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

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

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

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