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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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