just isn’t like her,” he said. Immediately he knew she must be tired of him and he wondered aloud why she didn’t just tell him she didn’t want to see him any more rather than avoid him. He was in a world of agony and anguish.

A few days later he swung by her house and she met him at the door. She was her usual self, friendly and warm, and unhesitatingly invited him in. During the ensuing conversation it turns out that he had sent her an email and thought he had asked for a response. She, on the other hand, didn’t realize he wanted a response and thought that plans were already firmed up. It was all a misunderstanding.

In both incidents – his son not showing up at the airport and his conviction that this woman had unceremoniously dumped him – it was only Pete’s futurizing thoughts that caused him so much suffering. To this day he doesn’t know why his son wasn’t at the airport.

Even when we get proof that we can’t believe our thoughts, as Pete did twice, we still believe our thoughts. We know a relationship shouldn’t end. We know our date shouldn’t be rude to us. We know we should have a partner. Yet it’s only because we believe we know how the world should work rather than seeing how it does work that we live in such emotional pain and turmoil. When will we ever live comfortably in the not-knowing and simply be with what is, watching it unfold, peacefully and painlessly moment to moment? After all, that’s really the only truth there is.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

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

2007-09-29T08:19:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-28T08:08:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-23T18:21:00.000-07:00

“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

292. A love companion can never fill your emotional void or make you happy

2007-09-05T14:30:00.000-07:00

Some years ago I dated a woman for a short time who was very successful in her career but she admitted that when it came to relationships she always ended up choosing the same kind of person and it was a disaster. On the outside her two husbands and other committed dating companions she had had were quite different. But on the inside, it turned out, they were pretty much the same. They all filled a hole in her for a short time but eventually the game was up and things flew apart.

Until we understand that always the primary relationship we have is with ourselves, we’ll be looking for another person to complete our lives or make us whole and we’ll never be happy. Successful relationships don’t work that way. Unless we bring a healthy, happy emotional grounding to any relationship we’re always going to be victims of that person we choose.

We end up manipulating our partner or date because we think we need to keep them in place so they’ll continue to give us what we lack. If they don’t show love in the way we think they should, for instance, we get scared. That fear can turn to anger with our partner for betraying us. Or we may find we’re bending ourselves into a pretzel to do everything we think our partner wants so we won’t be abandoned. Both are just different forms of manipulation. And of course it pushes your partner away because you’re expecting them to do your job, which is to make yourself happy.

What it comes down to is that we attract to ourselves the kind of person who fills the hole in us. For example, if we’re needy we attract a care-taker. If we’re controlling we attract a pushover. It’s simply the nature of how life works, this time showing up in relationships: you can’t have up without down or in without out. And you can’t have needy without a care-taker. But the care-taker and the pushover can only exist in that environment for so long, then all hell breaks loose when they can’t stand their roles any more.

Then the needy, or controlling, or care-taking one moves on to the next date or partner and the cycle repeats, complete with all its pain. Seeing it this way it’s clear that relationship problems aren’t ever about “them.” Any emotional hurt we ever feel is always about us. That’s why we get such a huge payoff when we’re willing to look honestly at the realities of life and question our beliefs. If we’re needy we can look to see if it’s true that we can’t take care of ourselves. If we’re a controller is it true we need to control so we won’t feel fearful and insecure? One question you might ask, for example, is this: Is there security in this world?

If you’re a person who seems to end up with the same kind of problem in virtually every romantic relationship you have, you can stop all the pain by just turning inside rather than jumping to someone outside to make you feel good. Find out the truth of who you are and stop telling yourself the lies that keep you victimized. Finding someone to fill your emotional holes just ain’t never gonna work!

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

291. When we let thoughts pass dating is easy and problem-free

2007-08-20T10:36:00.000-07:00

You probably know that old saying you hear in the bible, “It came to pass.” Well, that’s what thoughts do. They come to pass. That’s their nature. And if you notice that happens sometimes in split seconds, sometimes a bit longer. But every single thought passes very quickly. When they seem to stick around it’s because we’ve nursed them and fed them. Then they build, one on top of the other. You know how it works in dating: “He didn’t call; he should have called; why didn’t he call; maybe he doesn’t care; that’s awfully rude of him; that’s how it always works for me; initially I attract a guy then he gets to know me and disappears.”

Each thought comes to pass quite quickly but it seems to birth another thought, and another and another. It happens because we put the energy of belief into the original thought. But thoughts just show up. They’re not personal. They don’t mean anything. Every thought is recycled; it’s been thought millions of times by others. If we put no belief into a thought it just passes on. It can’t live without energy so it disappears into the Silence and Stillness it came from.

If you want to live happily, simply be in harmony with life as it is. Thoughts will appear and then disappear as another thought replaces it in an instant. But give the thought energy and it builds on itself, one thought at a time until you’ve got a thought-bundle that’s huge and seems so real and believable. Yet it’s all built on myth because the truth is we don’t know why things happen or what will happen next.

Meanwhile all those thoughts we hold on to block the joy and pure simplicity of this moment. How does it feel while you watch a beautiful sunset on a glorious evening while holding the thought, “I wish she were here to enjoy this with me.” Do you notice how that thought, and only that thought, ruins the natural joy of just being?

The entire universe operates perfectly and has for eternity. Why not let it be and live joyfully, trusting Life just as it is? The alternative isn’t much fun and never works because we have no influence anyway.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

290. There can’t be happy dating without hurtful dating -- until we stop judging and comparing

2007-08-19T21:38:00.000-07:00

We live in a world of twos – duality. It couldn’t be any other way. There can’t be up without down, joy without sorrow, peace without stress. We couldn’t say anything about an object if there was nothing to compare it to because, in effect, it wouldn’t exist. If there was tree, for example, and there wasn’t something you could call “not tree” then everything would be tree and we wouldn’t know tree at all. In fact, without something separate from tree there couldn’t even be space or a human to live in it.

So duality is a given in the world. The emotional pain in dating life comes when we take sides in the duality. This is better than that. Taking sides and judging is what the mind does best. It’s always making a comparison and judging: This should be and that should not be.

But let’s look at the belief we have that causes us to suffer so much. Are we really so certain of what should be? We’ve learned from other people that certain things should happen but do we know for sure? I’ll bet you can think of times when you’ve been so very certain and then later changed your mind. Maybe a relationship ended and you were so certain this was absolutely the right person for you, and you were crushed. Months or years later you say, “I’m so glad that ended. If it hadn’t I wouldn’t have met my true love” or “…I see now that I’d have been miserable,” etc.

Yet even with the proof of personal experience, showing us without doubt that our “certainty” was a sham, we still seem so certain that things should be our way rather than the way they are. Mary was rude to you. Tim stood you up. Harry took advantage of you. Gerry lied. None of them should be that way, we say.

But when you don’t argue with reality you see that Mary, Tim, Harry, and Gerry were being who they were. There have to be some liars and rude people so there can be honest and well-mannered people. One couldn’t exist without the other and who is to say we shouldn’t connect with some of them? You shouldn’t get a flat tire or cancer either but it happens. That’s reality.

Life is and it shows up as everything, including people we think are right and wrong. With clarity – seeing life as it actually is – we don’t need to compare one thing with another, and then judge how things should be in our dating life. When we witness the happening of our dating with interest and curiosity, and without an opinion, dating is peaceful and fun. Remember what Jesus said? “The kingdom of heaven is within you!” In their own words every sage has said the same thing.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

289. Of the two ways to go about dating and mating one is peaceful, the other painful

2007-08-19T12:09:00.000-07:00

Life is the way it is. Have you noticed? No matter what we think about weather disasters, disease, war, or famine life just is. It’s the same with dating. We may think we deserve a mate because we have a lot of love to give. (I’ve heard that a lot in my 12 years of dating and I’ll bet you have too.) We may think we have control. But with some looking we see that we don’t.

Life didn’t ask our opinion about how tall we’d be, the color of our eyes, whether we kept our hair or not, or what talents we’d be born with. Life doesn’t need us to breathe or blink or beat our hearts in rhythm. Life just does it. In the same way, Life doesn’t give us a choice about the thoughts we have. They come out of the Void and silently slip back into that Void.

Our dating in these mature years will be just what it is. There are two approaches we can take to it, however, that will make the entire difference between whether we’re happy or not. One is to believe thoughts that may come saying we should have control... and argue, be bitter, disappointed or in despair because we have no partner. The other is to watch what naturally happens, including dating and our thoughts about it, and just enjoy the process. There’s always joy in watching the beautiful mystery of Life unfurl as it does, but it’s more subtle than we may be used to.

We’re used to excitement, activity, going and doing. But have you noticed that all the noise and movement appears on the background of stillness and silence? When the activity stops what’s left is stillness. When the noise stops what’s left is silence. In that stillness and silence there’s never turmoil, only a quiet contentment, a causeless joy. From that place we can watch all that appears, including thoughts such as “I need a partner to be happy.” We can notice that everything is simply an appearance that comes and goes. The Mystery is delightful when we see it just the way it is!

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

288. Without your unwitting story you might find your partner is more lovable than you thought

2007-08-15T09:23:00.000-07:00

We’ve talked about how facts become stories and it’s the story that causes us to hurt, never the fact. Reality is another word for fact. It simply means “what is” just as it is. Most of us have been so conditioned to think in terms of our stories that we don’t even notice we’re the ones who added that story.

For example, you speak to your partner and he doesn’t answer. That’s the reality. A simple fact. The way the story gets added to that is when we interpret that action and attach our completely fictional meaning to it. It happens so automatically and insidiously that we believe the story as though it were a fact. We don’t even notice we’ve unwittingly added the story. It’s all fact in our minds. That is, until we investigate. And what reminds us to question our thoughts? Our pain. You’re suddenly not at peace, and that hurt is the signal to inquire. Do we really know what we’re talking about? That’s why questioning to see reality is such a powerful way to bring us back to peace and happiness and fun in life.

Let’s put our story-making habit into an example. It works like this: “I just spoke to Jim and he didn’t answer and that means…” and from there we add all kinds of stories, such as, “…he’s mad” or “…he just doesn’t care” or “…he thinks I’m too stupid to know what I’m talking about.” We can add a thousand projected stories, depending on our own self-image or conditioning. But the stories are purely our own invention because we’ve decided what it means that Jim didn’t answer.

I’ve added bold face to the words “and that means” because we don’t usually think those words or say them to ourselves. But in truth that’s what we’ve just done. We’ve determined what someone’s words or actions mean without having the slightest idea whether we’re correct or not. In our innocence we don’t notice this, however. Interpreting and judging is natural. To us, it’s how life is lived, and how everyone lives. And for most people it is how they live. That’s why most of us are hurting so much.

Of course after we’ve added our neat little story then comes our judgment: “Just who does he think he is to think I’m stupid!” “Just because I disagree with him he doesn’t need to get mad.” “He’s so selfish and rude; he’s never interested in what I say.” With those judgments there’s your pain. Judging always feels stressful and hurtful.

So how do we get past the hurt we create in our relationships? Stop. Look. Inquire. Do we really know what our partner’s words or actions mean? Are we sure things should be the way we think they should be instead of the way they are? We live in harmony with life by seeing facts as they are, without our interpretations and judgments. If we ask poor old Jim why he didn’t answer when we spoke we might just be told he was so engrossed in his project that he didn’t hear us. Hmm, now wouldn’t that be a revelation! Maybe he isn't such a bad guy after all.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

287. When you’re in pain over dating you’re believing thoughts that aren’t true

2007-08-13T20:52:00.000-07:00

In dating, when we’re hurting it’s because we think the other person did something bad to us and we have no control. Naturally we feel victimized and helpless. For example we believe thoughts like, “He doesn’t care because he doesn’t really listen to me.” “She should return my phone calls.” “He should do something special to show his love for me.” With those thoughts we hurt.

Over the centuries, however, those wise ones who live peaceful, happy lives remind us that thoughts aren’t believable. We don’t ask for them. They just appear. But we believe them as though we had created them and own them. Worry is a good example that we’ve all experienced intimately. Worry is nothing but a consistent thought about an imagined future we think would hurt us. In your own experience how many times have your worries actually materialized? Probably almost never. Yet we worry over and over. Even after we’ve been tricked again and again by our thoughts why is it that we continue to believe them?

Our thoughts about dating trick us in the same way. Whenever you’re hurting about your dating relationships it always works to look at what you’re thinking, because emotional suffering follows thoughts. What do you believe about the situation or your date/partner? Are you sure you’re believing what’s real or is it possible you’re believing a story you’ve made up?

Let’s say you think your date should return your phone calls. That’s a story. Should she when she doesn’t? You hurt because you think she should be giving you what she’s not giving you. Do you know for sure she should be doing what you want? Is your happiness her job? Reality is that she should not be returning your phone calls because she isn’t. That’s the fact without your story.

To believe you know what your partner or date should do is pretty crazy. Actually you know what they should do by watching what they do – period. Reality doesn’t hurt, only our beliefs and stories about it hurt. People are who they are and they do what they do. If you don’t see that just watch. In the end isn’t it we who create our own pain by deciding our partner should be different?

When we believe thoughts like these we’ve built a prison for ourselves and locked ourselves in it. We’re victims, thinking other people are controlling how we feel. But are your thoughts actually telling you what’s real? Are they worth believing? Or have you latched onto a fantasy that just looks real, like worry looks real?

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

286. Questioning your thoughts may seem too simple to end mature dating pain – but it works!

2007-08-13T15:25:00.000-07:00

When I speak of questioning your thoughts to end the turmoil, desperation and pain that can come with mature dating I understand it’s easy to discount the idea. The one complaint from people is that this is too simple. We’re conditioned to think that we’ve got to put out a lot of effort to make changes in our lives. It’s the “no pain, no gain” idea.

But when we see that all the painful emotional issues of our lives come from our thoughts, questioning those thoughts to see how true they are might make a little more sense. All our lives we’ve heard how life should be: “People shouldn’t do bad things to other people.” “Our dating partners should always be honest and true to us.” “We shouldn’t hurt anyone’s feelings.” “I’m never quite good enough.” We’ve picked up these ideas but are they true? Doesn’t it hurt when we think those thoughts? If we really look, and see the truth, do we still hurt?

Take any one of those statements above and we can see, with a little investigation, that they may not be true at all. For instance, “I’m not good enough.” How many of us think that about ourselves – at least some of the time if not virtually all the time. It’s a program that runs in the background of our lives almost without our recognition, until we start looking at how that single idea shapes our actions. Because of it we may be constantly trying for other people's approval, for instance. We may be always struggling to be somebody better than we think we are, wearing the mask of an actor. We’re not free when we’re not living authentically. It’s not fun. And in the end it never works.

But inquiry brings us back to the truth: Are we really not good enough? By whose standards? What’s “good enough”? Do we really need more approval than we’ve got? What I see so clearly is that every one of us has exactly the approval we need at any moment. All you have to do is see the approval you’ve got and you know that’s what you need – because you’ve got it.

Or what about the belief that we shouldn't hurt someone's feelings. What god gave us that power? Don't we decide our reaction to what someone says or does? When you think you can hurt someone's feelings you've made yourself responsible for what you have no control over. Sure, we can be kind, knowing some people hurt their own feelings based on our words. We can be considerate but we don't have to be dishonest to protect them. Their feelings are not our job or within our power.

The universe always works the way it does. That’s reality. Storms happen. People get sick. Things live and die. Change occurs. Life turns out different from the way we thought it would, even day by day. We think we’re going to answer the phone and we trip and fall and break an ankle. Oops? Who’s in charge here? Well, it’s obviously not us.

Yet we want to think things should be our way. That’s an innocent myth. Things should be the way they are. How do we know? This is it. Questioning always gets you to reality if you’re willing to be honest. With reality comes peace and happiness. We can opt for that or we can insist on our way and suffer.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

285. You can’t let go of painful thoughts but question them and you can end the hurt

2007-08-09T22:19:00.000-07:00

Let’s say Laurie is at a party with Dale and she sees him talking and laughing with another woman. Without a judgmental thought about it Laurie can be happy that Dale is having a good time. But often we don’t see things just as they are. We see them as we think they are and form judgments: “That’s not right; that’s rude, he shouldn’t be flirting like that,” and on and on our stories go. With those thoughts comes pain. Emotional suffering always comes only from thought, never from a situation, object or person. It’s always what we think about the situation or person that makes us hurt.

So it would appear that to get rid of our pain we have to get rid of thinking wouldn’t it? But no one has ever been able to control thoughts. You can’t get rid of them. They come and go on their own. If we could let go of thoughts we’d all have done it when they started instead of suffering for days, months or years about something.

We can’t let go of thoughts but we can question them to see what’s true. And when we understand life as it is instead of getting locked into our stories of how it should be, thoughts let go of us. They were never real in the first place. They only appear to be real because we believe them. Is it true Dale shouldn’t be having a nice time with a woman? It may look like flirting but do we know he’s not just being friendly? Even if Dale is flirting is it true he shouldn’t be? Do we know for sure how he should be living his life? Is it true that Dale’s actions can threaten Laurie? If there’s no threat would there be any reason to judge him?

Once we see what is, without our interpretations, analyses, opinions, and judgments, suffering is gone. It’s that simple. All it takes is investigating our thoughts to see what’s true so we can live in joy and harmony with things as they are.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

284. Follow your gut instead of your beliefs and dating is happy and enjoyable

2007-08-09T11:51:00.001-07:00

Recently I read an article about emotional intimacy in relationships, which I shared with a friend. In recent years she had dated two men who, she said, were really nice guys, with fine qualities. But something was missing which she couldn’t put her finger on. There was nothing really wrong in their friendships but my friend knew she wanted more. It turns out that she wanted to be with someone she could share with on a deep, emotional level, though she couldn’t put that into words at the time.

When she read about emotional intimacy she realized that was what had been missing. Her intuition, or gut, knew something was wrong for her in those relationships but she couldn’t put it into words or make sense of it mentally until she read the article.

To me, her experience is a good example of why it's important to trust our inner instincts in dating, even when they seem to make no sense to our heads. Trusting your gut, or your true essence, is different from having your life run by old beliefs you’ve learned, which are usually not accurate at all. Gut feelings are a knowing, a clear sense, that comes before thought. It’s like the sense of knowing that you are. If someone asks you if you exist your response is automatic: “Yes, of course.” You’d have to exist and be aware of that existence to even have a thought. So knowing comes before thought. Intuition springs from that same source, our true nature.

Belief, however, is always a thought, recalling a memory of something we’ve learned. It’s not based on knowing or direct experience. As we trust our intuition more and more we see that those intuitive impulses – that Life Intelligence – is meant to lead our lives. It blinks our eyes, beats our hearts and brings forth our next thought. All we have to do is follow what’s intuitively obvious and life, including dating, becomes just an easy, enjoyable, peaceful movement of energy. There’s no need to try to mentally psyche out life. We don’t need to try to run the show. Instead, we can just go with what we know is right for us. And our heart, or gut, or intuition tells us what that is.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

283. What happens in mature dating is never painful except for our thoughts about it

2007-08-07T12:33:00.000-07:00

All the heartache, disappointment, despair, loneliness and pain of mature dating comes and goes, have you noticed? Even in the midst of deep hurt there are moments of no hurt at all, such as when you stub your toe and your thoughts instantly go to that physical pain. Meanwhile your heartache just disappears – poof!

Where does it go? Was it real? Or was all that hurt just a thought? Since it can disappear in an instant what could the pain be except a fleeting thought? That’s why it makes sense to question thoughts and beliefs. While we hold a thought it feels physically real. Let’s say Ron’s thought is, “I want Adele to love me.” The more that thought is nurtured and fed the more Ron hurts.

But is it true that Adele should love Ron? Can he positively know that would be best for him? With that thought he’s in a world of hurt. Without it he’s just living life and watching things happen. When he doesn’t know for sure what should happen he’s open to what is. And with his focus off the thought what happens to the pain? It disappears in the simple awareness that Ron’s strongly held belief may not be true.

Thoughts seem to have great power to create pain for us. But in actuality they have no power at all because there’s nothing real about them. Thoughts are as fleeting as a lightning flash and as real as a shadow. Meanwhile, every moment a painful thought-illusion occupies us we’re not only hurting but we’re missing the only living there ever is, the life that happens in the present. And that present-moment life is not suffering at all.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

282. Bliss may be far-fetched but happy, adventurous, mature dating can be yours

2007-08-07T07:06:00.000-07:00

You’ve probably heard of the sages and gurus who speak of living in bliss. It sounds wonderful. Isn’t that what we want when we’re seeking a partner? – bliss? But that idea may not be too practical in real life.

In my study of spiritual traditions I’ve seen that the word bliss is often confusing. People sometimes think it means living on a constant high. Others think it must mean some sort of spaced-out, trance-like existence. Maybe it’s been a translation issue, but the honest, people of clarity who share spiritual wisdom speak of the happiness that’s our true nature as being simply a problem-free life. As one teacher, John Wheeler, puts it, “Life becomes open, natural and joyous – not necessarily in an overt way.” It’s the simple realization that everything is all right just as it is. And when it changes, as it always will, that’s all right too.

We live in that knowing that life is just fine when we question the beliefs we hold that cause us psychological suffering – in dating and in other aspects of life. When we don’t think we have all the answers and when we realize living is happening through us, our focus on “my way” loses its intensity and we start being happy just with what happens in the moment. The natural intelligence that expresses itself as everything we experience doesn’t have problems and suffering. It’s always only our idea that life should be our way rather than the way it is that makes us suffer.

Do you ever really know what should happen in life? Are you really the small, separate person you think you are, who has to struggle with life? Life is living through us, as us, and when we see that, dating becomes simply an interesting, fun adventure, without problems.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

281. We don't "need" love when we discover that feeling loved is an inside job

2007-08-06T10:53:00.000-07:00

We hear all the time that we have to love ourselves before we can love others. Or that we don’t need love from others when we truly love ourselves. The problem is, how do we truly love ourselves? Most people find that the way they try to get love from themselves is the same way they try to get love from others – by manipulation. When we try hard to give others what we think they want – to get their love through flattery and deceit – we’re manipulating. We’ve also made ourselves victims, waiting for someone else to make us feel happy and loved.

When we try to give ourselves what we think we want we’re also victims, hoping something we do will make us feel acceptable and worthy. You can take all the cruise trips you want, and soak in a perfumed tub with flowers and candles, but those methods of manipulation don’t do anything for self-love. Loving ourselves isn’t doing something, it’s being something. And what we’re being when we love ourselves is a spontaneously peaceful, happy person, content with life. Self-love and simple being in life are what’s always been there when we see through our self-loathing.

So, how do we love ourselves? We question our beliefs to see reality without our painful stories. At first that may pose a seeming problem because the things we don’t like about ourselves are the things we don’t want to look at. But that’s because we think when we recall what we loathe about ourselves we’ll just be reinforcing self-hatred. “Look at this terrible thing I did, and think about that cruel thing I said. Obviously I’m a terrible person.” We don’t want to think that.

But there’s a way to look at our past and see that it’s not something to regret and hate ourselves over. What blocks us from loving other people is judgment, and it’s the same with ourselves. We judge ourselves by believing our thoughts about how bad we’ve been. Then we’ve trapped ourselves into trying to find someone to love us so we can feel worthy. Of course it never works. Who’s going to love you when you, yourself, think you’re unlovable? That’s what you project. No, self-love is an inside job, not an outside job. And we’ll never see that unless we’re willing to question our beliefs and thoughts about ourselves.

What do we regret having done? Are we willing to look? Did we do the best we could at the time? Is it true we really wanted to hurt someone? Or is it more true that we were so hurt and confused that we lashed out as the only defense we knew then, the only survival technique we thought was available at the moment?

After we’ve questioned our long-held beliefs, and when we see that they’re not true, what’s left automatically is self-love. We don’t have to do anything to gain love. It’s what we are naturally, just as a light shines naturally when we clean the mud and dirt off the bulb.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

280. Believe a partner should be monogamous when she’s not and you'll suffer

2007-08-02T08:46:00.000-07:00

What we know in mature dating doesn’t cause us to suffer. What we believe is the source of all the emotional and psychological pain we feel. Knowing is reality. Belief is a story we’ve learned. That applies to any belief. It’s our story. Let’s say you find that your partner is not being monogamous. That’s what you know. Now, let’s say you believe she should be monogamous. That’s your story and the split-second you believe that story your pain begins. Your belief and your pain come side by side, self-created.

Pain hurts but there’s a gift in it as well. It’s the signal telling you that your thinking is off track and inviting you to play Private I and investigate to see whether your belief is really true. Seeing reality and ending our pain is that simple.

In this case, you’d simply ask, “Is it true my partner should be monogamous when she’s not?” Obviously, what’s happening is true, not what you believe should be happening. Do people have affairs in this world? Is that part of the reality of life? Can we know for sure that our partner should be monogamous? In the larger picture of life are we absolutely sure we know what’s best?

If you still think your beliefs are right you could ask further questions: Does my partner have a right to live her life her way? Do I have a right to demand that she live it my way? Who decides how I get to live my life? Who gets to decide how she lives her life? With simple questions, given honest answers, you find that life is a series of happenings, all things changing, all things coming and going. Can we know something or someone shouldn’t go? Who are we to decide we know best?

Though I didn’t have the understanding of life that I do now, when my wife died, one thing seemed really clear in the midst of all my emptiness and pain: She was supposed to be gone. I knew that because when I looked around she wasn’t here any longer. Somehow, that knowing was clear: It was supposed to be, because it was. All life, I see now, is like that. Reality rules.

When we simply witness life as it is, without our stories, we don’t suffer. You can argue with reality all you want, but all you’ll ever get is heartache and pain. It’s madness to argue with what is. Drop the resistance and judgment, see it the way it is, and pain is gone. Suffering is always optional.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

279. Living in our make-believe world makes for a lot of suffering in dating

2007-08-01T13:22:00.000-07:00

Most of the time we live in an unreal, make-believe, invisible world – a lie of our own creation. We wake in the morning and create our world out of our thoughts and beliefs. Here’s what I mean. Louise has been dating a guy and suddenly, without warning, he says he wants to date someone else. She’s crushed, and agonizes for months over what went wrong and why he isn’t with her any longer.

Marie has the same experience. She’s been dating a guy and without warning he tells her he’s ending the relationship. Marie, however, sees the reality of life and knows to just witness it as it is. If she has doubts or sadness she questions herself to see if it’s true that the relationship should have turned out the way she expected or hoped, instead of the way it did. With some clarity she sees that she doesn’t know the big picture and she can’t be positive that this relationship should have continued.

In fact, she can be positive that it should not have continued… because it didn’t. Living life without emotional suffering is seeing that life is just the way it is. Suffering would only occur for Marie if she thought it should be her way rather than the way it is. She would have to think that she has a voice in the matter, when in fact she’s simply being lived, as is everything else.

Once she realizes life happens the way it happens she can easily take it in stride and simply enjoy the next experience, the one that always replaces whatever disappears. This is clarity, peace and happiness. And it all comes from questioning our beliefs and seeing reality as it actually is. All our stories then end and all the suffering is gone without a story.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

278. We tend to blame ourselves but we can’t make a mistake in mature dating

2007-08-01T11:01:00.000-07:00

You can’t make a mistake in mature dating. When there’s a problem in our relationship it’s easy to think it wouldn’t exist if only we hadn’t said or done something. I know that flies in the face of what many of us think. We think, “If only I hadn’t been so honest.” “I shouldn’t have disagreed with what she said.” “I made a mistake when I asked that other woman to dance.” It’s called regret.

If you’re feeling regret over some action you took or words you spoke in your relationship there’s a simple way to get past that pain. Ask yourself, “Could I have done better in the moment?” If the answer is no, what is there to regret? If the answer is yes, question yourself a little more. It may be that you’re holding on to a belief about what behavior is right or wrong, good or bad. But does that belief square with reality? Is it true in your own experience that at the moment you took the action you could have done better? Didn’t you do the best you knew at the time to get what you thought would be the best outcome for you?

Regret is a waste of energy and robs you of the chance to be peaceful and happy with this moment. It’s the memory of a belief that isn’t true. Could something be different than the way it was? Can you truly know it should have been different?

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

277. If you stop judging you stop hurting and mature dating is then a fun adventure

2007-07-23T10:41:00.000-07:00

All the pain in mature dating comes from one thing and one thing only – what we think about what’s happening. A happening itself doesn’t cause pain. It’s only when we think it shouldn’t be happening or it should be happening differently that we suffer. Whenever you find yourself thinking or saying words like “should”, “ought”, “right”, “wrong”, “good”, “bad”, etc. you know you’re judging. It’s all about thinking we’re right and the situation or other person is wrong.

The job of the mind is to prove it’s right. So it judges and compares and pits this thing against another thing. The Tao Te Ching, that ancient Chinese spiritual text, says, “When people see some things as good, other things become bad.” When you think someone’s words or behavior is bad you’re not open to see the good that can come from it. We seem to think that from our limited human perspective we can assess and judge what that Infinite wisdom is showing us.

Once we question our thoughts, however, we may see that what we think is wrong and bad is just something we’re not clear about. For example, let’s make up a story about Mary. Mary’s relationship ends and her friends and family are happy because they could see this wasn’t the right guy for her. But Mary didn’t choose to end the relationship and she’s heart-broken, only to realize months later that her friends and family had more clarity than she did. Now she’s glad things didn’t go her way after all. If she hadn't believed her thoughts that the relationship shouldn't have ended she wouldn't have suffered in the first place. Instead, she'd have been able to acknowledge the change in her life and simply watch the next thing show up, whatever it might be.

Believing our thoughts without question is a recipe for pain. Questioning shows us that reality is the way of life and maybe we really don’t have the “right” answers after all. Without our right/wrong thoughts and beliefs we’re left with seeing life as it is. And “as it is” is just life spreading itself out before us moment by moment, full of interesting surprises and miracles if we’re willing to see them.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

276. Was it true that sex too soon ended her relationship?

2007-07-22T10:20:00.000-07:00

For many of us there’s a lot of stress in dating. In many cases it’s a new experience after being married or with a partner for years. Something has happened – death, divorce – and you’re single again. And now you’re in your 50s, 60s, 70s or more. You want to find a partner. You don’t want to live life without companionship, love and warmth. That’s a strong desire for you, especially now that you’re older.

Sad to say, that very desire is the beginning of a lot of trouble because we can easily think we have to be something special to be wanted or loved again. So, almost without realizing it, we begin to play the game of “make-believe”. We become inauthentic, trying to be someone we think is more acceptable. When we’re with a date we agree with things that in our hearts we don’t believe. We do things we don’t really feel is true to ourselves because we want love and approval. We’re trying to impress.

Reality, however, is that we are who we are. Each of us is given different personalities, different talents, different interests. We don’t have to try to be something we’re not. Acting is so stressful compared to “being”. “Being” is simply moving through life without effort, spontaneously, naturally, authentically – and happily.

Some years ago I met a woman who told me her story about a past relationship that ended. It was painful to her for a long time and she naturally questioned why it may have happened. What she concluded was that she got into a sexual relationship with this man too soon. “If only I had waited then probably this relationship wouldn’t have ended,” she said.

But since she was willing to explore the reality of those painful thoughts she realized, with some questioning, that she couldn’t know that her beliefs were true. In fact, she realized that the relationship ended not a moment too soon or too late. How did she know? She looked at reality and saw what happened. It’s like seeing that it’s raining outside. You know it should be raining because it is. You know anything should have happened because it did. Thoughts about it won’t change a thing. What is, is.

When we think we have to control how a relationship goes by being phony and false we’re living in a dream world. If a relationship ends it was supposed to end. If it continues that was meant to be. We can stop trying to be the “right person” for that wonderful man or woman we think we need in our lives. With some questioning we can even see that we obviously don’t need a relationship when we don’t have one. We think the right relationship would make us happy but can we know? Doesn’t that infinite, intelligence-energy that expresses as the universe seem to know what it’s doing? We could just trust life, live honestly and authentically, and be happy and relaxed in our dating. The ease of that is what I call dating fun.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

275. You can end stomach-churning suffering that often comes with mature dating

2007-07-20T10:15:00.000-07:00

Thinking of writing a book some day, I started taking notes about mature dating some years ago when I realized how much unnecessary pain and confusion I saw in people my age when it came to dating. The disappointment and heartache, in both men and women, is so obvious in dating because those feelings are so emotionally acute and penetrating. The feelings are often knifelike as they stab deep into our guts.

What I had realized by then was that these feelings are always self-created, though we do that innocently. We don’t realize that we create our own world each minute. In dreamless sleep there is no world and no stress or suffering. It’s only when we wake up and say “I” that we suffer. The mind is endless in its capacity to create huge dramas out of passing thoughts. All based on that little one-letter word, “I”.

But when we question our untrue thoughts the stress and suffering they’ve created disappears because there was no reality behind those thoughts. It’s like the turmoil we create for ourselves by worrying about something that never happens. You’ve done it. You know what I’m talking about. Your worry was all a mind game, but what a drama! And what pain that false drama created.

The movies we create are endless when we don’t stop to question thoughts. Are these thoughts true? In dating can we really know what someone thinks or what they mean by their words or why they do or don’t do something? Can you really know your date or partner should do or not do what you think? Are you sure you know what’s best for you in the long run? Can you be positively sure? Does your own history show you’ve been right in the past?

Thoughts are nothing more than a game the mind plays to keep itself alive and entertained. Meanwhile, life – reality, what is – goes on as it does, with or without our opinions or approval. We don’t need to figure it out. We don’t need to know the future, or why something happened in the past. We can live in not-knowing and be contentedly happy, watching life blossom and unfold in new surprises every moment. This is peace. This is the end of stomach-churning suffering.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

274. Looking at reality ends suffering – but it seems too simple

2007-07-19T12:55:00.000-07:00

In our “doing” society we nearly always think we have to “do” something to get rid of the disappointment, pain or suffering that often comes with dating. Yet in this blog I’m saying, “Just see reality as it is and all the suffering drops away by itself.” “How could that be,” you may be wondering. “It can’t be that simple.”

That’s the surprising part of all this: it is that simple. Here’s why. Doing involves will power. By force of will we’re going to change our thinking. “Think positively, not negatively,” the experts say. But if will power worked wouldn’t it have worked for you a long time ago? When you’re hurting emotionally wouldn’t you just will the suffering to be gone and it would be gone? But we can’t do that.

Investigating our often false thinking and seeing the truth of life is a whole different game. It has nothing to do with force or will power or effort or doing. It has to do with simply seeing what’s true. Then the ideas that argue with the truth evaporate by themselves because they were hanging on an illusion.

Let’s put this in the form of a simple, hypothetical example. Darrell and Kate have dated several times and things seem to be going well. But days go by and Darrell hasn’t called. Kate’s mind starts working overtime: “He probably got to know me better and realizes he doesn’t like me after all.” “He’s rude not to call.” “I’d never just drop out without telling someone.” “Why am I always the loser?” Those are all plausible-sounding stories but what do they have to do with reality? Absolutely nothing. And they cause Kate to agonize in turmoil.

The truth is, the only thing Kate knows is that Darrell hasn’t called. Period. That’s reality, and without a story there’s no pain in that at all. The pain is born only when a story is born. Let’s say Darrell never calls again and Kate chooses not to call him. What does she know then? That she wasn’t supposed to have a further relationship with Darrell – because she doesn’t. That’s it. Is there suffering in that? Only if Kate thinks she should have had a relationship with Darrell. All stories we create are just thoughts passing by that we latch onto and make real for ourselves. They’re all lies, but we don’t know that until we look. And looking seems too simple.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

273. Did you know that desire is the source of any dating pain you feel?

2007-07-19T12:25:00.000-07:00

In your dating life desire is the basis of all your emotional suffering. If you’re hurting in any way about dating it has to be because you want something or someone to be different. When we don’t get what we want we suffer – in the form of sadness, anger, jealousy, frustration, loneliness and more. I’m not talking about a simple preference, of course. I’m talking about a desire that says, “If only I had that I could be happy.”

Life, however, unfolds without our desires. It just shows up, always fresh and sparkling new every moment, offering unequaled surprises and beauty if we just stop and see it.

Usually, though, we’re too busy wanting and judging to just be with what is. “Being” seems too simple. "Being" is just doing the next obvious thing without interpreting it and without a desire to alter or modify it. You live in the truth then, the truth that you don’t need to know and can’t know what’s going to happen next. This morning, for instance, I was going to have a cup of tea and go out for my usual exercise walk. I opened the refrigerator – and there in the bottom was blueberry juice, running all over. I had put a frozen bag in to thaw and apparently it had a slit in it. What a surprise!

So instead of walking right away I spent the next half-hour cleaning up blueberry juice that had run all over. I had just thought I was going out immediately for a walk but what did I know? It’s that way with dating too. We think we know what’s going to happen or what should happen. And then we suffer when it’s not what we expected. Life gets much simpler when we realize that it is what it is. Life (or God, or Source, or Infinite Intelligence) is living us and everything else. Having a war with it gets you nothing but misery. “Being” with it as it is gets you joy and peace, and some surprisingly happy experiences.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

272. Your date or partner doesn’t make you hurt, your beliefs and expectations do

2007-07-18T11:21:00.001-07:00

Change is normal; every split-second moves out to make way for the next split-second. The very definition of change is “different”. You see it easily in the flow of nature: seasons come and go, day turns to night, there’s the rise and fall of breathing, and the rise and fall of nations. There’s heat and cold, calm and turbulence. With change come surprises, but only because we have expectations.

In mature dating, where we’ve let our heart get involved, change and surprise often hits us square in the face. We’re emotionally deeply invested and we can’t escape it. When things don’t go the way we want we label it disappointing and heartbreaking. But life doesn’t knock us around when we see it as it is, without expectations and without trying to hold on to things that are on their way out, including relationships. When we don’t take things personally we see that there’s just life. There’s no need to try to make sense of it any more than a fence post could make sense of itself. Without realizing it’s part of a bigger picture – the fence – the post can’t understand.

We’re invited by the Life Force every moment just to see what we need by seeing what is. It’s unconditional love, and if it has to come in the form of suffering at times it’ll do that. Each minute we’re being invited to see that we are the essence of life, showing up in form along with everything else. We’re not the pained, bewildered little person that’s separate from the Life Force and thinks it has to make life work all by itself. In dating this means we can let go of stress, bewilderment and suffering, and simply witness and enjoy life as it moves and modifies, floats and flows – just as it is.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

271. If you’re hurting it may be a case of mistaken identity

2007-07-18T08:18:00.000-07:00

In mature dating, any time we’re hurting emotionally because of what someone else says or does we’ve got a case of mistaken identity. We’ve identified ourselves as a person who needs someone to be a certain way for us to be happy. By our thoughts we’ve taken on the identity of a victim.

But is our belief really true? Do we really need another person to be different so we can be happy? Let’s say Sid and Janie are in a committed relationship and Janie says she’s pulling out. Sid is crushed and suffers for months. He feels if only Janie would come back he could be happy again.

But is that true? Reality shows us that after a time Sid gets over his pain and begins to happily date other women again and move on with his life. Janie didn’t come back and yet Sid is happy. So his sadness or happiness couldn’t have had anything to do with Janie. It was within himself, in his own thoughts and beliefs. Any time we argue with reality we hurt. See reality as just the way life is and suffering ends. In the end Sid may realize how lucky he is that the relationship with Janie ended because he now sees they weren’t meant for each other. He just thought they were.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

270. Mature dating pain is gone when we watch life just be the way it is

2007-07-16T19:58:00.000-07:00

Whenever you’re feeling the discomfort or emotional pain of wanting someone to change you can relieve that suffering by looking inside yourself. We always want someone to change because we want something for ourselves. The stress is that they don’t change the way we think they should.

Rather than focusing on getting someone to change, which results in interfering with their lives and causes us a lot of stress, we can focus instead on whether it’s realistic to argue with the way life is. Just seeing life without our self-centered desires is the end of all suffering. When we don’t want anything different we don’t suffer. It’s that simple. Facts never cause suffering. It’s always our disagreement with those facts that make us suffer.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

269. Loneliness doesn’t have to be our life if we question our thoughts

2007-07-15T08:58:00.000-07:00

In one day recently I heard about two people, both seniors, who are single and extremely lonely. One is a woman who told me about an emotionally abusive relationship she’s in but who clearly doesn’t want to leave it because she says she can only imagine loneliness. The other is a story I heard about a man who’s wife died four years ago and he’s been deeply lonely ever since.

It may be hard to see this but any feeling of stress and suffering, including loneliness, comes only from our thinking. This isn’t something I’m suggesting you believe. Instead I’m suggesting, if you’re interested, that you check it out for yourself. Many times during any day we all find ourselves busy thinking of something that completely abolishes our suffering, if only for a moment. In those moments loneliness is gone. In other words, you have to think about being lonely to be lonely.

The woman I talked with seems to be afraid to drop her unfulfilling relationship because, as she said, “I have no prospects” for another relationship. Instead of dealing with the present she’s trying to deal with a future that she’s imagining.

I know nothing about the widower except that he’s lonely. But my experience would say he’s probably thinking thoughts like, “I can’t be happy without her.” “I need her in my life to be happy,” etc. But is that true? If you asked him if he’s had times of joy and happiness in the last four years I’ll bet he’d admit he has. Maybe times with his family, his grandchildren, friends, even sitting alone in a peaceful setting such as beside a gurgling creek, or even watching a ball game on TV when his side is winning. So he’s had happiness without her.

The point is this: All emotional suffering comes from our thoughts. We believe the thought that says, “I need her.” But isn’t he functioning in life just fine? Is it really true that he needs her? Can he even know that her life would have been better if she’d lived? Can he know his life would have been better if she’d lived? No, we can’t really know any of that. Reality is always the teacher because it doesn’t lie. It doesn’t deceive. It isn’t phony. It’s just what is. You can count on it.

Questioning the stories we tell ourselves – if we’re willing to answer honestly – always leads us back to the peace that’s under all the mind’s shenanigans. The mind is a wonderful slave but it’s a terrible master when its thoughts pop up about life and we get involved with those thoughts. We feed those thoughts and give them a comfy place to stay. So when will they leave? We muck around in the sticky mud of suffering and call that life.

Before any thought can arrive, however, there has to be some aware being that the thought can show up in or on. That beingness is who we are, and it’s like a movie screen. It isn’t affected by the thoughts and movies that show up on it. It’s always at peace and without problems. Since that Aware Being must be there for us to even have a thought, and since it exists before thought, it must be who we really are.

Life changes moment by moment. It changes so fast, in fact, that before we can even speak of a moment it’s already gone. Our suffering comes from not wanting some of the changes and holding on to the idea that life should be our way rather than the way it is. Without that thought we move freely in the world, relishing new relationships and enjoying the sparkle of life in the moment, even in such a simple thing as doing the dishes. If we’re lonely we can live in our wretched thinking or we can live in the awareness that watches a thought come and lets it go, like a cloud in the sky.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

268. Your insecurities can have you living in mature dating hell

2007-07-14T07:46:00.000-07:00

The desire for security drives a lot of actions in life, and it sure shows up regularly in dating, especially in these mature or senior years. We want things pinned down. We want to know what’s going to happen next. We want things buttoned up and firmly fixed so we’ll know where we stand. We don’t want any painful surprises.

Veronica is a friend of mine who recently began seeing Chet, a man who had been divorced many years ago and has been alone since then. She told me she and Chet had been together three or four times and were getting along great. But apparently Chet was feeling uneasy. He called my friend and said he wanted to discuss some things that were important for him. He said he needed to know: Was she really invested in knowing him? How serious was she? Why didn’t she call him more often? What did she see their relationship looking like? He said he just wanted to know so he wouldn’t waste a lot of time and emotional energy on something that might not be going any place.

Chet’s concerns aren’t abnormal. But are they realistic? Would he really be able to feel secure if he had some answers? The truth is that life has no security, and we all know that when we examine it closely. You can have the most permanent, secure love relationship in the world and your partner gets killed in a traffic smashup. Or dies of cancer. Or finds someone new.

When we want security it’s because we think we have some control over life – our life. We want to prop it up and make sure it looks exactly the way we want it to look. But that’s a myth. There just ain’t no such thing, have you noticed? Life unfolds as it does and it doesn’t care a whit about our opinions and desires. Whatever this intelligent energy is that expresses itself through all the intricate functioning of our bodies and the planets is dictating the whole show.

We can watch it unfold in peace, and be in heaven. Or we can push and shove and try to control things and live in hell.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

267. Does body image keep you from dating freely and enjoying the experience?

2007-07-14T07:06:00.000-07:00

If you’re just beginning to date again – or even if you’ve dated awhile now in your mature years - a major concern for you might be what you look like now that you’re older. You’ve got wrinkles and some sagging skin now. You don’t have the youthful look you did when you were dating earlier in life. You may have also gained some weight. People often have the feeling that they just wish they looked younger again, and they do everything possible to appear young.

That’s a stressful way to live, and if your concern with looks is always in the back of your mind when you’re with a date you’re probably not nearly as fluid and authentic as you’d be without those fears and beliefs.

There’s a simple way to dispel that worry; take a look at it and see what’s really true. If the story you’re telling yourself sounds like this: “I wish I looked younger.” Or “No one will be interested in me now that I’m older,” you can question those beliefs. Even the belief I’ve heard often, “Men only want younger women,” can be examined a bit. Is it true that men only want younger women? Is it true you’d be better off if you looked younger? Can you really, totally know that?

Reality is that everyone looks older as they get older. That’s the way the world works. And unless you have a fixed idea of what beauty or good looks is you can also see beauty and attractiveness in older people. Another reality is that it’s true, some men do want younger women. But do you know there are also women who want younger men? So what? Sometimes the sun shines and sometimes it’s cloudy too. That’s just the way of it, as a friend of mine says. Another reality is that every day seniors and mature daters strike up wonderful romantic relationships.

Remember, when we examine life closely we realize we don’t really know what’s best for us and we’re not running this show. If you’re supposed to be with a partner that’ll happen. If not it won’t, and your fears and thoughts about the why of it won’t make any difference, as they never have in the past.

Believing our self-doubting and inhibiting thoughts can make dating in these later years a stressful event. But without those false beliefs senior dating can also be a fascinating, unfolding mystery and a discovery of whole new worlds of love and caring.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

266. Communication usually isn’t the problem in dating relationships, judgment is

2007-07-10T19:07:00.000-07:00

The inability to communicate is often cited as the problem between couples in relationships. Just because we’re in the mature stages of our lives doesn’t mean the ability to communicate with one another has improved. It only improves when people are willing to look at life realistically and be honest with themselves. Honesty often means we have to let go of our precious stories. We have to let go of being right and making the other person wrong.

We all know that a lot more than words are communicated when we’re speaking to each other. In romantic relationships that’s especially true because we know each other well enough to know what hurts the other, and sometimes we want to be hurtful.

However, when we’re not judging our partner we don’t need to hurt them in an effort to make them change. We don’t feel they’re responsible for our feelings so we’re not angry and trying to control them. When we’re enjoying a person for who they are as they are we usually communicate clearly. If we say, “Let’s go out to dinner,” that’s what we mean.

If we’re upset with our partner, though, and think they should be different, the words, “Let’s go out to dinner,” could be said with anger or that look of disgust we’re known for, and the meaning is clear: “You’re an idiot and the least you owe me is a nice dinner,” for example.

Communication is hardly ever the problem when two people really want to listen to each other and feel respect and care for each other. It may take us a few tries but we’ll almost certainly be able to eventually communicate what we mean and be understood.

So it’s not communication that’s the problem. It’s judgment that’s the problem. When we’re upset with our partner because we think they should be different we manipulate our communication to try to control them and make them do what we want. Our manipulation is unmistakable. It’s not honest communication and it never builds love.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

265. When you love yourself you can share with a partner, not need him

2007-07-10T10:52:00.000-07:00

We hear all the time that we should love ourselves. Loving ourselves, we’re told, is our job and we can’t expect someone else to do it for us because they’re busy trying to love themselves. But what does it really mean to love ourselves? One of the ways we love ourselves is by realizing that we’re the ones deciding how life is (for us!). It isn’t about what life is dishing out but how we judge it – either good or bad for us. In article #264 I wrote about believing someone should want what they don’t want. In that belief and its naturally following expectation we’re hurting ourselves, not loving ourselves. We’re not seeing reality. We’re telling ourselves a lie, without realizing it.

Willingness to question thoughts and beliefs and see the truth takes us immediately to self-love. In this case we see specifically that who a person is and how they live is exclusively their business. When we don’t resist that by thinking they should be different we’re left with a feeling of ease and freedom – peace, or self-love.

We let the other person be who they are (as if we had a choice anyway) and we do whatever is apparent for us regarding them. In dating we may choose to be with the other person as she is or we may move on to someone else. But we don’t need to try to change them or fight them. If we move on it’s without judgment and anger toward them. After all, they’re being themselves, just as we’re doing.

That respect and love for the other person is also love for us: We’re no longer feeding ourselves a story that isn’t true and making ourselves miserable. Instead we’re just observing the way things are. Seeing the way life is rather than judging that it should be different is the primary way we love ourselves. “Seeing”, with no need to modify, alter or change anything, always feels peaceful, content and satisfying. We’re quietly and simply in love with life as it is.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

264. She suffered because she thought her friend should want what he didn’t want

2007-07-09T21:28:00.000-07:00

It’s so easy – and we’re so conditioned – to think that if we can just get circumstances to change we’ll be happier. But no matter how upset we get, that’s nearly always hopeless because life is what it is. For example, today I was talking with a woman who had asked for help in sorting out some painful things in her life. I had suggested she try using the method called The Work that was introduced by Byron Katie (www.TheWork.com).

This woman, that I’ll call Kathryn, had written that she felt hurt and angry because a man she had a relationship with only wanted sex from her. She thought he should respect and honor her by wanting more than just sex.

Questioning those thoughts and beliefs helped her get some clarity. When I asked her if it was true he should be different from the way he was she was quite quickly able to see that it wasn’t true. He should be who he is, just as she is who she is. How could he want what he doesn’t want? Kathryn thought she was suffering because this guy wanted only sex from her. But as she unraveled the truth, with the help of some questions, she was able to see that her suffering really was because she thought this man should be different. It wasn't about him after all, it was about her.

When I asked how she felt when she held to the belief that he should want something he doesn’t want her answer was that she felt demeaned, and that gave her a stomach ache. Asked how she felt without that belief her answer was: Peaceful. Any time we suffer emotionally it’s only because we’re resisting what is. It could only be that, because just observing reality without a judgment can’t have any pain in it. It’s when we think it should be our way rather than the way it is that we hurt.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

263. Loneliness doesn’t exist except as a thought we believe in

2007-07-09T11:39:00.000-07:00

Single seniors and mature men and women often feel lonely. It feels like we’re lonely because we have no partner in our lives. We think if the external world would change and give us a partner we wouldn’t need to feel lonely any more. But the external world is all our own projection. It’s like a mirror. You can’t look into a mirror without seeing your own reflection. It’s impossible.

In exactly the same way you can’t look into the world without seeing your own reflection because you project onto the world what your thoughts are about it. Two people can listen to the same music and one likes it, the other dislikes it. Obviously the music was just a fact. Our perception and projection is what makes it good or bad for us.

Back to loneliness, if we think we should be with someone we’re lonely. If we don’t think that’s necessary we’re not lonely. It’s all about believing our thoughts, and that’s where inquiry comes in. When you look at reality you see that you don’t have a partner. Should you? Do you know more than God? Obviously right now you don’t need a partner or you’d have one. Are you absolutely sure you should have a partner and that you wouldn’t be lonely if you did? In my first marriage I was lonely, and I’m not the only one who has experienced loneliness while having a partner.

There are more than six billion people on this planet. Is loneliness really a problem or is it just thinking that’s the problem? You can argue with “what is” but you can’t win. You can’t even be sure you’d be better off if you did win!

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

262. This one, primary desire is the heart of all suffering – in dating and in life

2007-07-08T21:46:00.000-07:00

When you’re seeking a mate, and dating, you know before you start that there’s a risk involved. The risk is that you could wind up with a broken heart. We want not to be hurt. But the primary desire everyone has – the desire that causes all the psychological suffering there ever was or could be – is the desire to have the world be the way we want it to be rather than simply seeing it the way it is.

You don’t need to ponder this idea and wonder if you could believe it or not. All you have to do is look at your own direct experience. Isn’t it true that every time you hurt emotionally it’s because you think something or someone should be different? Judgment is another word for it. We judge – this is wrong, this is bad, this shouldn’t be. Without judging where can suffering exist? It can’t.

So the question is how you get rid of that primary desire to have the world be the way you want it rather than the way it is. If we narrow our focus down to mature dating we’ve all been around long enough to see that what was a broken heart often turned out to be a blessing in disguise. What we knew with certainty at that time, we later realized we didn’t know at all. Wiping out emotional suffering is always a matter of questioning: Do we really know it shouldn’t be the way it is? Could we just allow ourselves to watch life rather than think we should run it?

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

261. When one myth about mature dating drops a whole host of others drop with it

2007-07-08T17:34:00.000-07:00

What happens in dating is the only thing that could happen because that’s what did happen. There’s one operating principle (many call it God) in this world so how could it make a mistake? We can’t have a problem with dating and relationships unless we believe our thoughts about them. This morning I was talking with a woman about these ideas and she said, “I just keep repeating these dumb mistakes.” I asked her, “Can you really know what you did was a mistake in the big scheme of the world?” After pondering the question a bit she said, “No, I don’t really know that.”

She had believed her thought that some action she took was a mistake, and along with that came her judgment that it was dumb. But when “mistake” goes do you notice that “dumb” goes with it? “Mistake” was never real so it can’t stand up to scrutiny and serious questioning. And “dumb” was also just a myth tied to the first myth. When one goes the other goes… and that’s not even true. They don’t actually go because they were never there in the first place. It was all illusion.

That’s how the mind works; it appears to make real something that was never real in the first place, such as a statement like, “I should have a partner.” With that come thoughts like, “There must be something wrong with me.” “I have to find ways to be more attractive.” “If I just put on a happier face maybe then I’d find a partner.” Each statement is like the judgment “dumb” above. It’s the fantasy child of a fantasy woman, the first belief: “I should have a partner.”

The way you know you don’t need a partner right now is that you don’t have one. Tomorrow you may have a partner but in this very moment what you have is what you have, and fighting it is creating a war with reality that you’ll always lose. Without that war you just have life, as it is, which is totally satisfying once we give up the idea that it should be our way rather than the way it is.

Sometimes people ask me, “Does that mean I shouldn’t put my profile in the personals to find dates and a partner?” The answer is no, you simply do what you’re moved to do as part of the functioning of the world, but without needing a particular result. The joy is in the happening in the moment. You simply enjoy the process, watching the mystery of life unfold and realizing that you’re part of the unfolding along with everything else. No one ever put us in charge; we just thought so.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

260. Being peaceful and happy is as natural as gravitating toward a mate

2007-07-03T10:49:00.000-07:00

Our natural state is peace and happiness. You can prove that to yourself by just noticing that in those moments when you’re just being, without really thinking of anything, you’re perfectly content. Or consider this, before any movement there’s stillness. Stillness has to be the background on which movement appears. It’s that way with noise also. Before sound there’s silence. Notice that you can jiggle a cup of water and when you stop jiggling it goes back to its natural state, stillness. You can make any sound – strike a gong, play a note, say a word – and when the sound stops there’s silence again. Silence is the natural state.

In silence and stillness there’s nothing but peace, no disturbance. It’s the peace we feel when we’re asleep at night. It’s the state small babies live in until they get old enough to have a sense of “me” and begin to believe their thoughts. We suffer, in dating and in other aspects of life, because we’re confused. We resist and argue with life as it is; that’s the confusion. We think life should be different because we’re confused about who we are. We haven’t noticed that living is happening through us not from us. We aren’t the authors of life. In fact, we have no independent power at all. Our very existence and every breath and heartbeat is given to us.

When you feel stress about your experiences in dating just notice that you believe some thought that’s fighting with what is. We don’t argue with gravity, we don’t whine that leaves fall off the trees in the fall, we don’t complain that some flowers have no perfume. This is all just the way life is, and who knows why?

All of life is like that. There’s a name for it when we disturb our natural inner silence and stillness by thinking anything should be our way instead of the way it is. It’s called insanity.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

259. You can’t lose when you see dating as it is, a delightful adventure

2007-07-02T11:33:00.000-07:00

This morning I read a comment written by a 70-year-old woman who was saying that being older is not as good as being younger. As you read that do you notice that this is a woman who’s adding a slight stress to her life by arguing with reality? If you question whether something that subtle is stressful put yourself in her shoes a minute and ask yourself two questions:

1. How do you feel emotionally when you think the thought that life isn’t as good as it once was? Just feel that for a moment.

2. How would you feel if you paid no attention to that thought and just let it disappear into wherever it came from? Feel that one.

Even hypothetically, doesn’t question #2 feel better? Living happens, aging happens, spouses die or leave, we find ourselves alone in life. If you think it shouldn’t be this way isn’t that a bit like thinking if you drop a plate in mid-air it shouldn’t hit the floor? You just make yourself miserable.

The articles in this blog don’t say you can find a partner and here’s how to do it. What these articles say is that whatever happens in your dating you can enjoy life with a sense of well-being and contentment when you go with life as it is. Thoughts come and go by themselves. You can only have one thought at a time so any time there’s a new thought, which is every second or more, you’ve also lost the last thought.

If we buy into certain thoughts and nurse them and feed them and pay attention to them because we think they mean something we just create a lot of suffering for ourselves. I’m not even really talking about acceptance here, because to have acceptance you also must have non-acceptance and rejection. I’m only talking about being, before thoughts, before judgments, before attachments. Just see life as it is and you’ll have no pain. Then mature dating is a wonderful adventure and you can’t possibly lose.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

258. Believe thoughts about dating and they’ll bite you every time

2007-07-01T18:15:00.000-07:00

The mind is a wonderful slave but a wretched master. Unfortunately, a huge part of our waking hours we let thoughts master us. We believe them, and then get jerked around by them like an animal on a chain, forgetting that we started the whole process: “He didn’t pay any attention to me when I spoke to him. He must be mad. It’s probably because I said I didn’t want to go camping with him. Maybe if I make his favorite pie he’ll get over it.” And our story builds and snowballs. But do we know it’s true? We’ve believed our thoughts without questioning them.

Let’s say this woman catches her insanity and says to her guy, “You didn’t answer when I spoke to you, is something wrong?” And he says, “You spoke to me? Gosh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know you said anything. I was so engrossed in fixing this thing that I didn’t even hear you.” Or maybe he does say he’s mad because you won’t go camping with him. Is that your problem to fix? You know he’s supposed to be mad because he is. You don’t need to change him or fix him. You may decide you don’t want to live in that tension, though, so you go shopping. Or eventually you may decide to find a different guy. But you don’t fall into mind traps that say this shouldn’t be this way.

We build stories in our minds because we’re interested in our thoughts. We think they’re real and they mean something. But they’re not and they don’t! All worries, doubts, problems and questions about dating only exist and make us suffer when we’re thinking about them. What do most of us do to relieve the suffering? Usually one of several things: 1) We try to change someone so they’ll be or do what we want. 2) We try to find some experiences to get our minds off the suffering. 3) We try to keep the mind silent, which is like saying, “Don’t think of pink elephants.”

The real answer to the end of emotional suffering is always to question and see what story you’ve got going that argues with reality. Never once will your stories win when they fight reality because reality is just what is. How can you argue with what already is? We just think it should be different, but does that have any effect on what is? Not for a second!

The world works as it works. Dates cheat. Partners lie. Women have affairs. Men say mean things. Is your situation any different? It’s just what is. The way the Masters have found to be always at peace and happy with life is to see that we’re part of its creation and not to form self-centered opinions and judgments about it. It seems too simple, but if we just settle back and relax, life is problem-free. In the end we might even let ourselves see that the me-personality doesn’t even exist. There is no independent person. That too is just a thought.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

257. Do you really know that what you believe about dating is true?

2007-06-30T14:56:00.001-07:00

All psychological or emotional pain comes from believing our thoughts. We can get a good dose of emotional pain from dating because we’re putting ourselves out into the world and feeling pretty vulnerable. In that situation we’re an easy mark. So when your date doesn’t call right away, or says something you take as critical, it’s easy to feel hurt because we believe what our thoughts tell us about these scenes.

We keep going into the mind for answers to life because we believe our thoughts are true. But are they? What we call mind is really just the memory of things that happened. It’s a wonderful tool when you have to know how to tie your shoes or fry potatoes. It does its job exceedingly well.

However, since its job is to record and play back it also remembers many things it was fed based on our interpretations of life that aren’t true – things we picked up from our experiences or ideas we were taught by those around us. For example, let’s say you saw a stern look on your mom’s face when she was angry with you. You learned that when you saw that look from Mom you’d better “straighten up”, as my dad used to say.

But then one day you see a stern look on mom’s face because she’s worried that Dad isn’t home on time. You think she’s angry at you, though you don’t know what you did wrong. But it sticks in your mind from then on that you can’t trust yourself because you can make people angry without even knowing it. That might result in your being extra-sweet and honey-nice to keep people from being angry at you. The technique becomes a major part of your personality, and it’s all based on the memory of a misconception that you still take to be true.

I once had a conversation with a woman who was almost paralyzed when she saw a garter snake, though she’d been raised on a farm and knew they were harmless. It turns out her mom had been raised in a part of Italy where snakes could be deadly and she passed that belief on to her daughter. Even though this woman knew that garter snakes were harmless her deeper belief, learned from her mom, was still intact. She hadn’t fully questioned it to really unmask the lie she lived with all her life.

In dating and romance we put our hearts on the line and we can feel easily hurt. But any time you suffer it helps to just look and notice that your suffering comes from what you believe, not from what’s actually happening. We believe someone is angry at us when they’re not. We believe our life would be better if he called when he doesn’t. We believe she shouldn’t cheat on us when she does. Reality doesn’t lie. But when you think life should go your way when it doesn’t, you churn inside and hurt. Seeing life as it is you’re like a baby, just watching. No judgment no pain. Thoughts can come and go, we just don’t believe them any more once we see what's false through self-questioning.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

256. There’s one thing in your life that will make dating peaceful and happy always

2007-06-29T12:37:00.000-07:00

Everything in the life we know is transitory, changing. We search for new experiences, new sensations, new objects, new loves – anything we think will make our lives happy. Yet every single time they fall short because every experience of happiness leaves us sooner or later, and it’s usually sooner. When it goes we’re back to the search again.

Psychologists tell us there are people who are addicted to romance, or to sex. They find a new romantic partner and in that first blush of romance they’re thrilled. But then the rose fades and they’re disappointed. So they’re off for a new romance. It’s a constant circle of win and lose for them. Relationships with any object, whether it’s a new plasma TV, a new car or a new partner, will always leave us wanting. The thrill is short-lived and transient. Nearly everyone on earth lives their whole lives on this wheel of win/lose, then win and lose again. We strive for something, get it, and then lose the joy it temporarily brought.

There’s good news, however, and it applies directly to dating. The good news is that there’s one thing in your life that has never changed and is always peaceful and happy because it doesn’t take us out on a search again. That one thing is awareness or what we could call presence. You have a sense of being present. You know you exist. That knowing you exist isn’t a thought or belief. You don’t have to think if someone says, “Do you know you are?” Through all the changes in your life – the physical, emotional, mental, and experiential changes – that sense of being, that knowing that we’re present, has never changed. It’s never been affected by any circumstance or experience.

That sense of being or simple awareness is who we all are. No one could say “I’m not” because even to say the words you’d have to “be”. But when we learned the idea that we’re a separate person who has control in life, that’s when our troubles began. “Being” just watches life without judgment, desire, opinion or interpretation. It’s what you feel when you’re immersed in gazing, without thought, at a sunset or mesmerized by a project you’re deeply engrossed in. Small babies live in this empty beingness all the time, never discontent unless they're physically uncomfortable.

The times when we’re in emotional pain over dating are the times when we think we’re in control and believe our thoughts – thoughts that something should be different. That’s why questioning and investigation is so useful. It helps us realize that we don’t really know the answers to life, even our life, which we thought we knew. Eventually we begin to see that anything we add to that awareness of “I am” is trouble. Because that’s when we start dividing things into two – man/woman, good/bad, lucky/unlucky, right/wrong, should/shouldn’t, good/evil, pretty/ugly, etc. Immediately we’re judging that life one way – our way of course – is good and the other way is bad. Even at the moment it looks good to us we only have to wait awhile and it’ll be bad. We all know this. This is nothing new to anyone. The moment we’ve created right we’ve also created wrong. With “good” we’ve created “bad”. But there’s no such thing, except in our thoughts. We put the labels on and then suffer because of them.

To be at peace, content, and happy is as simple as just noticing that every thought, experience, or object appears somehow. What does it appear in? It appears in the clear space of presence or being. The being/awareness is the silent, still background that allows for everything without judging or rejecting anything. We live in that natural state of being or presence when we just witness life as it is. The alternative is to follow thoughts and beliefs out into the world of wants and needs and that never-ending win/lose wheel.

Whenever you have a disturbing thought you already know, from direct experience, that it will change. The mind jumps from one thought to another like a monkey in a tree. But the empty, space-like awareness that allows for thought is never affected and is always content and happy. That’s your true nature and it can watch thoughts without sticking to them or believing them. How could they be real when they’re changing all the time? Their fickleness is proof of their falseness.

When you live in presence/awareness and bring that to a relationship you’ll always be happy, no matter what’s going on with the relationship. Because whatever is going on is just another changing object that appears in the never-changing, always-content beingness of life. That's called living happily and harmoniously with what is.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

255. Dating heartaches are about what we THINK not about what happens

2007-06-28T20:05:00.000-07:00

Every item I’ve posted in this blog is trying to show you how seeing reality lifts you immediately out of any suffering associated with mature dating. This isn’t theory. It’s not something I’m asking you to believe. This is about the way the world really works. And if you’d like you can check it out for yourself. In fact, that’s the only way you can prove it to yourself and experience the peace you get from investigating.

For some years I tried to believe a concept that’s quite popular: We create our own reality. The way it’s most often used, it means that you get what you think. So if you focus on positive thoughts about what you want in life you’ll get it. Seminar leaders and authors tell you it’s so easy: just don’t ever think of what you don’t want and always focus on what you do want. If you apply that to dating in these later years of life you’d have the partner you want if you just hold your tongue right, make sure your socks are straight, and focus on already having that special person in your life as though it had already happened. That’s the way, the experts say.

The problem is, it doesn’t work. Some people’s lives are destined to be successful in society’s terms – wealth, possessions, status, power, etc. They’re the ones who tell us how they did it and how we can all do it too. But try as I might – and I worked hard at it – those ideas never paid off. Nor do they pay off for most of the folks who read the books and pay handsome fees for the seminars. Why? Because, as I’ve now realized, Life is living us, not the other way around. Thoughts or no thoughts, visualization or no visualization, there is no “little me” who could be in control. It’s a myth.

Not one person on earth has any independent power to take a single breath or create a single thought. The Life Force or God, if you want, obviously came into form and sustains itself as form every moment. Humans are one of the forms. We’re the instruments as life is lived through us. We don’t see that though. We want so badly to be in control that we keep trying, failure after failure, to make life work our way because we’ve been told all our lives that God gave us free will. Even if we had free will would we know what to seek, what's really best for us?

Happiness is the bottom line we’re all seeking. To be happy by concentrating on what we want we’d have to have the power to control our thinking wouldn’t we? Yet who can do that? Who can stop thinking? Do you know where the “off” switch is? When your thoughts are so painful why not just stop them for awhile? No one can do it. That’s why we like sleep so much. Thought stops and therefore emotional pain stops because it all stems from believing our thoughts.

Investigating life as it really is, however, helps us see that when we just love life the way it is we have no psychological suffering. Resisting life by judging, interpreting, comparing, setting one thing against another is always painful. When we see that life is the way it is, and we stop trying to tell God what to do we’re happy. God, by the way, is another term for “what is”. How can we know God? Just notice everything you take in with your senses. That’s God. What else could it be?

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

254. Questioning your beliefs almost magically gives you peace again when you’re hurting

2007-06-28T07:24:00.001-07:00

Have you noticed that when it comes to romantic pain will power just doesn’t work? Psychotherapists will sometimes tell clients, “Just switch your mind and don’t think about it.” Or “Get busy with other things so you don’t have time to think about the pain.” No one knows how to let go of thinking or stop it. But everyone has the ability to question their thoughts and look realistically at what’s happening.

We’ve all grown up being taught what’s good and bad and right and wrong about life. We’re sure we know what’s best for us. But the truth is we don’t even know who we are. We think we’re a person running our lives until we question and see that instead life is running us. Thoughts come out of nowhere and say, “He shouldn’t have lied to me,” “She shouldn’t have died,” “It shouldn’t be so hard to find the right person for me,” “I’m older and have wrinkles so who would want to be with me now.” But those are all thoughts we can question easily. It only takes a moment of total honesty to see that we don’t know what the heck we’re talking about. We just think we do, and that causes us a lot of pain until it’s questioned and we see the truth.

A few weeks after my wife died, I remember thinking, “She was only 54, and she shouldn’t have died so young.” Then for some reason – and this was long before I had the understanding I now have – I asked myself, “Can I be really sure her life would have been better if she had lived?” And the no that came out of that question was almost ear-splitting. Of course I couldn’t know that. At that moment it was clear that she was supposed to be dead because when I looked around she wasn’t here any longer. And it was just as clear that I was supposed to have a life because I was here, and something in me knew it was not supposed to be a life of grief and misery forever. I didn’t understand but I did see reality.

Questioning is a gentle, powerful tool that can take you instantly out of any psychological suffering you’re stuck in. It may seem too simple. It may seem crazy. But questioning takes you to the truth when you’re willing to give up what you think you know. And when you see the truth there’s nothing to resist and no way to create pain for yourself. After all, can you ever successfully argue with what is?

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

253. If you believe your thoughts about dating you’re probably hurting

2007-06-27T20:10:00.000-07:00

Thoughts aren’t real. They’re always projections of a past or a future. Reality, on the other hand, is whatever is happening – “what is” at any moment. An easy way to wipe out any suffering about your dating life is to remember that: Thoughts aren’t real. Your heart might be broken. You might feel anger, jealousy, grief, emptiness, despair, disappointment. Whatever feeling you have, notice that feelings only follow thoughts (no pain when you sleep, remember) and thoughts are always unreal. Unreal means they’re fleeting, transitory, fickle, and unreliable.

When thoughts cause pain you know, if you check it out for yourself, that you’re resisting and arguing with reality. Thoughts are trying to bring into reality something that doesn’t exist. Those thoughts are a lie; that’s why I say they're unreal.

Reality is what is, and the only reason it could be painful to you is if you think it “shouldn’t be”. At that moment you’re trying to play God. You’re saying, “I know she shouldn’t leave me because we’re the perfect match. She just didn’t give herself a chance to really know me.” Are you positively sure you’re right in that belief? Or you think, “I’m just not finding attractive people to date. I must be doing something wrong because others are finding new partners.” But is it really true that you know how the world – including your world – should be?

When you fight reality you always hurt and you always lose. When you just see and love what is you’re happy and at peace. One way is as good as the other. There’s no right or wrong here, but making war because you believe your thoughts is pretty crazy don’t you think?

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

252. A giraffe doesn’t seem to make much sense either!

2007-06-27T16:10:00.000-07:00

Dating in this mature stage of life can be effortless and fun when we just relax into living out the urgings of the voice within. If the voice says, “Take some dancing lessons,” you sign up for some lessons. If the voice says, “Just relax and don’t go to that party tonight,” you just do it, even if it might seem crazy. The ego-mind doesn’t like it this way, though, and it’ll probably pop up with statements like, “No, you can’t sit back right now. You’ve got to get out there if you’re ever going to find a partner. Remember, you’re not getting any younger!”

The ego-mind thinks it’s in control so it wants to make your life work. It wants to know and control the outcome of life. But the promptings from within often don’t seem to make much sense. For example, the ego-mind couldn’t begin to see that not forcing yourself to attend a party that feels unsuitable to you could lead to anything but utter loneliness in old age. But do we realistically know that worry and search will be better than just relaxing into life as it naturally unfolds and as we’re naturally prompted to live? Maybe you’ll literally bump into your lifetime partner in a parking lot fender-bender! That’s not something the ego-mind could ever plan for.

Or with those dancing lessons you took. No one in the class looks at all like a potential partner and you might find yourself wondering, “Why am I doing this?” Then the last night of the class you meet a man who comes to pick up his sister at the end of that lesson… and voila!... there’s the man you were supposed to meet. That apparent “chance meeting” makes no sense to the ego-mind but the Source doesn’t care what the ego-mind thinks. It just lives as you, playing out the life called Jeannie, Sue or Tom in the mysterious, playful way it wants to. After all, this is the same Source that put a giraffe and a bare-butted monkey on earth, remember!

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

251. The timing for your life and dating couldn’t be better

2007-06-25T12:35:00.000-07:00

When you’re really intent on finding a partner soon you’re probably in a lot of emotional pain. Not only are you unhappy while waiting for a partner but you’re probably feeling a lot of concern and dread that it may never happen.

I’ve been single more than 12 years since my second wife died, though I’ve met many women and dated a great deal. My first marriage ended in divorce after 17 years. Then two years later I was married again and was with my second wife for 18 years until her death. That’s a total of 35 years of marriage and I liked the idea of having a mate and partner. So I fully expected I’d probably be married again in a few years.

What I’ve learned, though, as a result of really investigating how life works, is that there is nothing that happens before its time or after its time. It couldn’t be possible because everything that shows up is just the One expressing itself in diverse ways. Now it’s clear to me that in the overall harmony of the universe I’m not supposed to have a partner now. I know it because I don’t. That’s the way the One or Source of all life is living itself out as me right now.

Since it’s animating my every move and heartbeat how could it make a mistake? For something to be called a mistake it would have to be compared to some other thing called “not mistake.” But that would mean there are two and that’s a myth. The idea of a separate, individual “me” who has any independent power and should have my way is only that – an idea. No doctor, doing an autopsy, has ever found something called an “I” or “me” inside anybody. Outside of an idea or thought, none of us has ever been able to locate this thing we call “me” either.

At first that sounds like bad news; we realize we have no control because there’s no “me”. But the exceptionally good news is that we no longer have to try to make life work. We don’t have to struggle to succeed any more. We don’t have to worry that we’re doing something wrong and that’s why we’re not finding a partner. We just notice that we’re moved when it’s time to move, we sleep when it’s time to sleep, we blink, breathe, digest food, allocate nutrients to the right parts of the body – all done in perfect timing because we’re not actually doing any of that. It’s so clear when you look at it that way isn’t it?

Perfect timing is also what’s happening in your relationships because the One just shows up as it wants to and only the idea of a person would argue with it. The simple, peaceful, happy way to live is to simply do what’s obvious for you without opinions and judgments about how things should be. If you doubt that, any time you’re suffering because life isn’t going your way just ask this one simple question: “Do I absolutely and without any doubt KNOW it should be my way?”

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

250. You can be happy, but it won’t come from finding a partner, strange as that seems

2007-06-25T08:17:00.000-07:00

Nearly everyone dating in these mature years is dating with a goal. We want to find a partner. But that’s really a middle goal. The ultimate goal is the same as the goal for virtually any activity we pursue: We want to be happy, or at least happier. So if the final goal is to be happy why not just skip the middleman – getting a partner – and go for happiness? That sounds kind of nuts doesn’t it? But if we examine it a little closer it may not sound so crazy.

What is happiness? Is it really getting something we want, whether it’s a partner, a new car or that next cruise? No, we can see that that’s not true. If getting something made us happy we’d be happy forever once we had that thing – a partner or a new car, for instance. But are we? No. After awhile we’re on the search once more for some other thing to make us happy.

And while we’re searching we’re not happy. Oh sure, some people say they find a lot of joy while they’re working toward something. But we’d have to say, if we’re totally honest, that the nagging feeling of wanting and not feeling quite completely fulfilled isn’t what we’d call happiness.

Since we’ve temporarily eliminated a partner as our source of happiness where do we go to find the happiness we want? We thought finding something new would be it, but we’ve just looked and noticed that’s not true at all. So what is happiness? Well, ancient and current people who have really examined and investigated life have noticed something interesting. Happiness isn’t getting something, even though we do feel happy when we’ve gotten it and it feels like that thing or person is the source of our happiness.

Actually, a closer look reveals that it’s not the object we’ve gotten but the lack of that nagging, striving, seeking desire for a short time that is the real source of happiness. When there’s no desire for something to be different the mind is peaceful. It can be present with simply what is and that feels happy. In sleep, for instance, happiness and peace is always there because there’s no nagging thought of what should or ought to be, or what we want to be different from what we have.

Even during waking hours we all have those moments when we’re totally peaceful and happy. Those times usually occur when we’re so totally engaged with something, whether it’s a project we’re working on or watching a gorgeous sunrise over a lake, that we’re just “lost” as we sometimes call it.

Another point: We tend to think that happiness comes from the object of our desire. A car is a good example. Does that metal and glass and rubber really make happiness? For a person dying of cancer giving them a new car wouldn’t mean a thing. So it’s the subject, not the object, that provides the happiness.

As one well-known East Indian sage, the late H.W.L. Poonja put it, “To have true peace you have to be alone, separated from everything you enjoy and love as separate objects. This bliss, the bliss that does not depend on enjoying an object or an experience is imperishable, permanent. No matter what else is destroyed this will remain. Nobody knows where this happiness is because everyone is looking for it in the wrong place.”

So, how does this apply to mature dating? It simply means that if we live in our natural state of being, that state before thoughts and desires, we’re simply being in life. If your natural impulse is to date you’ll find yourself dating. But you won’t be dating with a goal, with that stress and pressure of making your life work in some way you don’t even know is best for you, really. Instead, you’ll just date for the fun of being with someone in the present, with no futurizing.

Having a partner may or may not happen. But why be miserable while you wait for something that may never be when you can be happy in the whole process of dating and living now? Then we just let the unfolding of the universe take us where it wants, which is what it’s going to do with or without our hopes and nagging, pressure-filled desires.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

249. Mature dating is a fun adventure when we live in harmony with the way of it

2007-06-24T14:43:00.000-07:00

Dating in your senior or mature years is really not much different from any other aspect of life. It’s one slice of life. However, the struggle, strife and suffering that most people experience in everyday life is often magnified and brought to the fore when we’re dating because romantic relationships are so dramatic and intensely personal. The pain of a lost love can be like no other pain.

That’s why it’s so helpful to see that we can back off from life and not take it personally when we realize that we’re being lived and we really have no control. Then it’s a matter of just flowing with life as it happens rather than trying to fight or control what happens.

If these are new ideas to you I understand; they can sound crazy. They did to me too, at first. However, nothing I had ever done relieved the emotional hurt I often felt when life didn’t go my way. And when I read about what the sages have been teaching throughout the centuries it seemed to me that they might just have something. Those who saw the light (enlightened?) were from all parts of the world, all cultures, all centuries, and they all had come to see the same thing, with no input from each other because there wasn’t the communication in those days that there is today.

What they all saw, simply put, is that some Life Force – call it God if you like – is energizing itself into form, and we humans, like every other form in existence, are among the objects brought into existence.

We’re being lived. If you don’t think so try to make yourself do nothing, for example. You can’t do it. Try not breathing. You can’t. Try not thinking. You can’t. Try not blinking your eyes or sneezing or hiccupping. It just can’t be done. What moves your hands when you express yourself as you talk? What just made you swallow? Obviously we’re not in control of this “me” we think we are. Even the very idea of “I” or “me” is no more than a thought. No one has ever located a Me anywhere. This so-called Me has no individual power. It can’t exist for a split second without the power that enlivens it and animates it. So how could it be in charge of how life should go?

Seeing that, what the sages taught is to just relax, see life as it really is, and flow with it. Realize that what happens is obviously supposed to happen, for no other reason than that it does. You’re stood up for a date? Obviously you were supposed to spend that time doing something else. How do you know? Because the time is available and you’re going to fill it some way, whether you like it or not. Your honey decides to leave you? It must be that you’re supposed to be alone for awhile, or be available to meet someone else. Again, how can I know that? Simple. Because that’s what is and you can’t argue with it. You can think it should be different. You can wish it would be different. But in the end, it just is the way it is. So why spend all that energy and misery resisting the way it is? That's insanity, and a lot of suffering.

Flowing with life the way it is may sound like caving in and giving up but it’s not. It’s a vital, snappy, full-of-life, active way to live. It’s a not-doing that begins to recognize the intelligence-energy of the universe as it is. You begin to see the fullness of life that’s always been present and is available for us to realize when we stop trying to control life. And though we're not the doers everything gets done.

In this realization you’re not succumbing and folding up with your tail between your legs. And you’re not crawling into bed to bawl your eyes out and be depressed because life let you down. Instead, you’re watching with amazement as life unfolds in the way it does, which might be much different than you had expected. What a mystery! What a delight! Life sparkles amazingly when we just see it as it is, and realize we're being lived right along with everything else. We're actually that living power showing up now as a human. What a miracle as it changes every second! Dating can be exciting, adventuresome and fun when we simply live harmoniously with the way it is. What the heck! Might as well since life is going to be the way it is whether we like it or not. We don’t get a vote, have you noticed? In fact, there is no independent "we" to ever have had a vote in the first place. How can a drop of ocean spray vote against the ocean?

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

248. Are you a controlling person? You may be surprised when you answer this question

2007-06-23T14:09:00.000-07:00

You probably don’t think of yourself as a controlling person, and you may be right. But if you answer this question honestly you’ll know. The key to this way of knowing yourself may surprise you. The question is this: Do you ever get defensive when someone criticizes you? Yes or no, what’s your answer? I’m asking you to stop and honestly answer with just one word, yes… or no.

If you said yes you’re controlling. Here’s why. The moment you get defensive you’ve not only lost your peacefulness but you’re trying to control what someone else thinks of you. Right now you may be saying, “What the heck is he talking about? That’s crazy? It has nothing to do with wanting to control; I’m just saying what’s true.” Yes. And you’re trying to get the other person to see you the way you see you. Isn’t that wanting to control how they think and feel in that moment?

If you’re in a relationship where you get criticized you don’t have to feel hot and bothered by that criticism at all. When you feel that hot feeling of defensiveness start to well up inside you just stop for a second and ask yourself, What’s real here? What’s real is that the one criticizing you is making sounds we call words. And we see that the words are judgmental so we call them critical, which makes sense. She may not even believe them but that makes no difference. Without adding an opinion or interpreting in any way you can hear critical words coming at you.

Some years ago I dated, for a time, a really nice woman who got jealous at times. When she did she would sometimes make some cutting remarks. One of those cutting statements was, “Oh, you just have a need to be needed by other women. That’s what boosts your ego.” I didn’t see myself that way at all but I also didn’t need to defend myself. Why would I try to change what she believed? She had the right to believe whatever she wanted to believe.

Besides, the moment I tried to change her mind by defending myself I would have lost my peace of mind and I’d have lost that battle. I have no control at all over her mind, nor should I have. Being defensive and trying to control someone isn’t right or wrong it’s just not very wise because it’s like trying to control the weather. It’s hopeless.

You may choose not to spend time with people who put you down and criticize you but you don’t need to judge them either. Why would you do that? Have you criticized others before? I have, and in the heat of my hurt or anger at that time I was doing the best I knew how. Well, so is everyone else. They’re confused, that’s all. Usually their confusion includes their belief that you’ve done something that makes them hurt. They think you’re responsible for their feelings. You can see their confusion with kindness or you can feel hurt and get defensive. Being defensive is never peaceful. Seeing reality, without a story, is always peaceful.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

247. You'll never succeed in dealing with the ghost under the bed

2007-06-22T09:15:00.000-07:00

Pete was 67 and Alice was a few years younger when they met. There was immediate chemistry and they began seeing a lot of each other. After a few months, however, Pete began to notice some disturbing things about Alice. She seemed to be constantly picking at him in little ways, wanting him to change. This continued and Pete became increasingly unhappy. Friends asked why he didn’t move on and meet other women and he’d say, “Because she’s so sweet. When we first met I just knew I’d met the love for the rest of my life. I don’t want to let go of the woman I know is so right for me.”

When two people first get together one or both of them are often on their best behavior. They may not be very authentic in the beginning. But then with some time they become their real selves, and sometimes that’s not so endearing. Yet people stay in bad relationships, partly because the mind is so tenacious in its belief that it’s right. It doesn’t want to admit that it fell in love with an image, not the real Alice. Yes she was wonderful when she wanted Pete and was showing her best side. But there was also the other side – the critical, judgmental, controlling side that Pete hadn’t seen until later.

It’s painful to be in a relationship that isn’t kind and we often stay because we’ve believed an illusion created only in our minds. We’re not looking deep enough to see the truth. We want to believe we’re right.

The way out of these kinds of mind-entrapments is the way out of any kind of emotional suffering – inquire within and be honest. Ask yourself, for instance, was the Alice I met the real Alice? When I now see the entire picture of who Alice is do I still want to be with her?

When you’re hurting or uncomfortable in a relationship, and if you want to know the truth about it, you have to forget being right. Holding onto old concepts is holding onto pain. Being free of pain means seeing reality as it is, not the way you wish it was or think it should be. When we stop believing our concepts and see life as it really is we can deal with reality. We can never successfully deal with false images. That’s like trying to deal with the ghost under the bed.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

246. The way to end dating pain and suffering seems too simple, but it works

2007-06-20T11:06:00.000-07:00

When you think of all the ways mature dating can be painful it’s no wonder that some people say they’re not interested in meeting a partner any more. They’ve been hurt too much and it’s not worth it, they say. Dating pain can range from jealousy, sadness, and anger to emptiness, disappointment, despair, and more. With all these ways to feel hurt it seems unbelievable that there could be one, simple solution that wipes every one of them away. That’s why people often say, “It can’t be this easy,” when they hear about what the sages and masters have been sharing for centuries. Sages say it’s just one misunderstanding that’s behind all emotional suffering.

That misunderstanding is basic and often hard to swallow at first. It’s this: We believe we’re living our lives and it’s actually the other way around: Life is living us. Every beat of our hearts, every move we make, every thought that pops in to wherever we think we think, is that mysterious power expressing itself through us, AS us. Not a lot of people are eager to hear this.

We can see the truth of this easily in babies and very small children. They have no ego judgments or desires because they don’t sense a separate me. They’re never unhappy unless they’re physically uncomfortable. But then around the age of two or so we all began to get a sense that “I’m separate” (you remember your kids going through the terrible twos don’t you?). From that moment on we’re in this fight to control, win, compete, interpret, and judge life.

But the basic sense of being that babies have is still our underlying essence. If you take any painful thought you have and notice that there’s got to be something separate from that thought to even know there is a thought, you’ve taken a big step. Before there is a thought we all know we are – we exist. And that beingness is aware. If someone asks, “Do you exist?” it doesn’t take a thought for us to answer, “Yes, of course.” That basic presence-awareness that sees and knows all objects, including thoughts, must be who we are in essence. That sense of beingness or isness has never changed throughout your lifetime. Ego thoughts, judgmental thoughts, self-image thoughts – all these have changed. But that sense of I-ness that is the space for thoughts to show up in has never been altered or disturbed by anything. It’s just awareness of life as it is.

Next time you have painful feelings about dating at this mature stage of life just notice that the thoughts that bring on those feelings eventually change. When we ask ourselves if we’re absolutely sure life should be the way we – at any moment – think it should be we have to say no. If we’re honest with ourselves we know we can’t answer yes to that question because so many of the thoughts and beliefs we held so firmly in the past have crumbled over time. Reality shows us we can’t really trust what we think and feel. We’ve proven that to ourselves again and again.

What we can do to date peacefully and happily is to just see life as it is. It doesn’t even take acceptance because acceptance means there would have to also be non-acceptance. Seeing life as it is doesn’t include good/bad, right/wrong, should/shouldn’t dualities because there could be no such thing until the so-called “mind” invents it. “What is” is just life, showing up moment by moment, without any suffering at all until we impose our wants on it. If you’re thinking, “This is too simple,” I don’t blame you. I only invite you to take a deep look and see for yourself.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

244. Judging and manipulation aren’t right or wrong they just don’t work

2007-06-19T14:38:00.000-07:00

Have you ever found yourself unhappy when you’re giving to a date or partner without strings and without judgment? That seems to be when we’re happiest. When we don’t want something back from someone our action is not based on manipulation but on love. And when we’re not judging someone we’re emotionally and mentally joining them where they are, which is also love.

Judging someone and giving with conditions (strings) isn’t right or wrong it just doesn’t work. There’s no peace or happiness in it. Have you ever seen a judging, manipulative person with a peaceful smile on his face? Have you ever seen someone without a smile and sense of joy when they’re giving just because that’s what naturally flows out of them?

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

243. Protecting yourself from potential romantic pain makes you a loser every time

2007-06-19T11:24:00.000-07:00

During the years I’ve dated as a senior I’ve met more than several women who felt they had to protect themselves from being romantically hurt. To do that they’d hold back on sharing any real feelings for a guy. They wouldn’t hold hands when they felt like it, they were afraid to cuddle and kiss, and they tried to remain somewhat cool and aloof. They were almost trying to hide their interest in a guy even from themselves.

But does protecting ourselves from something that hasn’t happened and may never happen make sense? Unmet expectations would be the only reason a person would be hurt emotionally anyway. But why look to a future that’s made up purely in our thoughts? Now, in this very moment that’s already passed even before you can say the word “moment”, is the only time that exists.

Pictures of the past are only thoughts happening now. “Future” pictures can only show up now. Yet most of us live most of the time in our past and future thoughts and miss now, which is the only vital, alive moment there is. We’re hardly ever home. We hatch a future in our minds that we’ll be gut-wrenchingly torn apart because a romance doesn’t work the way we want it to. Then we invent a mechanism for dealing with that scene by protecting ourselves ahead of time. And it’s all just made up in our heads. It’s not real.

“Yes, but,” you say, (can’t you just hear it?) “I’ve been hurt before and it’s been excruciating. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, I could barely function. I don’t want that to happen again.” That’s understandable. But the reason for that pain in the past was invalid. It doesn’t need to be that way in the future. In our innocence we’ve believed our thoughts that, for example, “if this person leaves my life it’ll be the end of my world.” But is that true?

With a little bit of understanding we can learn to question those thoughts that pop up out of nowhere. Do we really know this is the person for us? Are we absolutely sure? How do we live when we believe that myth we’ve created? Aren’t we miserable? Haven’t we been sure in the past and later realized our beliefs were wrong about many things? When we’re so sure we’ll be hurt or we need this guy or gal in our lives it feels so right because that’s what we think. Feelings always follow thoughts. Wake up in the first seconds of the morning before thoughts pop in and you’re not hurting at all.

What if you realize that this intelligent universe always rules. You can’t ever win by arguing with what already is. If someone leaves your life you’ve probably been spared. Thinking you know it should be your way would be the only cause of your pain. But flowing with the way things are you’re back in peace.

Not only is it unnecessary to protect yourself from future suffering that doesn’t ever need to be there, but when you do protect, you’re holding back the real. Your date or partner never has a chance to know you. You only give them a mask to know. How can that help a romance to flower?

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

242. Marriage or partnership may not make you happier at all

2007-06-18T14:14:00.000-07:00

A lot of us might take the stress and seriousness out of dating – and have a lot more fun – if we saw mature dating as part of living rather than loading it down with the goal of marriage or permanent partnership. If that goal isn’t met dating isn’t enjoyable to us. In short, it's no fun because it didn't work.

Yesterday I was talking to a 70-year-old woman whose husband died in 1990. She’s been single since then and desperately wants a partner. “I can’t imagine living the rest of my life without a romantic partner,” she said, implying there could be no more horrible fate. It’s not surprising that she’d think she’ll be happier with a partner. Most of us have seen studies showing that married people are happier and healthier than single people. That condition is widely borne out in nearly every country studied.

But further studies are showing that it isn’t marriage, at all, that’s behind the greater happiness of married people. It appears that happier people tend to marry and that’s why married people are happier than singles. In fact one large study, compiled from the records of 24,000 Germans over 15 years, shows that after the first blush of marriage people revert to the level of happiness they had before marriage. On a scale of 0 to 10 that figure turns out to be 7.28 for the married couples on average.

Other studies show that happier couples are those who don’t see their partners as perfect. High goals for happiness, if they’re not bucked up by solid communication skills, lead to disappointment in relationships, studies show.

What all this tells me, once again, is that there’s never been any proof that something outside of us will make us happy. Happiness is an inside job. The nice thing is that it doesn’t even take any effort. When you look deeply you see that happiness, joy, and love are our true nature and appear by themselves once we uncover them by realizing that Life is living itself just perfectly without our opinions and self-centered needs and wants. When we flow with life as it is there’s just happiness. Funny how that works isn’t it?

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

241. If your mature dating includes expectations you’ll suffer unnecessarily

2007-06-17T10:27:00.000-07:00

The search for more happiness is why people want to date and find a partner. We expect that we’ll be happier with someone than without someone, especially as we get older. I saw an article recently reporting that the first world map of happiness was produced recently. Denmark came out on top. The Danes have ranked first in European satisfaction surveys for more than 30 years. One of the main reasons, according to researchers, is that as a nation Danish people have low expectations of life. While there were other reasons, the study authors said one thing was clear – the higher the expectations the deeper the disappointment when they’re not met.

The Ancients have been trying to tell us for eons, it seems, that we’re happy when we simply see that what we have is what we need, without expectations. They say, question your thoughts and beliefs about what would make you happy and see if you know they’re true. Can you definitely know you’d be happier with a date or partner right now? Do you know this person you’re now with is the right one, and you should never part?

The sages advise us to look at reality, without our unexamined beliefs and stories. For example, one ancient Chinese text, the Hsin Hsin Ming says,

Gain and loss, right and wrong: such thoughts must finally be abolished at once. If the eye never sleeps, all dreams will naturally cease. If the mind makes no discriminations, the ten thousand things are as they are, of single essence. To understand the mystery of this One-essence is to be released from all entanglements.

The idea, of course, is to trust the One-essence intelligence of the universe as it is, to realize that we’re being lived as one expression of that One-essence. That essence that breathes us, beats our hearts, and keeps the planets in place is harmony and perfection in action even when we don’t recognize that.

The Tao Te Ching, another ancient Chinese spiritual text, has this to say:

When people see some things as beautiful other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good other things become bad.

… Things arise and [the Master] lets them come; things disappear and [the Master] lets them go. [The Master] has, but doesn’t possess, acts but doesn’t expect.

And the Ashtavakra Gita, a revered East Indian spiritual text shares this:

As the air is everywhere, flowing around a pot and filling it, so God is everywhere, filling all things and flowing through them forever. (The One-essence.)

When will men ever stop setting one thing against another?
Let go of all contraries. Whatever comes, be happy and so fulfill yourself.

…With resolute dispassion free yourself from desire and find happiness.

Clearly, spiritually wise men and women through the ages are saying it’s our beliefs or stories about what should be that cause our suffering, not the reality of life as it is. Hopes and expectations are another way we look to a future we think we want, without really knowing what’s best for us. Can we really tell That which created us what we need?

Dating can be based on expectations, which will surely be dashed at some point, or dating can be just another interesting aspect of living, just as going to a park or enjoying a sunset. Dating is a way to be with a friend, which may develop into permanence.

The future will take care of itself, no matter what we think. One way to live is to want the future to be your way, and be miserable when it’s not. Another way is to simply see that life shows up one moment at a time, and to relish the mystery and surprise of it as it is. Life will always be as it is, just as it’s always been. Happiness is to live in harmony with that reality and date playfully – content, peaceful, and relaxed. When you don’t expect anything you can’t lose anything. Life without seeking is joy.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

240. With no dating agenda you’ll have easy fun instead of fear and nerves

2007-06-15T19:45:00.000-07:00

If you’re nervous before you meet a date or partner you know you’ve got an agenda for that meeting and you’re afraid it won’t work the way you want it to. If there was nothing to lose you wouldn’t feel nervous. What’s the biggest thing people are afraid of losing in dating relationships? Their sense of self-worth.

They define themselves by what other people think of them so their fear of rejection can be huge. Conversely, when you don’t need anyone’s approval you spend time with a date and enjoy the adventure and the unfolding of whatever happens. That makes dating fun rather than an effort and struggle.

Many singles are so focused on winning approval from a guy or gal that it’s no wonder dating in these mature years is such a chore. If you believe you need appreciation or approval from a date that belief will probably show up in your body as fear and nervousness. If so, that’s a time when you could investigate honestly to see if those thoughts you’re holding are really true.

When you look you see that we never have any control over what someone thinks – about us or anything else. So why bother about what they think? That’s their business, just as what you think is your business. “I need her approval,” is that true? “I need him to think I’m great,” is that really true? Aren’t you paying an awfully high price if you believe self-created lies like those? Reality would never agree with you.

239. Could it be that your mature dating pain is self-created?

2007-06-14T10:51:00.000-07:00

Someone told me the other day about a bumper sticker she'd seen. It read:

REALITY IS NOT WHAT YOU THINK!

How true that is. Most of us look at reality through our filters of good/bad, right/wrong, should/shouldn’t and other opposites. Reality is just what is, as it is. It’s neither good nor bad until we put that label on it.

In mature dating the moment you think, “He shouldn’t be so friendly with her,” “She shouldn’t be dancing so close with him,” “If he cared he’d call,” or make any other judgment your experience is not based on reality. You’re viewing life through your “belief” filters and you suffer. Your experience, then, is a self-created myth.

Loving life as it is, full of mysteries and surprises, is living in harmony and peace. Before judgmental beliefs can even appear you’re the beingness that allows the appearances to show up, like space permits objects to show up.

That beingness or presence has no opinions or judgments. It’s simply love and uncaused joy. Questioning your painful beliefs reveals that unborn love and joy at any moment because it’s who you naturally are before you lay on your judgmental thought-filters and start looking through them at the skewed world you’ve created.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

238. Most people love with strings attached, so is it love?

2007-06-14T10:18:00.000-07:00

Most people don’t love you when they say they do. When you’re giving them what they want and agreeing with them they say, “I love you,” and they’re kind and warm. As soon as you don’t do or say what they want they get hurt or angry or jealous or sad. They’re not getting their way and they think that’s your fault. They’re unhappy with you, and their personality switches from kindness to coldness, from warm to icy. They berate you, withdraw, threaten, yell, sulk, blame, call you names, and find other ways to verbally or physically assault you, attempting to force you to be what they want.

People like that are confused. They think there’s a right and wrong way to be. When you don’t do it their way you’re doing it wrong. That’s why you’ll hear people say, “I would never do that,” or “I’d never say that,” referring to something you did or said. They’re implying, of course, that their way is right, yours is wrong, and you’d better change.

Would a yellow rose say to a red one, “You’re too flashy and garish; I’d never show up red!” Most people haven’t questioned their thoughts and seen that life shows up in all kinds of ways, expressed as all kinds of objects, including people who are different. That’s reality. That the way life is. Do you have a right to be the way you are? Does your date or partner have that same right? Sure.

You may be a guy who values monogamy and you learn your partner is having an affair. Should she stop? Only if she wants to. But you’re not her victim. If you ask, and she refuses to be monogamous, you know you weren’t supposed to have a monogamous relationship with her. You know because it’s not happening. Remember, reality always wins. You can wish her well, knowing she’s living her life the way that feels right to her, and also knowing your way is not her way and it feels natural for you to move on. That love is unconditional. It doesn’t demand that anything be different and you can both be at peace.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

237. Do you feel bad because your neck tells the truth about your age?

2007-06-13T14:56:00.001-07:00

One of the reasons some people are leery about dating in these mature or senior years is the very fact that they are mature; they’re older. It turns out, according to the experts, that age has as much or more to do with attitude as it does with years. That’s probably not news to you. I’ve met a number of people 55 and beyond who seem to “think” old. They joke about senior moments and say they can’t do this or that any more “at my age.”

I read this morning about a popular book by Nora Ephron titled, I Feel Bad About My Neck. She writes humorously, “Our faces are lies and our necks are the truth. You have to cut open a redwood tree to see how old it is, but you wouldn't have to if it had a neck.” She’s right; our necks seem to indicate our age often more than our faces do.

But carrying “old age” ideas into life and mature dating probably isn’t going to make your dating very much fun or successful. Instead of being excited about all the things you could do with a date or partner you may be thinking of all your limitations. You even approach your first meeting with this new guy or gal thinking about your aging body and telling yourself you have to try to be perky. But one expert says, "Don't get bogged down in all the hype about aging. Once you start thinking about it, it can drive you mad. There's nothing you can do; the clock is going to tick away."

It’s also important to get over your stereotypes or mental images about aging. You may have picked up ideas that aging means life loses its happiness. But are those stories you’ve told yourself true? When you start believing stressful thoughts you’ll feel the discomfort and suffering. You know then that it’s time to question those beliefs. If you’re suffering from worry, sadness or desperation those self-created hurts can be undone by simply investigating what’s true.

The article I read this morning reported on a couple – he’s 79 and she’s 80 – who took a week-long backpacking trip alone in the wilderness last year. He had taken up mountain climbing after he retired and has climbed Mount Whitney, Kilimanjaro and hiked to the Mount Everest base camp. Does that fit your stereotype of older folks?

Living happily and peacefully, I’ve realized, is always living in reality, not our stories about reality. Reality is the way things are. Change will happen. That’s life. It’s not bad unless we think it’s bad. Yet why worry about something that may never happen, like being debilitated? When we simply live in the moment we can trust that as changes in our bodies take place we can deal with them sanely and without stress when the time comes. We simply see and enjoy life as it is, however that is. How do you know you’re not supposed to be as vigorous and vibrant as you once were? You’re not. Nothing to fight or resist. You’re left to just do what you do and be happy without a story. Everything you need to deal with any event will be there when you need it.

The clear message is to question your beliefs and see what’s true. Is it true you shouldn’t be slowing down or getting a neck that shows your age if that’s what’s happening? Obviously not. Would you start a war with reality by fighting a battle reality will always win because it’s just what is?

As you put yourself out there in dating you can be sure you’ll be a much more attractive date and potential partner if you’re happily seeing the beauty of life as it really is instead of falling prey to your beliefs about how it should be or terrifying yourself about how it might be in the future.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

236. Hiding hurt feelings is dishonest and a recipe for failure

2007-06-12T21:10:00.000-07:00

You’ve lived long enough by this age to have had the experience – probably with a spouse – of resentments and angers building up over time. You’re probably nodding your head “yes” as you read this. But have you ever thought what it really means that hurt feelings build up? To have something build up it has to accumulate over time doesn’t it? Ah, and there’s a huge problem. We let things build up.

In other words, we’re dishonest in our relationships. We don’t tell our partner when something bothers us. Why? Because we want something we’re afraid we won’t get if we tell what’s true for us. Yes, I know, that sounds harsh doesn’t it? We don’t like to think of ourselves as manipulators who want something. But question it for a moment and what other conclusion could you reach? Even if you say I don’t tell what’s bothering me because I don’t want to hurt my partner, that’s not quite true. We don’t want to see someone else hurt because that hurts us. So we’re still back to wanting something, subtle as it may seem. We don’t want to hurt seeing them hurt.

In the end, though, stifling our real feelings never works anyway does it? Our partner is eventually hurt anyway, usually a lot more than if we had dealt with feelings as they arose. We know that from experience. Feelings pile up and eventually there’s a volcanic eruption. And your partner says, “What the heck just happened?” She doesn’t see that your eruption has almost nothing to do with the current issue and everything to do with resentments from the past that she couldn’t deal with because she didn’t know about them.

Since it’s pretty easy to recognize that piled up hurts don’t help. And since we can also see we let those feelings pile up because we want something or we’re afraid of losing something, what’s the solution? The solution goes back to what sages have been saying for eons: question life and see what’s true.

Ask yourself, what am I afraid of losing or not getting? Do I think there will be a big blowup? Am I afraid of my partner’s anger or hurt feelings? Then ask yourself if believing those thoughts and covering over your hurt emotions has ever worked. If not, maybe you’ll start to see that you’ve been fooling yourself. The old way of hiding feelings is just a recipe for disaster. And that can be the death of a relationship when resentments are so big you can’t feel any love for your partner any more. Then you can say, “Was the hiding and dishonesty worth it?”

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

235. Give up control and see what a fun adventure mature dating can be

2007-06-12T13:11:00.000-07:00

Have you ever noticed how much most of us try to control life? That idea is so habitually pervasive that we don’t even notice it. Yet when we’re trying to control and can’t succeed it leaves us with an ongoing stress and uneasiness that serves as the background for all our waking moments. We carry that disappointing grayness with us everywhere.

Here are just a few examples of how we try to control situations pertaining to dating:
o We work hard to say the right thing or look the right way so our new date will approve of us. (We’re trying to control what they approve of.)
o With anger or withdrawal we try to make our partner live the way we want them to live and be who we want them to be.
o We lie and spread on compliments we don’t believe so we can get something from our partner.
o We fail to say no when that would be honest so we can gain the favor of our partner.
o Our partner ends our connection and we feel sad and hurt because we can’t make life be the way we want it to be.
o We use jealousy as a tool to try to control who our partner allows into her life.

In these ways and countless others we make ourselves miserable by trying to control life, without realizing that life is living us and we have no more control than a flower has over when it opens or a tree controls when leaves bud in the spring.

If this doesn’t make sense question just the ordinary everyday happenings in life and things might look different for you. How much control did you have over the weather today, or the instant you fell asleep last night, or the moment of your birth or your height, eye color or hair thickness? Did you control when you last got sick or the last thought you had? If control really worked wouldn’t we have pretty much everything the way we want it by this age in our lives?

Life has been as it is for centuries before we got here and will probably continue for centuries after we’re gone – all without any control by us. Don’t you think we’ve come on the scene pretty late to exercise any control over how life decides to be? Since we, as humans, are another expression of life just being itself maybe we could just notice that, and watch instead of trying to control. If you try this you’ll be amazed at how simple life is and how happy you’ll be while dating at this age of your life. The stress, anxiety, worry, disappointment and despair can all be gone. If they show up again they’re just the perfect signal to remind you that you’re trying to control life again.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

234. She was devastated when he ended their romance, now the tables are turned

2007-06-11T09:39:00.000-07:00

Life is much easier, I’ve found, when we take it as it is. Instead – and you could almost say this is a hallmark of most mature dating – we’re nearly always looking for what isn’t. “I need a man,” or “I need a woman in my life,” we think. Instead of dating because it’s just the natural thing to do we tend to think we need something that someone else can give us.

But do we really know what we need? Can we relax and enjoy life when we’re always striving and seeking? It’s like rushing for a plane to get somewhere. Once we arrive we can stop rushing. But in dating we’re often rushing constantly. The stress is always in the back of our minds: “My life won’t be happy until I have a partner.” It’s a thought that comes from somewhere and we latch onto it and believe it. Where did that thought come from? Where does it go when we’re not thinking it? It’s so transient how can it be real? Yet we usually treat our thoughts as almost sacred. We believe them totally, and we hurt as a result.

I know a woman in her mid-60s who fell madly in love with a man about five years ago. He ended the relationship some months later and she was devastated. Later they maintained some contact and became friends. Recently they’ve gotten together a few times and it’s clear to her that he really wants to resume their romance, and even wants now to marry her. But she’s not so sure. When before she thought her happiness was ended forever because he was gone from her life, she’s now seeing that he may not be the right guy at all. She realizes now that her earlier belief that life was over for her wasn't accurate at all.

Can we really know what’s best for us? That life force that brought us into being and keeps us alive is actually doing the living that we call “my” life. We’re being lived. Yet we think, somehow, that we know what’s best for “my” life instead of trusting that maybe things are exactly as they’re meant to be.

What do we really know about this life force? What do we know about how our futures should look? When you think about it, isn’t it awfully stressful to always be living with an eye toward how life could be if only we had that perfect partner? What’s that feel like? How would it feel if we simply relaxed, dated, enjoyed the adventure, and watched as life played itself out? Whichever way we view life, the actual events are going to be just as they are anyway. Maybe it makes sense to just love things as they are and stop the stress of trying to control what we can never control. Life is. That’s it.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

233. Stop giving yourself up in mature dating by seeing life as it really is

2007-06-08T13:50:00.000-07:00

Any time we expect someone else to make us happy we’re going to suffer. When we think our partner is responsible for our happiness we often give ourselves up to that person so they’ll give us what we think we need. We make an unspoken bargain with them – I’ll give you this so I can have that. And what we expect from them they can never deliver because we’re the decider of what happiness is at any moment. Since that’s true how could someone else ever make us happy?

I know of a situation where a man brought his wife eggs and toast and she responded with: “Why do you give me eggs on a dinky, little plate like this?” Someone else, of course, would be happy that her husband was so thoughtful. Clearly, it wasn’t the action that made this woman unhappy. It was her thoughts and beliefs at the moment. Happiness never has anything to do with someone else.

Often we’re operating under two misconceptions in romantic relationships. First, we believe our partners can make us happy, and second we believe we have to manipulate them to get what we believe only they can give. But are those beliefs true? Just as someone else’s words can’t hurt us unless we choose to feel hurt, someone’s words and actions can’t make us happy unless we choose it.

I talked with a woman recently who told me she’s learning – in her mid-60s – “not to give myself away while I’m dating.” She has seen that she’s sometimes dishonest with herself and gives in to things she doesn’t want so she can get the love she think she needs. Then she doesn’t like herself very much of course.

Giving ourselves away isn’t self-love. No wonder we think we need to have someone else give us love. Since we’re not giving it to ourselves where else will we get it? Seeing it this way it may be clearer that we love ourselves when we stop long enough to see what’s true. Seeing life as it is, is seeing reality. It’s when we think it should be our way and we try to manipulate and control things to get our way that we suffer. If you don’t win the love and approval of the person you thought would give that to you, have you lost anything? No, that’s the way things are.

You can never win when you argue with reality. After all, do we really, really know things should be our way rather than the way they are? How do we deal with it when we see that we’re resisting what is? By investigating, asking some questions, looking inside: “Is it true I need love from any other person?” What price am I paying when I bargain and give in because I believe that thought?”

The most important relationship we’ll ever have is our relationship with our own thoughts and beliefs. They’re the single cause of our psychological suffering, and seeing through them to the reality that is, is the only way to end that suffering. Living with our stories – those thoughts and beliefs – will kill happiness and kill relationships because our stories and fairy tales cause us to be dishonest, manipulative and controlling. No relationship can happily thrive under those conditions.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

232. Look and truly see… do you really need their approval?

2007-06-06T16:26:00.000-07:00

When we’re children we learn to define ourselves by what other people think of us. We get praise from parents, teachers and other authorities when we do what they want. And we get criticized when we don’t.

Unfortunately as grownups, even in our 50s, 60s and beyond, we’re still trying to get others to approve of us, especially when we’re meeting and dating. “Will he like my hair?” “Is this color too bright?” "What if she’s dressed up and I’m wearing jeans?” “Gosh, maybe I shouldn’t have let her know I’m not always the confident guy I may appear to be.” It’s as though we’re saying to everyone, “Please like me so I can think I’m okay. Don’t disapprove of me because then I’m worthless.” That sounds like a silly exaggeration doesn’t it? But take a real look, if you’re interested.

Living with the need for approval takes so much energy and is so stressful. Worse, when we need approval so badly we can’t be our natural selves, so the person we’re with never gets to see the real “me”. We’re working so hard at doing it right that we’re being phony – sometimes so phony we hate ourselves later for giving in to what we didn’t want just to get approval.

While it’s easy to see how we got into the habit of thinking we need approval, it’s also easier than you might think to break it. All you need to do is question that habitual belief. If you look into it deeply you’ll probably see that what someone thinks of you has nothing to do with what you think of yourself. That is, unless you believe it matters. It’s all your own belief. You need someone’s approval, is that true?

I’ll throw in a little warning here: People often hear that investigating and seeing reality is the whole answer and they say, “Aw, it couldn’t be that simple.” If you’re thinking that I invite you to give it a try. Honestly look deep into the matter and see what’s really true for you.

Without that old belief think how much lighter and easier life would be. You’d just move smoothly and spontaneously through life, taking what comes, including anyone’s opinion about you. After all, they have a right to their opinions. And for them their opinions are right. But those opinions have nothing – not one thing – to do with you. If you really examine that carefully and see through the myth you’ve believed all your life it’ll be hard to be concerned about what anyone else thinks. You’re free then, and dating can be just a fun adventure.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

231. Dating is painful when we believe our stories instead of seeing the truth

2007-06-04T10:55:00.000-07:00

When dating or relationships cause us pain – and they often do – we usually feel sure that the source of that pain is the other person. “If he hadn’t…” “If she would only…” We can nearly always point at our date or partner as the reason why we’re hurting. After all, “He’s the one who lied to me,” or “She’s the one who secretly dated other guys.” So it goes against everything we know to hear that the only source of our emotional suffering – ever – is that we argue with reality. We think “what is” should be different. And the problem is, it isn’t different.

But let’s investigate life a bit and see what’s real. We say, “Jane shouldn’t have cheated on me.” But reality is that Jane did what she did and we label it cheating. Trying to argue with that or make Jane wrong is just asking for a lot of pain. The way life actually is, people sometimes cheat. Have you ever cheated in your life? That’s the way it is. That’s reality.

When we try to play God and say it shouldn’t be that way we’re going to hurt. Yes, I know, it’s easy to say that any good person would agree that Jane shouldn’t have cheated on you. That’s the way most of us have been taught to believe. But belief in a lie doesn’t make it the truth. The truth is that people cheat and in this case Jane cheated. “Cheating” is the story or label we’ve attached to her actions. And that story may not even be true.

Can you say she shouldn’t have dated someone else? What’s the reality? She did, right? Can you say it shouldn’t have rained today. What’s the reality? It did. Without adding our story that’s just what happened, and since the power that shows up as this world seems a lot more intelligent than we are maybe we could just trust that it knows what it’s doing. Seeing reality without adding our story isn’t painful. It’s just seeing reality, like seeing the sun.

It’s when we argue with reality that we suffer psychologically. Put another way, it’s our judgments that life should be our way that cause us pain. Yet, if you notice, no amount of judging you’ve ever done has ever changed what is. Any judgment that makes reality wrong and wants it to be different causes us stress because it’s a lie that opposes the way things are. Seeing without judgment goes along with the way things are, and we’re content and peaceful.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

230. “Futurizing” isn’t a word but it creates lots of stress in mature dating

2007-06-04T07:09:00.000-07:00

There’s no word in our dictionaries yet called “futurize” but there should be, I think. Futurizing would describe the habit of fixating on the future, usually with a great deal of concern and stress.In the past I did a lot of futurizing so I know what it feels like from experience. I’d focus on thoughts such as: “When I meet this woman will there be a spark?” “She’s a city person and I’d prefer the country so would we ever be able to live together?” “What if I don’t find a partner and I’m alone for the rest of my life?” There were hundreds of these thoughts I’d snowball into worry and concern.

Then I came upon the teachings of spiritual masters who pointed the way to a clear understanding of life. When I saw that the nature of life is just to be as it is, and that humans are part of that nature, I realized I have nothing to do with “my” future. Ah, all of a sudden I could just relax, knowing the future will be what it is and I don’t have to make anything happen or even wish for anything in particular.

I realized that I’m not breathing myself and that thoughts aren’t mine, they just come. Seeing that I’m being lived simply meant I could be fully in this moment, enjoying the only time there is (this moment), and watching the future roll out before me, including everything about meeting, dating and mating.

Next time you find yourself spending a lot of stressful energy on thoughts and beliefs about your future you might just notice that futurizing is nothing but a bad habit that’s usually not fun. Happiness and peace is letting thoughts about the future float right on by because they won’t make a whit of difference to what will actually happen anyway.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

229. A love like this lights up the whole sky

2007-06-03T15:33:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine was asking what I meant when I said in my article #226 that most people in romantic relationships don’t love, they want something. She cited the example of her marriage of more than 30 years until her husband died and said it was a very loving marriage. Yet she and her husband had times of anger where they didn’t speak to each other for several days or longer, she said. “But just because of those times how could you say we didn’t have love?” she asked me.

My response was that any action we take in a relationship that’s designed to control the other person’s behavior isn’t love, its manipulation. We want our partner to change. In the case of anger we’re saying, “I’m going to make you hurt bad enough so you won’t do that again.” Whether our action is in the form of withdrawal or sharp words to punish, or being extra-nice, if our action aims at getting our partner to do what we want or stop doing what we don’t want, it’s not love. On the other hand, we’re happy to love when things are going our way.

We each know when our love isn’t pure or genuine – when we’re doing something we don’t really want to do so we can get something back. And our partner and the world knows it when we show our anger or disappointment when the reward we expected doesn’t come. Have you ever heard anyone say something like, “I went to the symphony with her but now she won’t even come to the races with me.”? Well, there you have it!

Hafiz, a great Persian spiritual poet of the 1300s wrote, “Even after all this time the sun does not say to the earth, ‘You owe me.’ Look what happens with a love like that. It lights up the whole sky.”

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

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

2007-06-01T10:42:00.001-07:00

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

2007-06-01T07:31:00.000-07:00

“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?

2007-05-29T06:25:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-28T21:03:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-28T07:25:00.000-07:00

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

223. Relationships can’t have a problem, only you can

2007-05-26T11:09:00.001-07:00

Mature dating can be a great teacher. It often forces us to look at things we might have overlooked because it brings up painful feelings we can’t ignore. Years ago I was in a relationship that wasn’t working, yet my partner wasn’t willing to get any help to improve it. At the time I had no idea I could get help without her. So I lived in what I thought was a painful relationship.

I’ve since seen that no relationship ever has a problem because “relationship” isn’t a thing. It’s a word describing how two people get along. So any problem can only be within one or both of the people. If you’ve got a problem relationship and you’re hurting, you’re the one who has a problem. The proof is that you’re hurting. Your partner may be hurting too but you can’t do anything about that.

We’ve grown up learning to judge and blame, and that’s especially our tendency in relationships. When we do that, however, we’re victims of our own thinking. We’re saying, “If my partner would change I could be happy.” That’s not only hopeless but even if there is a change, something else will always come along and you’ll see yourself as a victim again. Without blaming and judging you get another picture, however. When you don’t put the onus on someone else you simply see life as it is: Your partner is doing what they’re doing and you’re deciding it should be different and making yourself hurt.

Now there’s some clarity. Since everyone has a right to be who they are, just as we do, do we really need them to change? No. We can either choose to stay and accept them as they are or leave. Neither choice has anything to do with our partner. We can ask them to change a behavior and whether they do it or not is their choice. In simple terms, our problem is always our stuff! Only we are ever responsible for our feelings. What our partners do is none of our business.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

222. The core thought that can make a hell out of senior dating is the I-thought

2007-05-21T20:35:00.000-07:00

When you think about the times when you’re hurting in the mature dating world you’ll notice that it’s only when you believe something should be different – the way you’d like it to be instead of the way it is.

Thoughts come all the time. Have you noticed that even though we say “I’m thinking” we really have no control over the thoughts that show up? But thoughts aren’t the problem. They’re just part of the way this world functions, obviously. The problem is that we grab onto thoughts and believe them and think they’re right while believing the way things are, is wrong. But how could that be? The way things are is just the way things are. How can we argue with what already is? You can’t fight reality and ever expect to win.

Have you also noticed that the present never has any problems? The problem is always thoughts – thoughts about the past or the future. But do they take place in the past or future? No, they take place only in the present. There’s no such thing as past or future. If you couldn’t think you wouldn’t have a past or future and you wouldn’t have suffering.

The core thought that’s the basis for all suffering is the simple thought “I”. Every problem we have starts with “I” or “me” or “mine”. When we see that this I-thought is just a thought and really doesn’t have control then all the other thoughts associated with “I”, such as what I like or want or don’t want… all those thoughts just drop away because they’ve started with an “I” that’s not even real.

We’ve been taught how the world works and how we have control and must run our lives appropriately. But reality, when you look, shows you that everything appears out of nothing and goes back to that. That void or nothingness has to be the basis for everything that shows up. We can call it Source or God or the Absolute. Knowing it’s the basis for everything we can just relax and trust that that God-Power can take care of things just as it always has. We don’t have to pay attention to the painful I-thought and all that goes with it.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

221. “Out there” is never a problem in mature dating, it’s always “in here”

2007-05-21T16:35:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine told me the other day about a bumper sticker she saw. It applies perfectly to the source of suffering in mature dating. It read, “Reality is not what you think!”

In just a few words that line sums up what we’ve been talking about here. Reality, or what actually is, has nothing to do with thought. What our senses register about the world just as it is, is reality. There’s no emotional pain in that at all.

What causes us to hurt in senior dating is the thinking that gets added to reality. Many times we don’t simply see reality, or “what is” just as it is. Instead we add judgments to what is: “He should call me.” “She should have told me the truth.” “They shouldn’t do that.” “I’m getting older and I should find someone soon.” But in all those cases reality is just the way things are. It’s always our opinions, interpretations and judgments that cause us to suffer. Without that, there is no suffering. There’s just reality and our awareness of it.

And if this seems confusing, reading further in this blog may help. I invite you to remember one thing, however, and that’s this. We’re ALWAYS the source of our own pain. The problem is never “out there;” it’s always “in here” – in our thoughts.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

220. Without your thoughts mature dating can’t have any problems

2007-05-18T10:44:00.000-07:00

You have a dating problem. Really? Who decided that?

Let’s say the woman you’ve been dating doesn’t want to see you any more. You’re disappointed and feeling hurt. You want it to be different. Now let’s imagine you have a friend who happens to be in the same situation. The woman he’s been seeing doesn’t want to see him any more either. But he’s not hurting. He figures it’s just the way life is, and moves on. So where did your problem come from? Obviously from your own thoughts. It’s not real. It’s self-created.

Every single problem we have results from our thinking that life should be different. We’re the ones who decide what should and shouldn’t be. We’re the ones who decide what’s good and bad, right and wrong, painful and pain-free. Yet the strange thing is that when we look at our own life, our own experience, we can see that we don’t really know how things should be. We just think we do. We’ve all had plenty of experiences to prove that if life had gone the way we were so sure would be best it may not have turned out so well. At the very least all we can say is that we don’t know.

My neighbor lost her son to a freak accident when he was 20. With an experience like that it would be easy to discount what I just said. You could say that nothing good came out of that at all. But do we know? Do we know what his life would have been like had he lived? Can we really question the Power that created him in the first place and then decided when the life in him should stop? In truth, without an opinion, he lived exactly as long as he should have lived. Not a second too long or too short. You know that because that’s the way it was.

The simple seeing or presence that we are witnesses and registers all kinds of events, thoughts, and feelings that pass through our awareness. Our only problem comes when we latch onto them, put our own interpretation on them, and then suffer as a result. It’s that Little Me idea, with its judgments, that’s the center of all emotional hurt and pain. It all starts when we believe our thoughts. Thoughts are just energy passing through. Nothing more. We don’t ask for them, we don’t control them, we don’t choose how long they’ll stay. Why not just see life as it is, without our self-centered opinions, and be happy? After all, that’s our true nature, just the pure being-awareness in which everything shows up, just like space makes it possible for objects to show up.

See that and you can’t help but be content and problem-free. This is what all the spiritual traditions have been sharing throughout the centuries. It’ll make your dating pain-free, guaranteed.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

219. Answers to a reader’s questions: What does make happiness in mature dating?

2007-05-16T07:55:00.000-07:00

An anonymous reader wrote yesterday asking for clarification of statements I’ve made in this blog about mature dating. The questions were good so I’m quoting them and hopefully providing some clarity here. Behind these questions is the assumption that we’re in charge of our lives. So let’s examine that assumption as we go through the reader’s questions.

Q. Why are we called sentient beings and insects are not? Don't we all digest food, our wounds heal, the natural functioning goes on? Sometimes I think you are describing a vegetative state here, insofar as humans are concerned. These things often happen in a vegetative state, so is that called happiness?

A. Yes, bodily functions often do go on naturally in a vegetative state but I’m referring to a conscious state, to normal, everyday living. If you were vegetative, meaning unconscious in my understanding of the word, you couldn’t be happy or unhappy because you would be unaware of feelings.

Happiness is the absence of resistant thoughts. When we’re not thinking something should be different we don’t have any problems and we don’t suffer emotionally. Without problems in life most people would think of themselves as happy, or content, or peaceful – whatever word you choose. That’s the happiness I’m talking about. It’s only when we step in to judge life that we feel so miserable. And judging means thinking that anything should be different.

Q. What happened to "effort"? Is it "effort" that makes one unhappy, therefore it is to be avoided?

A. Here’s an example of where the idea of a person who can make an effort shows up. Without that assumption of a person who has an opinion there is no effort to make life be a certain way. Rather than effort, which is designed to get a result we want, what I’m referring to is simply seeing life as it is, without an opinion about how it should be. When we see life as it is we make no effort and have no struggle and no pain. When we think something should be different, whether we think, “My date should have called” or “She shouldn’t be so friendly with that other guy” we set up our own suffering. What we haven’t noticed is that people do what they do and life is what it is. How do we know they shouldn’t be doing life “our” way? They’re not, that’s all. Reality is reality and to argue with it is mad. It’s already a done deal.

Q. I almost get the impression from your blog that any relationship will just move along all by itself. Is that true? What does that look like?

A. Yes, what I’m speaking of refers to relationships and to all of life. Life and relationships do move along by themselves. What it looks like is this: You’re sitting in a group having a conversation and without realizing it you cross your legs. If someone asks if you crossed your legs you’d probably say, “Well, I obviously did that but I sure don’t remember it.”

Or take seeing, for example. We say, “I see.” But do you have to do anything to make seeing start? Do you have to think: I want to see? Do your eyes have to decide to see? No, seeing happens by itself doesn’t it? So is it true that “I” see, any more than it’s true that “I” cross my legs, blink my eyes, digest my food, beat my heart or breathe my lungs? Even thoughts aren’t yours. Thinking happens. We have no idea what our next thought will be. And if we controlled thoughts would we choose to have sad or painful thoughts, sometimes continuing for days or months or years? “You” did none of those actions or thinking, yet it appears.

It’s the same with relationships, and we all know it from our own direct experience – things happen and we’re not in control. You have a huge fight with your date and you’re sure it’s over for both of you. Three days later you’re speaking again and you’re totally surprised. Or you’ve given up on dating or ever finding the right man. A week later you start talking to the guy in the supermarket checkout line and a year later you’re married to him. (This actually happened to a woman I know.)

Q. If nobody makes any effort, then the life force didn't want it to happen? I'm confused here. Perhaps you can clarify for me.

A. Yes, whatever effort or lack of effort that happens IS the Life Force doing what we call effort. It doesn’t involve anybody, any “me”. Action (that we call effort) happens or it doesn’t, just like rain happens or not. If movement (effort) is supposed to happen through somebody it will. You can make all the effort you want and not get what you’ve been striving for. So it isn’t effort or no-effort that produces results. Results simply show up as they are, just as effort shows up as it is.

The most important thing to realize is this: This is about seeing that we’re not independent individuals who have any independent control over anything. Who we are is not separate from the one, single power or life force that appears as everything, including you and me. Everything appears out of that silent stillness, that void, and returns to it. We exist and we know we exist. We can’t deny it for the simple reason that it would take presence to make a denial. So we’re present and we’re not the power behind our presence or our awareness of it.

Then thought appears on the scene and the little me gets in the picture, thinking it’s in control. We think we’re the doers when in fact life, including our life, is being done. We’ve simply shown up out of the silent stillness that’s the background of everything. That emptiness from which everything shows up is like space. Space can’t be seen, smelled, touched, tasted or objectified in any way. It has no boundaries, no center point, nothing you can describe. Yet you can’t argue that it’s there. Without space nothing could exist.

In the same way, without that silent, space-like emptiness or void, nothing could be. For you to even know you have a thought or have suffering there has to be something separate from suffering that knows it. That knowing is presence, your pure essence or what’s often called your natural state. We’re not separate from that emptiness, which I sometimes call the life force, or source or the absolute. (I seldom use “God” because the word has so many mixed connotations.).

In other words, we’re being lived. It’s only that thought of a “me” we think is separate from the source that’s behind all our suffering. When there is no “me” that assesses and judges everything, life can simply be seen as it is, without judgment, opinion, or interpretation. Of course, without judgment – thinking something needs to be modified or changed – we’re content, happy, at peace. We’re simply watching life unfold, including the life that unfolds AS “me”.

This way of seeing the reality of life applies to every aspect of every relationship and every moment of life – the life we’ve mistakenly thought was ours. Animals and very small babies already live in that natural functioning. They make no judgments. That’s why they’re content, happy, without problems. What else could you want in life but to be happy with everything just the way it is? Seeing life that way could there be any struggle and suffering?

See life as it is and you also see that peace and happiness is there, waiting, as it’s always been. We’ve never been anything but that Presence-Awareness thinking we were separate and had to struggle to make “our” life go. When the separation ends and there is no me-thought that wants life to be “my way” all suffering dies too. What’s left is happiness. Ahh, what a relief!

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

218. Mature dating is a pleasant stroll when you don’t have to make it go your way

2007-05-14T17:44:00.000-07:00

All the worry, stress and discomfort of mature dating can evaporate if we’re willing to give up what we think we know about life and see what our direct experience tells us. I’m talking not about beliefs, which are always learned from someone else, but knowing. When you know, belief is no longer necessary. If you know how to swim you don’t say, “I believe I can swim.” Belief is wiped out with the knowing.

What I’ve come to know by studying the teachings from a number of wise ones with a clear understanding of life is that Life is living us. Functioning of a body we call “me” is happening by itself. When you look deeply you can’t find anything with an independent nature you can call “me”. Your very life isn’t under your control at all. “Me” is only an idea, a thought. You can check that out if you’re interested.

The problem is that “me” seems so real. We say I walk, I talk, I am the doer of my life. But when you take a look you’ll see from your own experience that you can’t locate a “me”. But then you’ll say, “Well then, who’s walking, for instance, if it’s not me?” Good question. I suggest you look and see. Are you walking? When you’re walking along and having a conversation with someone are you consciously moving each leg and setting your foot down with each step? Do you even know how to move your leg? Isn’t walking just happening?

Are you actually responsible for blinking your eyes? Do you wave your hands and arms around consciously as you talk, to help express yourself? Or do they move without your even realizing it until someone points it out? Do you grow yourself from childhood to adulthood? Have you made your hair turn gray and added wrinkles to your face in these mature dating years?

A chameleon changes color as a camouflage to protect itself. An octopus not only changes colors but can also change its “skin” from smooth to rough or variegated to match its surroundings so it can’t be seen. Do you think these animals consciously make that happen? Or is it just the way nature functions? Would the Life Force function in what we call the animal world but not for you in your human world?

When we realize that we’re also part of nature, just as an octopus, and that we’re being lived in the same way a natural relaxing into life happens. We no longer have that self-centered reference point – that filter that everything passes through – as we ask ourselves: How do I like this? How does this affect me? The me-idea that’s been the center of our universe can just drop away and the natural functioning, that’s been going on all the time, will be at the forefront instead of in the background.

Thinking we have to make life go our way to be happy is a mental habit that causes us a lot of pain. Realizing that Life knows what it’s doing and just relaxing into that knowing is freedom, peace, and happiness. All the emotional turmoil of mature dating can just evaporate in that knowing. What’s left? Just the joy of “being” as we move spontaneously and effortlessly in the dating world and in all other areas of life.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

217. It’s freedom not marriage that makes us happy and healthy

2007-05-14T13:30:00.000-07:00

When I talk about good relationships I think of freedom. To me that’s what a happy romantic relationship is about, the freedom both people feel to be themselves without sensing that their partner is judging them or trying to change them. Now comes a recent essay in Time magazine about marriage, saying: "There's good evidence that it is freedom that makes us healthy and happy, not the bonds of marriage."

The article, by John Cloud in the February 8, 2007 issue, cites some interesting facts from a recent book titled, Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After, by Bella DePaulo. One study, she says, cites the fact that married people are only 0.115 points happier in life on a 0 to 10 scale than singles. But the researchers couldn’t tell which came first, the marriage or the happiness. Maybe, Cloud points out, happy people are more apt to marry because they’re more social.

DePaulo cites another study that concludes, "It is better to have no relationship than to be in a bad relationship." That’s probably not much of a surprise to anyone.

In general, what all the studies show, Cloud says, is that we tend to feel better when we can mate up and then end it when things go bad. And we feel worse when we can't find a partner or when we feel trapped by a bad partner. Thus the conclusion that it’s freedom that makes us happy, not marriage.

As we’ve been pointing out in these articles, we make assumptions about how finding a mate would make us happy in these mature years of our lives. But do we really know? Wouldn’t senior or mature dating be more pleasant and easier if we didn’t hold onto the idea that we’re absolutely sure we need a mate? The stress could end.

When we expect experiences to bring us happiness we haven’t noticed that all experiences repeat themselves endlessly and never bring lasting joy. We’re always on to the next experience, looking again for satisfaction. Yet the Source that makes all those experiences possible is never striving, searching, or stressed at all.

That non-judgmental Source, or awareness, is the changeless background that all experiences show up in. It’s that knowing that lets us say, “I had an experience.” When we live from that awareness, where we simply witness life, we’re like the movie screen, unaffected by the drama showing on it. We see life as it is rather than suffering the pain of want and need, trying to get what we don’t have.

Maybe, as the article points out, what we don’t have isn’t better and we’re just stuck with our own idea that it is. Trusting that Source can end the entire struggle. Whether you have a relationship or not will happen or it won’t. Why not go with the flow of life as nature does and just be happy now rather than living for that day “when”?

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

216. If you let mature dating happen as you let dinner digest it's fun

2007-05-13T18:01:00.000-07:00

Dating, when we’re considered by society to be mature, or seniors, is a slice of life that seems to amplify the basic struggles most of us feel in life generally. Dating sort of holds our emotional life up where we can examine it pretty easily. A lot of feelings that would normally appear for us over a long period of time are squeezed into a short space and have a lot of energy.

One of the first things we see is that life, reflected up close and personally in our dating, is often a real struggle. We suffer and we’re in pain, and it’s not easy to escape that when things don’t go well with our dating. We struggle with desires and fears. We worry and fret about whether we said or did the right thing. What is our date thinking about us? we wonder. We scramble and sputter as we work at trying to impress our date or partner, and we feel stressed. No wonder senior dating is no fun for so many.

But is it normal to be so obsessed over doing life right? When you think about it, your body calls for very little attention when you’re healthy, except for the normal requirements for food, drink and elimination. It’s only when something is wrong with our bodies that we’re concerned and pay attention.

Yet with our personalities we seem to be always paying attention, as though something is wrong. We worry and stew over all kinds of things that show up dramatically when we’re dating. But does a personality really need to have any designs of its own? Does a person need to be concerned about doing it right in the dating world?

The Life Force that we are expressions of is guiding us effortlessly, even as we’re scheming and negotiating to make our life work. That Life Force takes care of the body’s actions effortlessly and without your attention. Cut your finger and it heals. Eat your food and it digests itself; the energy goes where it’s needed in the body.

The personality, too, has no need to worry about itself. After all, it has no life force of its own; it’s not a separate entity with any separate power at all. It’s every movement and every breath and yes, every thought, is an expression of the Life Force, that intelligent energy that keeps the planets in place and brings us humans into life and takes us out again.

Normal life and normal dating doesn’t need to include stress and strife, when instead we could relax and be guided from within. When that happens life becomes a journey into the unknown, a mystery and a fascinating trip we can watch with interest, and in peace, contentment and joy. That’s our natural state. We’ve all experienced it in those times when we’re so totally engrossed in something that we later notice that life at those moments was totally peaceful and without a problem.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

215. Do you really need a partner to be happy? Your answer might surprise you

2007-05-13T14:57:00.000-07:00

Wanting what we don’t have is always painful to some extent. I’ve heard people say, “No, it keeps my life interesting. It gives me something to look forward to.” I can hear that. But when you question it you also see that wanting says we’re not happy with what we’ve got right now. I call that unhappiness pain or suffering. It’s certainly not harmony and happiness.

In fact, have you ever noticed that even people who say they’re striving for peace are wiping out the very peace they say they want? Striving isn’t peaceful.

I talked to a woman in her mid-60s recently who’s been divorced many years. She told me she really wants a committed relationship. You know the picture: two people riding off hand-in-hand and heart-in heart-to the golden sunset together. Her desire for the pleasure of a relationship is pain itself. To her, the pleasure of a partner would be the end of her pain. But then pain is always the end of pleasure too. They rotate until people can see life clearly and simply allow what is to be the way it is, without judgment, opinion or expectations.

We tend to forget that when we had a committed partnership life probably wasn’t all roses. (And this is coming from a man who had what I easily described as the best marriage of anyone I’d known until my wife died.) I agree that companionship is wonderful but why not just watch as that Infinite Intelligence, the source of all things, simply rolls out life before us, moment by moment?

When the painful thought comes up: “I want a partner in my life because I know life would be better,” investigate. Ask yourself if you can really know that for sure. Do we have any proof of that at all? Then you may be able to just relax into life as it is. And that certainly could include finding people to date and enjoying the whole mature dating process, but without a need. It’s the attachment to a need that’s painful.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

214. She built her own penalty box and put herself in it, but blamed him

2007-05-11T08:40:00.000-07:00

A few years ago my friend Miles was dating a woman in her mid-60s that he really cared about. He said she was a kind, wonderful woman who was fun to be with and had an easy-going, cheerful manner. The only problem was that she’d sometimes get hurt easily and react with anger and withdrawal. Later she’d feel sad after she saw that her emotional outbursts came from her insecurities and that Miles wasn’t the problem.

When they talked about how he felt about her anger and hurt Miles told her honestly that he wasn’t comfortable with it and he was reluctant to get into a deeper relationship with her. She said she was working to understand herself and he replied that he’d like to continue to date and just watch to see how things played out. But that also hurt her and she referred to his watching statement as, “You’ve put me in a penalty box and now I have to wonder how long you’ll keep me there before you let me out.”

For Miles it was clear he had nothing to do with putting her in a penalty box or anywhere else. He knew he didn’t have the power to do that, nor did he have any interest in it. He was simply living his life and watching how things unfolded between them. This is a perfect example of how thoughts can build stories that seem as real as events in a dream.

We say things like, “Boy, she sure put him in his place.” But that’s never true, of course. We only put ourselves in a place and then believe it’s real. This woman had obviously mentally created her own penalty box and put herself in it, thinking she was a slave and Miles was her slave-keeper. Apparently it seemed as real to her as prison bars.

No matter how we cut it, no one ever has the power to control our thoughts or feelings about anything. The moment we start hurting while thinking it’s someone else’s fault we’re at a fork in the road. We can either irrationally blame someone and be a victim or we can see that only we control how we feel and take responsibility for buying into crazy thoughts. Guess which choice breaks down the non-existent walls of the penalty box and brings us back to peace.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

213. Ending the discouragement and heartache of mature dating is as simple as seeing life the way it is

2007-05-11T07:20:00.000-07:00

At first it’s difficult for nearly everyone to even begin to consider, let alone embrace, the ideas we’re sharing in the articles in this blog. “Leave things alone? Let life be just the way it is? How could I do that? If I don’t take care of things for myself, who will?” These are the kinds of thoughts we have about this way of viewing life. I know. I’ve been there. And I’ve sat in countless meetings over many years where people, in dialogue with someone sharing true understanding, have asked these same questions.

Yet, this way of seeing life is ancient. Those wise ones over the ages who drew followers because of the calm, happy way they lived have been saying the same thing: Recognize that life just is the way it is and leave it alone. Notice that some Infinite Intelligence seems to know what it’s doing.

Since dating in our mature or senior years can often be so stressful and we can feel so hurt when our hopes and expectations are dashed finding clarity can be heaven on earth. It can be the end of heartache and suffering for those able to give up old concepts and be open to a new way of seeing.

The opening words of the Hsin Hsin Ming, words from a Chinese master of centuries ago, sum up the teachings well:

The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the truth then hold no opinion for or against. The struggle of what one likes and what one dislikes is the disease of the mind.

It’s only due to our habit of accepting and rejecting that we don’t see the true nature of things, the way life actually is. Stop judging and we realize that ease, happiness, and peace have been with us all along. We simply had covered it with our “shoulds” and “oughts”.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

212. Why does she feel hurt and lash out? 'What?’ questions lead her to peace

2007-05-09T07:34:00.002-07:00

Mature dating often turns out to be like a mirror, reflecting back to us who we are in our most insecure and fearful states. Sometimes we don’t like what we see. We may notice we strike out with hurtful, cutting words at times, when we’ve always thought of ourselves as a kind person, for instance. It doesn’t feel good to see that, so it’s natural to start questioning: Why do I do that? Why do I say hurtful things?

I’ve spent a lot of time asking “why?” questions in the past. At one point in my life I spent countless hours over about four years in a psychologically-based program designed to do just that – trace back my feelings and reactions to their so-called roots: “Oh, I see, I feel this and react that way because my dad criticized me when I was nine years old.” As I’ve now seen the way life actually is, I know why that method only worked temporarily.

What I’ve seen is that “why?” questions are the wrong questions. The mind loves chewing on questions like that because it gets to play with them for years and never find an answer. There is no cause for events. Any cause can be traced back to another cause, and then another and another: “Why did I feel that way? It’s because my dad said this to me. Why would he say that? He didn’t know any better because he was raised by an abusive mom. Why was she like that? Well, she was orphaned when she was six so she really didn’t know how to parent…” and on and on we go through the generations, to the beginning of time. The question “why?” only gives our minds a fertile playground to create ever more pain and confusion. Even if you think you know why it doesn’t help much.

There’s another type of question that’s a powerful tool to see the truth, however. That question is “what?”. “What?” doesn’t involve the mind at all. It only invokes pure, objective seeing, without interpretation, without judgment, without evaluation, without opinion – without anything. When you’re looking at “what” you’re viewing reality as a camera does, just taking in what it sees, without discrimination. With a “what?” question we’re looking only to see “what is”.

Let’s say your partner, Ray, has lunch with Linda, his long-time friend. You think he shouldn’t spend time with another woman so you’ve lashed out at Ray and you’re hurting. But “what” actually happened? Reality, without your story, is just that Ray had lunch with Linda. You probably wouldn’t have a problem with that if you weren’t feeling threatened. In fact, without your insecurity you could enjoy the fact that Ray had a nice time at lunch with an old friend.

“What?” helps you see the truth. If you want to get rid of your hurt and jealousy ask “what?” questions: “What’s the reality of this event? Does Ray have a right to have lunch with whoever he wants, just as I do? Does my jealousy and anger solve anything? Has it ever worked? Is Ray still with me, even after having lunch with Linda?” Notice that in all these questions you’re really just looking at “what’s” true. “What?” will always take you to clarity and peace when you simply see and allow life to be the way it is. “Why?” will always keep you spinning.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

211. The therapist even agreed that she hurt his feelings but is that possible?

2007-05-07T14:06:00.002-07:00

Seeing life clearly isn’t always easy. Our conditioning is pretty strong. One of the things it seems we’ve all learned is that other people are often responsible for our feelings. “He hurt my feelings,” – or variations of that lament – is a common refrain.

The other day I read the opening of an advice column on relationships written by a couple, both trained as therapists – one a Ph.D. and the other an M.A. Here’s how a small portion of the dialogue went:

QUESTION: I told my husband of seven years (we have been together for a total of 15 years) that I was bored with our sex life. Now he is mad at me because I hurt his feelings….
ANSWER: …We're sure you didn't mean to hurt his feelings, but you surely did.

Really? She “surely did” hurt his feelings? I was surprised
that these well-educated counselors both agreed that this woman was responsible for her husband’s hurt feelings. When you look at reality and see the truth, though, how could that be? Could I get into the head of someone and click a switch that makes him decide to be hurt by something I said? I just don’t have that power. We always decide for ourselves whether to feel hurt or not.

Why is it important to be clear about that? Because living a peaceful, happy life comes when we deal honestly with reality, in all its forms. If I think I’m responsible for someone else’s feelings, those feelings include their happiness and their misery. That’s a huge burden I’ve taken on myself. Can I honestly do anything that would guarantee my partner’s happiness? No, of course not. Our feelings – our happiness – are always an inside job. Why try to play that role for someone else when you know you can never succeed? It doesn’t mean we won’t be kind. It doesn’t mean we won’t choose words thoughtfully if we know someone else may hurt their own feelings by what we say. But we’re never responsible, any more than we’re responsible for the weather.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

210. Faulty self-beliefs can ruin your dating and your happiness

2007-05-05T07:38:00.000-07:00

What we think of ourselves affects our whole view of life, including our dating relationships of course. I know a woman – I’ll call her Loni – who seems to see her whole life through a negative self-image. I was at a meeting one time, talking to a friend of mine, and happened to glance up to see Loni. Later she called me to ask why I was laughing at her. It turns out the moment I glanced at her I apparently was laughing with my friend. Loni knew I was laughing at her. That’s a pretty extreme example of a negative self-image but we all know that how we view ourselves colors our entire world.

Yet for most of us that self-image seems pretty solid; it becomes a thing, like a pair of colored glasses we wear every day. Every morning we get up and our glasses go on automatically. We’re looking at everything through that colored lens. Through the lens life looks like this: “Joe didn’t ask me for a second dance last night so obviously he thought I wasn’t good enough for him.” “Jill talked about her cousin’s great education so obviously she thinks I’m not very bright because I don’t have my doctorate.” It’s clear that our view of the world is all a projection based on our view of ourselves.

Since our self-image affects our dating so much maybe it’s worth taking a good look at it. What is a self-image, after all? We take it for granted that it’s who we are. But is that true? After all, when you look you can’t really find something called a self-image. If it’s real where is it located? It’s only a bundle of thoughts or mental images we hold about ourselves. And in fact that bundle of thoughts isn’t even consistent so how real can it be? Sometimes we think we’re pretty wonderful. At other times we think we’re complete losers.

If we examine those self-image thoughts what are they? It turns out they’re nothing more than ideas or concepts we picked up throughout life that we’ve believed in and made real for ourselves. A third-grade teacher didn’t praise your drawing the way she praised Jennie’s so there’s a label you stick on your forehead. It reads, “I’m not talented”. The kids laugh at your book report in the 6th grade. There’s another label; this one reads, “I’m stupid”. It doesn’t take long before your whole body is plastered with labels and if you read them it’s clear that you’re nothing but a loser. The proof is right there in the labels, see?

We’ve been living with them for years so they must be who I am, right? But is that true? All we have to do is investigate to find out. Is it true you’re not talented because that teacher didn’t happen to praise your work? Are any of those other self-image beliefs actually true? When you really look and be honest with yourself you see the fallacy of those beliefs. You see through that whole self-image illusion; you see it’s nothing but a sham.

Seeing reality – the truth of life – is powerful because when we see through the innocent lies we’ve been telling ourselves we don’t have to live with the suffering they cause any longer. Then we simply see life for what it is – events happening. Events that are no longer interpreted through an illusory self-image filter. Without our self-image projections the fact that Joe didn’t ask for a second dance means nothing more than the fact that it’s windy today. Life is what it is. Ah-so! Your contented happiness isn’t affected at all.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

209. Do you really want to tie your happiness to what he does?

2007-05-04T13:08:00.000-07:00

Happiness is that elusive feeling that, try as we might, we can’t seem to pin down and keep around all the time. For most of us it comes and goes, depending on what we’re experiencing in the world. At least it seems that way. So if we get that phone call from the guy we met for coffee last week, we’re happy. If not, we may feel disappointed and gloomy. When we look, though, it’s pretty easy to see why happiness isn’t consistent in our lives. When we tie our happiness to outside events and other people we’ll always be a victim. We’re saying, “You’re the one who gets to decide if I’m happy or not.” Of course they don’t always consistently do what we want, so we’re jerked up and down. Not a fun way to live.

There’s another way to live in this mature dating world, however. It starts with seeing the truth of life. The truth is if another person could make us happy then whenever we’re with that person we’d be happy wouldn’t we? If we marry them we’re happy for life, with that kind of thinking. Well, we all know that just ain’t true. Divorce courts are filled with people who once thought their partners would make them happy for life and now can’t stand to be in the same room with them.

Happiness just doesn’t come from “out there”. The same event can make one person happy and not another. I could go to a heavy metal band performance where lots of people are thrilled and even stand in line and pay big bucks to get admitted. Me?... I’d be trying to find the exit door. So it’s pretty clear that happiness doesn’t come from out there. That’s an illusion. It comes from in here; it’s our projection. It’s like the light from the moon. It doesn’t come from the moon even though it looks that way. That too is an illusion. The truth or reality is that the light of the moon is a reflection.

Our happiness is always a reflection of our own feelings projected onto an event or another person. Every moment of happiness we’ve ever felt in our lives emanated from inside us. It flows from us, not to us. The reason we’re not happy all the time is that we manufacture opinions and judgments about how things should be. These judgments flow from inside us also. They have nothing to do with the reality of life as it shows up. We think we know how life should be and that’s another illusion. What’s true is that our natural state has nothing to do with judgments. It’s simply the state of being or presence, and that presence observes life without thinking it needs to change. Peace, happiness, and love are natural feeling that are always there when we stop trying to force our will on life.

So in practical terms how do we apply this to our example of the guy not calling after you’ve met for coffee? Like this: Without believing our thoughts we just see that life happens. If you don’t think you know what’s best – that he should have called or you want him to call – you just see reality as it is. If you wonder about this ask yourself: Do I really, absolutely, know what should happen?

You’ll probably immediately notice the calm peacefulness of your real nature when you just see what is. The space that exists because he didn’t call is now available for whatever else the universe will provide. What could it be? The mystery of life continues to unfold its own way with or without our opinion. Does it make more sense to take this false, self-centered “me” opinion out of the picture and just enjoy reality as it is? Without our judgments we might be clear to see that life’s natural beauty and perfect unfolding IS the happiness we’ve been seeking. What can be wrong about life without our thoughts about it?

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

208. We suffer, not because a relationship ended but because of what we think about it ending

2007-04-26T08:19:00.000-07:00

Everyone knows that dating can bring heartbreak. At least it looks that way. Something ends in a relationship: it could be a long romance or even just a short period of dating. But when it ends we often feel pain, sometimes excruciating pain. It seems natural that we’d feel pain and loss for something that has ended. Everything in life seems to say that that’s the way life is; it always hurts when something ends.

But sages over the centuries have been seeing and saying something different. They say that when you look closely the pain from loss only comes about because we think what has ended shouldn’t have ended. We want it our way rather than the way it is. Life, however, doesn’t care what we want and it doesn’t alter itself whether we’re suffering or not.

Life is a great teacher, and the workings of nature give us a simple way to view it. It’s easy to see in nature that everything changes. Change means something ends to make way for something new. Notice, it ends. Seasons end; day ends, night comes; plants grow and die; rain comes and goes; our heartbeat ends, to be replaced by a rest period; the incoming tide ends and begins to move out again. Everything ends. Everything changes. That change is in front of us at every moment even as each moment ends to make way for the next one.

Now, as obvious as that is, we still seem to have the idea that a relationship shouldn’t end, and when it does we hurt because after all everyone hurts when a relationship ends that we wanted to continue. But that suffering we feel isn’t the reality of life. We’ve made up our own suffering. Our war with life is what hurts and lacks any feeling of love.

Seeing life as it is, however, is love. There’s no judgment, no resistance, no fighting. When you see that a relationship is over you know it’s run the full course it was meant to run. You know that because it ended. The sages constantly taught that Life is love and that it’s living itself just fine. We can be completely happy and at peace if we don’t argue with it. Without opinions about how life should be we simply see it as it is, without judgment, with love.

You may be thinking, “This guy obviously hasn’t had relationship heartbreak because he just doesn’t know how it can hurt.” Yes, I know. I’ve been there. And it hurt a lot because I didn’t know it was only my thoughts about it that were causing my suffering. I thought it was the circumstance. But circumstances and events and what people say and do can’t ever hurt us emotionally when we see reality instead of our home-made, self-centered dream.

I know there’s naturally emptiness when a relationship ends. There seems to be a hole in your gut and sometimes you can’t think of much else except your loss. But those are all thoughts. Remember, when you’re in deep sleep and not thinking you’re not hurting. So it clearly isn’t the ending but your thought about the ending that makes you hurt.

Seen with real clarity we can realize that we don’t really know this relationship should have continued. Rather, in fact, we do know: it shouldn’t have continued… because it didn’t. We know something ends to make way for something new. When we can watch what new comes into being to replace what ended we just see life with amazement and curiosity, not pain. Life has shown all of us through direct experience that an experience we thought was the end of the world was replaced by what we later saw as a blessing. Endings aren’t bad unless we say they are. Otherwise we just notice that endings are the natural way life functions. Let it be, enjoy the adventure of what comes next, and be happy. Living in “not knowing” can be just plain fun.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

207. Want a partner, or got a partner and don’t want him – it's all about viewpoint

2007-04-25T13:48:00.000-07:00

We think we know what happiness is, and it always looks different from what we have right now. That’s why all our lives we’re striving for something else, something more, different or better from what we have. Dating in our senior years is usually another way that striving and seeking happens. We think if we had a partner life would definitely be nicer. Even people who have left marriages because they weren’t happy usually feel that their partner was the cause of their unhappiness and if they had a different partner they definitely would be happier this time.

Pam is a friend of mine who lives in a mature community; all the residents must be 55 or over. She moved into this community about 8 months ago and is still getting acquainted with other residents through the many activities that are available there. The other day she met with a group of women and was surprised when a couple of them told her that a lot of the residents who were beginning to get to know her were envious of her. These were married women who looked at Pam’s free and single lifestyle and wished they had that freedom. Freedom to date whoever they wanted, to come and go when they wanted, to be accountable to no one. They were thinking, “How lucky she is!” Meantime, Pam tells me she’d rather be in a partnership, to have someone she can talk to and do things with, someone to confide in and trust.

This is another example that while most folks are nearly always thinking life could be better if… they’re not seeing the reality that life actually gives us everything we need at the moment we need it, even though we don’t think so. If we’re totally honest – and I mean deep-down honest – can we say we know life would be better if we had that mate we want?

Without making that kind of judgment about a future that hasn’t yet arrived does life in this very moment – as you read this – have anything wrong with it? When you believe you know for sure you need a partner to be happy how do you live? Isn’t living that way – arguing with reality – stressful and painful? What if, instead, you trusted the universe (or God or any term you want to use) to provide your life just the way it is providing it right now, just as it provides your next breath and your next heartbeat. Some power has been providing for your needs since you were conceived.

Maybe we could just relax and know everything is perfectly the way it should be because that’s the way it is. Dating, then, would still go on but now it could be just a fun adventure, not something done to achieve an end result. If you just picture that for a moment and let it settle in, does it seem that living without an agenda for your dating would be easier and more relaxing?

The real heart of the problem is that we think we are a separate “me” that needs to make “my” life work. But we’re not separated from that One Source. We just haven’t been taught to question that “me” thought. Where is this me? Does it really exist? Can you find any direct evidence of it or even pinpoint where it is? When we see that we’re being lived, that we don’t need to try to control things, life gets infinitely easier. I invite you to investigate and see for yourself.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

206. You’re getting older… does it really pay to fight it trying to attract a mate?

2007-04-22T07:45:00.000-07:00

It’s interesting to me that the way – the only way – we end up suffering emotionally is through belief in our thoughts. I know, that’s a radical-sounding statement. So stay with me for a few minutes and let’s see if I can show you what I mean. Then you can judge the validity of the statement yourself.

Last night I had a conversation with a long-time friend of mine, Anita, who was feeling sad about the fact that she’s getting older. The conversation clearly showed me she was creating her own pain just by her thoughts. None of us have to do that if we can simply see life a little more clearly.

“I’ve seen more doctors in the last few years than I ever have in my life,” she said. “It just makes me sad.” Anita is widowed and in her late 60’s, and she’d love to be in a relationship. So every time she thinks of getting older she also thinks no one will want her.

Where Anita is creating her own suffering, it’s so clear, is in an area I talk about a lot. She’s trying to fight reality, and in the process she not only loses but also makes herself miserable. What is reality, in this case? Well, it’s clear that in real life we all age and we all begin to lose some of our youthful physical abilities and we’re all eventually going to die. You can’t argue with that. Yet – and here’s the strange part – we try.

We think it shouldn’t be this way. We think it’s awful. We mourn the fact that we don’t have the energy we used to have, or that our knees hurt when we stand up, or that we have wrinkles and sagging skin we never had before. “Yes,” you might be saying, “but who wants to get old and wrinkly and have sagging skin? It’s hard enough to find a partner without having to also go out in the world without the youthful good looks I once had.”

But let’s look at the actuality of life for a moment. Whatever you look like when you look in the mirror, and whatever you feel like when you’re active physically, that’s just what life has dealt you isn’t it? You’re not being singled out as the only 50 or 60 or 70 or 80-something who’s getting older. That’s just the way life is.

Now, we can fight it and bemoan it and suffer it or we can just accept life as it is. We seem to have those two choices. Meantime, aging doesn’t stop. It doesn’t care what we think. It’s going to be what it is, just like life is what it is every day. Every spring the trees put on new leaves and every fall they lose them. Every minute or so the tide comes in. And every minute or so it goes out again. There’s summer, spring and fall. Nature has its ways and it acts through everything, including all animal forms, which includes humans.

Reality always wins. It always rules. But let’s look for a moment at what happens to us when we try to argue with it. How do you feel inside if you’re sad and miserable because you’re aging? You might actually take a moment to let yourself know what that really feels like inside your body. And how does that feeling affect your happiness, your joy, your spontaneity? Do you think what registers inside you might also register on the outside to the men or women you’d like to date or have a relationship with?

While we’re in the mood of being sad and disheartened about aging how do you think we come across to any potential partner or date? We’d have to reflect that wouldn’t we? So as far as I can see when we argue with what is we lose in at least two ways: We don’t feel happy, which is the biggest way, and we also lessen our chances of finding joy in our dating and of attracting someone to us. Who wants to be around a sour puss who’s inwardly miserable about getting old?

And the main point is this: For what? For what reason are we believing our thought that it’s terrible that we’re getting older? Is it terrible or is it just life? It’s only terrible if we say so. It’s all a myth. We’re creating a nightmare and living in it as though it were real – self-created misery. Seems to me it’s a lot easier to see life just as it is without throwing up arguments that change nothing and make us suffer. Without our made-up story life is just fine. No judgment, no suffering. You prove that to yourself every night when you sleep.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

205. What he described as care and concern she described as feeling stangled by love

2007-04-02T12:39:00.000-07:00

Seeing danger signals in a dating relationship can prevent a great deal of suffering in the future. I’ve met a number of men and women who have been hurt when the man or woman of their dreams turned out to be someone different from the person they thought they knew. When they discussed what happened virtually all of them said there were warning signs they should have heeded but ignored because they didn’t want to see them.

A few months ago Annie, a woman I know, was telling me about a man she’d been seeing recently. “He’s a really nice man,” she said, “but I feel strangled by love.” She could have said, “strangled by false love,” and we’ll see why. This man was a widower in his 70s and had lived a life of achievement and success, well-educated and accomplished – a strong Christian. Yet Annie felt constant pressure from him. Not pressure for sex but pressure to let him take care of her and be the partner and protector in her life. He wanted her to carry pepper spray when she walked, for instance, and even gave her some and asked if she was using it. She didn’t feel a need for it but he wanted her to use it anyway.

One day she was telling him of a volunteer job she had that caused her to drive a long distance on the freeway. He tried to dissuade her from making that drive. He pointed to statistics describing how driving more miles on the freeway leads to more risk of being in an accident, and eventually said to her, “You know, you owe it to the people who love you not to take risks like that.”

She was dismayed and immediately knew didn’t feel good in her gut, she said. The problem with a statement like that is that while it doesn’t feel good it can sound so much like love that it’s sometimes hard to figure out what’s really going on. The statement can feel like love because it seems to say, “Oh, look how much he cares, he doesn’t want me to be hurt.” But since it didn’t feel good to Annie let’s look behind the words and see what’s really being said.

A little inquiry can bring some clarity. The statement this man made was: “You owe it to the people who love you not to take risks like that.” First, he clearly puts himself in the group of “people who love you” so we can narrow his statement down to, “You owe it to me….” Now we can see he’s not really taking care of Annie’s friends and relatives, whom he doesn’t even know, he’s taking care of himself. So let’s just be clear about that first.

Next, his statement is actually saying, “You owe it to me not to live the life you want, but to live the way I want because, after all, I love you and I know what’s best for you.” That may sound like a harsh assessment of his statement but we’re here to look at reality not to whitewash it. We also don’t need to judge him or think he’s wrong. In a confused view of life this is what love may appear to look like. But why, then, doesn’t it feel good to someone like Annie to hear this?

When you consider his statement more thoroughly is it love or is it control? He’s really saying, “It’s up to you to take care of my feelings and I worry (my feelings) when you drive long distances and risk being in an accident so please stop it (take care of me).” Control is always nothing more than that – someone trying to get us to live their way so they can be happy. This man’s statement to Annie is a huge, neon sign flashing: “Control! Control! Control!” If there’s control in this aspect of life isn’t it likely – about 100% likely – that this man will also try to control in other ways? If he wants Annie to take care of his feelings in this instance he’ll surely want to make her responsible for his feelings in other areas. (“It’s your job to visit my adult children with me,” for example.) All this is in the name of love, of course.

Love isn’t controlling. Love is about freedom and care without control. It doesn’t say, “My love demands that you take care of me.” No, love says, “Because I love you I want you to live your way and if I’m worried that’s my problem, not yours, and I’m the one who needs to take care of it.”

In any relationship, where one or both people are dependent and needy, there will be obvious signs of trouble if we just pay attention. How do you see these danger signals? It’s easy – your body will tell you. Our deeper wisdom knows when something doesn’t feel right, even if we can’t put our finger on it consciously at first. A little deep inquiry will always show us the light.

Then all we need to do is move away from that controlling behavior, without judgment or condemnation. You may even feel compassion but you don’t get unwittingly sucked in with behavior that wears the mask of love and concern but is really manipulation and control when you peer under the mask. If you don’t see control early it’s a guarantee that you’ll pay the price later in a relationship, when the clinging, needy behavior begins to feel like being “strangled by love” – false love masquerading as real.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

204. When we trust our deeper wisdom mature dating becomes a romp in the park

2007-04-02T12:29:00.000-07:00

All things change, all the time. In the physical world things change because creation changes. Something decays, something else is born. In the thought world too, things change constantly. Even who we think we are changes, just in the space of a day, or even a minute. One moment we see ourselves as loving, a moment later we’re angry and spiteful. One day we love ourselves, the next day we loathe ourselves.

In our dating and partnerships things also change. At one time we think we know exactly who we want as a partner and moments later we’re not so sure. Yet, when things don’t go the way we want them to go we’re upset. We’re in pain. Why? Because we’ve decided we know what’s best for us. With all that uncertainty within us does it make sense to actually believe that thought?

The mind that believes it knows what’s best is a closed mind – inflexible, fixed, stiff and stuck. It’s not open to the wisdom of the way things are. “Out there,” which includes our thoughts, is always changing. But that simple awareness that is the source all things spring from is always waiting in the background as the open, accepting space that allows all things.

That infinite wisdom never changes. It’s what you could call the heart wisdom, the beloved. When you stop believing all your thoughts the heart wisdom is there, reminding you what you’ve always known – that the way life is is the truth. As you question your thoughts, your assumptions, your interpretations, and your judgments, your beliefs of resistance fall away because you see through them. You see they’re not true.

You begin to see life with an open heart. And until you come to life with an open heart and mind you’ll suffer. Through clear investigation you see reality. Almost magically you’re happy, peaceful and free of pain simply by observing life as it is, trusting that the beloved knows its way. You can start by asking yourself, “Do I really know the way life should be; do I need to resist what is and create suffering for myself?”

After all, it’s only when we think something should be different that we suffer. Rather than thinking, “My partner shouldn’t have left me,” we can notice reality and say, “He should have left me and I know that because he did.” That’s seeing life the way it is rather than fighting it, which is crazy. And it’s only that craziness that makes us hurt. In fact, could it possibly be that “what is” is actually best for us?

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

203. My suffering for a partner led to freedom and this blog, written to point you to freedom and peace also

2007-03-21T14:57:00.000-07:00

I started writing about mature dating because of my own dating experiences after my second wife died. I was lonely and I really missed the companionship, warmth, and love of a woman. I wanted another partnership. Now, more than 12 years later, I’m surprised I still don’t have a committed partnership. But I no longer suffer. Life is happy just the way it is.

Along the way I’ve learned so much more than I knew was possible to learn. Actually, I didn’t learn, as much as I saw, the world for what it is, simplicity itself. As I dated in the early years I was also on a deep and committed spiritual search, a search to learn who I was, looking for a way to alleviate my suffering. That search took me, finally, into the realization that my pain wasn’t coming from the lack of a partner. It was coming from my inability to see life just as it is. Seeing that, I naturally wanted to share it – and this blog was born after some years of note-taking based on my experiences. I had seen many others hurting from the same thing I had been hurting from – a belief in their thoughts about life rather than seeing life for what it is, just as it is.

Dating as a senior turned out to be a wonderful metaphor for all of life. I had been trying to find my happiness by getting the world to line up the way I wanted. Eventually I realized that’s not the way. If it had been people would have found happiness a long time ago by using sheer will power to make things go their way. Or we all would have used affirmations or the certainty that we create our own reality and we’d have done that – created our own reality.

But after years of living and years of struggling through motivation programs and self-help books and courses of all kinds I knew that didn’t work. Finally I saw that the answer is so elusive because it’s so simple. It was a matter of questioning my firmly-held beliefs to see if I actually knew what I thought I knew. It turns out I didn’t. Freedom and peace, to my surprise, came when I allowed deeper, intuitive answers to surface, and saw that I wasn’t in charge of my life and neither was anyone else. All I had to do was to realize the truth that I’m being lived and the power that lives as me and all of life is always at peace and living in harmony.

Argue with that and we hurt. See the truth of that and we simply live as awareness, peace, happiness, and love, watching life unfold. That, surprisingly, is who we’ve been all along. We just didn’t know, while all the time we thought we did. What a shock! What a gift!

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

202. Your “thoughts” about reality can make mature dating miserable

2007-03-21T10:12:00.000-07:00

When your mind is clear and you’re seeing reality as it is, not believing your thoughts about reality, mature dating becomes as simple as a leaf floating down a stream, serene and happy. As we notice that life always does what it does, with or without our approval, we can see clearly that anyone can come and go in our lives as Life wishes.

The stress of dating is gone when we give up our ideas of how things should go. We don’t even have to give up our ideas, actually. All we have to do is see that we’re not in control and never have been, and our control ideas evaporate by themselves. We see that Life has its own way and we’re being lived as part of that way. We never know what’s best, we just think we do.

As we stick to our judgmental thoughts we hurt. As we question those thoughts and see what really is, we just notice that all things come and go, including people in our lives. If we find people to date, good. If we don’t find someone to date, good. It only means that’s not supposed to be happening for us right now. If someone comes into our lives, good. If that someone – even someone we think is very special – leaves that too is good because we know it’s simply the way of it.

So if someone ends a relationship with you it doesn’t have to be heartbreaking. It’s only heartbreaking when we think it shouldn’t have ended. Seeing the reality that all things end can take the pain out of it. We see that we enjoyed the experience as it was and now it’s obviously time for us to enjoy new experiences. How do we know that? Look, here it comes! Every moment, after all, dies as a new moment is born. That’s simply the way life is.

We can live in harmony with the way things are because they’re going to be that way whether we like it or not. We can go along peacefully and happily or we can go screaming and fighting. Either way we’re going to go. When we stop arguing with reality we’re automatically happy. Some people might call that surrendering to God’s will.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

201. No wonder mature dating is painful and disappointing if you add your own interpretations and warp the truth

2007-03-19T16:47:00.001-07:00

If you’ve read a few of the entries in this blog you’ve seen that I’m suggesting your dating can be easy and fun when you stop looking “out there” to find happiness and instead start looking “in here”. We each create the world we live in every moment; it’s all projection. When we clear up the projector lens rather than try to clean the spot off the screen we find success. The projector lens, of course, is the filter through which we see the world. When you’re seeing through a purple filter everything appears purple. (Note the word “appears”.)

It works like this: The guy you’re dating says something, you put meaning onto it, you react and respond based on the meaning you added, and you don’t even notice that’s what you’ve done. What you’re reacting to is not what he said but what you heard and what you attached to what he said. This is just one example of how we so often don’t see “what is” but only what we “think” about what is. We believe our thoughts, see them as reality, and act on the lie we’ve just projected. We're at the front of the theater trying to clean the black smudge off the screen, not realizing we put the spot on the lens. In fact, we’re always living in the world we create, never the same world anyone else lives in. It’s all personal and it’s all projection.

A few years ago I attended a sponsored dinner with a woman I was dating. Wine was being served and during dinner she excused herself to leave the table. I casually remarked, “Are you going to get another glass of wine?” Instantly she gave me “that look” and became cold and distant. Later she was able to talk about her reaction, telling me she thought I was criticizing her for drinking too much. That hadn’t even entered my mind; it was entirely her own projection and her response sprang from her belief about what I’d said, not what I actually said.

That’s why questioning our thoughts is so important if we want to date happily and without stress and suffering. Without investigating and seeing reality as it is we usually believe our thoughts and create all kinds of pain for ourselves – in dating and in every other part of our lives.

A balanced mind is always at ease, not for or against anything, simply seeing life the way it is. When you stop accepting your habitual way of seeing life and question your thoughts you’ll find dating can be an exciting adventure, full of surprises, full of fun – peaceful, not stressful. Then dating doesn’t have to go a certain way. Any way is fine because that’s reality, and how can you argue with reality? Maybe that poor guy didn’t mean what you thought he meant. Maybe her leaving is the best thing that could happen to you. Do you clearly know life should be your way? Maybe it should be just the way it is.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

200. Authentic mature dating relationships aren’t built on fantasy and illusion

2007-03-18T12:46:00.000-07:00

In the dating world have you noticed how easy it is for people to fall in love with their romantic fantasies? I met a woman several years ago who was saying, “Let’s go to France! Let’s go to Branson, Missouri!” after we’d only seen each other a couple of times, for coffee and lunch. I told her I didn’t know her well enough to even consider trips like that at such an early time in our friendship, and a few weeks later I chose to stop seeing her because I knew she was dealing in fantasies that would eventually bite me.

A Zen master is quoted as having said, “Do not seek the truth; simply cease cherishing illusions.” Whether his words are applied to seeking a spiritual truth or to dating relationships they’re right on. We too often fall in love with our images and fantasies and when the air clears and we see reality we wonder why things didn’t work. The amazing thing is that the red flags appear to always be there. Over the last dozen years or so I’ve dated a number of women who have told stories of disillusionment with past relationships, where they eventually felt hurt and deceived. I’ve literally asked almost all of them, “As you look back now were there any red flags that you didn’t pay attention to at the time?” And the answer I’ve gotten every single time is, “Oh yes, there were flags; I just didn’t want to pay attention to them.” They were in love with their cherished illusions, not reality.

You see that lived out in cases where women who are physically abused continue to stay with their partners, apparently not able to see that reality says, After being abused one or two times it’s time to leave. Instead, they appear to believe their cherished illusion that this time the guy will really change, and sometimes they die for that belief.

What I’ve learned is that any time someone thinks you’re a princess or a prince – or you think that of someone else – you’re almost certainly dealing in illusion. In the nitty-gritty of everyday life, which is where we live when all the fancies and fantasies are finished, life isn’t about a fairy tale. It’s about loving someone as they are, not as we imagine them to be. Fantasies never last long. Reality lasts because it’s authentic and real. It has the soul-satisfying depth of truth and honest love.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

199. She said yes when she wanted to say no, adding monumental stress to her mature dating

2007-03-15T14:45:00.000-07:00

Some years ago I read two books, popular at that time, about how to say no in any relationship. One title was How To Say No Without Feeling Guilty or something like that. A couple of days ago I read an article online about ways to say no in personal and business dealings. Obviously saying no is not easy for many of us, and sometimes that becomes painfully apparent as we date in our mature or senior years.

My late wife, a woman I greatly respected, admired, and loved was one of those who had a really tough time saying no. Being what I call “too nice” caused her to sometimes be taken advantage of by peers and co-workers. Last week I had an extensive conversation with LeeAnne, a friend of mine who was suffering from the same problem. And I do mean she was suffering. This woman, in her mid-60s, had begun to realize that all her life she had agreed to things she had actually wanted to say no to, but hadn’t known how. The issue came to light again recently because she was seeing a man who was constantly asking her to attend events and weekends away when she felt she didn’t know him that well and wanted to move more slowly.

She agonized every time another request came because, she said, “I don’t know how to say no.” Because she had told me she really wanted to explore this habit and deal with it, we began to talk about the importance of living her truth. One thing she was sure of was that she wound up feeling trapped into doing many things she didn’t want to do. When I asked her if it was true she couldn’t say no she realized, for the first time, what a trap she had set for herself by believing that. It’s not true that she couldn’t form the word no in her mouth and let the sound come out, she realized. So then the statement had to become, “I don’t want to say no.”

Many people have trouble saying no because they think they need approval from others. It turns out that’s pretty common, and it was true for LeeAnne as she looked more deeply into that pattern in her life. She wanted this new man in her life to think she was a nice person. Also, she didn’t want to hurt his feelings, she said.

As she explored the price she was paying for not saying no, however, she realized it was astronomical. She had all kinds of stories to support her “can’t say no” habit and it was taking a toll on her. A few days after our conversation and her exploration of the truth for herself another request came from the same man, to go away for several days. And yesterday I got an email from her explaining that her new stance about being more self-assertive was working. “Yes, the no word is taking shape,” she wrote. “It is telling the truth and the story stops there. No pretending or extending. I like the way it feels.”

She had realized that not saying no had created suffering for her that snowballed – to use her word. Not only did she extend a lot of energy trying to find excuses to allow her to say no – or worse, to back out of what she had already agreed to – but she also suffered from the guilt she felt for lying and the embarrassment from knowing the other person probably knew she was lying. Sometimes her search for excuses would take days or even weeks of thought, energy, and planning as she concocted “reasons” why she couldn’t follow through on something she had committed to. All this when a simple “no, thank you” would have stated the truth.

Once we’ve seen what’s true for us, acting on that is a natural follow-on. But seeing the truth – that’s what we usually haven’t been taught how to investigate. The answer is to simply ask ourselves a few simple questions: Is it true I really can’t say the word no? Is it true I have the power to hurt anyone’s feelings, or do they choose to feel hurt when they don’t get what they want from me? Is it true I need approval or anything else from this person who’s asking me to do what feels stressful for me? Would a simple “no, thank you” work, with no explanation unless I feel like offering one?

And to see what your not saying no has cost you try this powerful question: “How would I feel if I just told the truth?” Forget what you think the other person may feel for a moment. Your immediate sense of relief may be all the answer you need. What I’ve learned is that truth is freedom for me. No guilt, no shame, no stress and no regrets. Life is good. LeeAnne seems to be finding that too.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

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

2007-03-07T11:41:00.000-08:00

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