74. Senior dating evokes many feelings but they're never caused by your partner

The emotions we feel in dating relationships have exactly not one thing to do with another person, and everything to do with ourselves. “But that can’t be,” you say. “She said this and it hurt my feelings.” Yet another person in the same situation may not be hurt at all. The wise ones over the years have told us we each live in a different world. That sounds crazy. We all know there’s only one world and we all see the same things in it. When it rains we all get wet, not just some. Go to a concert and everyone hears the same music. So we can’t live in different worlds, you say.

On a concrete level that’s all true. However, there’s another world we also each live in, and that’s the subjective or personal world. That’s the world of personal analysis, interpretation, judgment and opinion. We apply these qualities to nearly everything we experience, and most people live in that opinion world all the time. For example, two people hear the same music. One says she likes it, another says he hates it. Still, the music is just what it is. Two people see the same art. One thinks it’s exquisite, the other thinks it stinks. The art, however, is neither good nor bad; it’s just what it is. A rude comment is made. One person is hurt, another thinks the commentator has a problem. The real truth, though, is that, without interpretation, the comment is just sounds in the air.

So you can see that the world we live in is only what we see based on past observations and interpretations. When we’ve learned someone else can hurt us we live in a painful myth. We’re assigning others power they don’t have and relegating ourselves to the role of victim. “Victim”, in the way I’m using the word here, means someone whose happiness is controlled by someone else. No one has control over your feelings, only you. In dating relationships we take on the victim position all by ourselves by giving power to someone else to determine how we feel.

No one can hurt you emotionally unless you choose to be hurt. In the same way, you can’t hurt anyone either. In short, what I’m saying is that the world we each live in is always our own belief about it, and rarely what it really is. If we like the music we hear we’ve overlaid the sounds with our opinion. Is the music the cause of our feelings? No, it’s what we bring to the music that makes it “good” or “bad”. To the child whose mom makes her take a nap that’s bad. To the mom it’s good. In reality it’s neither good nor bad, except for someone’s opinion.

Next time dating is painful to you, instead of blaming someone else and feeling like a victim just notice that it takes a “you” to decide to suffer. Another person wouldn’t be suffering in the same situation. So it can’t be the situation or the other person that’s responsible for your hurt. Then ask yourself: Am I sure this incident should be my way? Or does the universe function quite clearly just the way it does, without asking my opinion? Seeing life as it truly is, is always freeing. Seeing it through our myths, dreams and projections will always mean pain because our ideas aren’t true when you match them up with “what is”. Remember the saying, “Know the truth and the truth will set you free.” And the truth is that our emotional world is always, entirely, 100% our own making.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

73. Watch your emotional hurt evaporate when you stop resisting its pain

Seniors, like anyone else, are in the dating world because we want companionship and love, a natural response to life. It seems to be who we are, having a desire to pair up with a partner. Sometimes, however, that desire can get out of hand and create a great deal of pain in our lives. At those times we feel like victims of that suffering. There seems to be nothing we can do.

Desire, when you look at it, is nothing but a fixation on a particular thought. The thought is about something that looks attractive to the mind. In relationships the desire is to be with the person we’re dating, perhaps to make it a more permanent coupling. Suffering comes in when we realize the focus of our desire doesn’t feel the same way. We’ve probably all experienced that the pain from unrequited love can seemingly overtake life. We can’t eat, we can’t function very well, we look for ways of escape in running away or keeping extra busy. But your thoughts keep going back to the love you think you have to have, as persistently as your tongue goes to a tooth in your mouth that a dentist has just worked on.

One thing the mystics and ancient teachers have said throughout the centuries is that peace comes from accepting what is, just as it is. In the case of that gut ache that comes from a breaking heart that means to do the opposite of what we’ve learned to do. We’ve learned to try to escape it. But instead of running from the pain the unbelievable answer is to just be with it. Watch how it unfolds, without doing anything with it or trying to add or substract anything.

Instead of putting a label on it and translating it into a concept, a word, you just let it be. Be with it. Doing this, you wouldn’t say to yourself “I’ve lost my lover”. And you wouldn’t say to yourself that it’ll be better soon when she wants me as much as I want her. Instead, if there’s attraction there just see the attraction and let it run its normal course. See what happens.

When feelings are translated into thoughts and labels by the mind they seem solid, they transform into a thing in appearance. It’s not really the case, but it seems that way. That thing then becomes a knot in the gut or an ache in the heart. Yet there’s no physical cause; it’s all just physical reaction based on thought. A mass of energy has gathered and built up which in turn causes us to focus more on it and it continues to grow, in a vicious circle. Of course you resist the pain and the very resistance holds the idea – and remember it’s just an idea – in place and makes it more solid. Without resistance, with just watching and observing instead, as a scientist would, it dissipates and dissolves.

When you have a knot in your stomach if you look for it in your body you’ll realize you can find no self center or core to it. And as you look your attention is naturally taken off the cause of the gut reaction (my lover is gone) and so the effect of that thought (your hurting gut) has to disappear because it’s not real and never was real. It’s only a thought-made thing that appears real.

So next time you feel pain and hurt because of something that happens in a relationship or your dating, remember that thought can’t be in two places at the same time. If the intensity of your thought is in investigating the feeling rather than fixating on your desire, your suffering will dissolve instead of continuing to grow. In life, thoughts show up on their own and leave on their own, usually in pretty short order – unless we latch onto them by trying to change them or resist them. Stop the resisting and just focus on the feeling, accepting it as it is and it dissolves. It may come back again a time or two but when it does, handle it the same way. Look at it with clear eyes without wanting or needing it to change, and you’ll see it evaporate.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

72. Holding back your tears and fears could be riskier than fully living and finding love

And the day came
When the risk to
Remain tight in bud
Was more painful
Than the risk it took
To blossom.
- Anais Nin

Risking is living, and it certainly applies to loving and dating. The middle line of this aphorism says it well:

Work as if you don’t need to.
Love as if you’ve never been hurt.
And dance as if no one is watching!

We often hold back for fear and desire for security. We’re afraid of getting emotionally hurt. We act as though we couldn’t handle it if our heart breaks for awhile. But is that true? Haven’t you had a broken heart before and survived? Yet holding back in a relationship seems pretty common. We feel if we invest ourselves and really let go and feel the love we have for someone it may not be reciprocated. That would not only be crushing emotionally but also humiliating. Do we really want to be hanging out there alone letting someone know how vulnerable we are?

They could take advantage of us and that would be painful. But the line from the poem, “remain tight in bud”, points out that not risking is also painful. When we’re unwilling to risk we lead pinched up lives – narrow, tight, stifled, boring and dull. Living that way you’re dead to life while you live. Remember, we live in a world of dualism. It takes the opposite of a thing to have that thing at all – no up without down, no pleasure without pain. When we hide in a cocoon for protection we may not have the agony of suffering but we’ll also never have the joy of the butterfly.

When we hold back we don’t ever let our date or partner know fully who we are. We’re not vulnerable enough to show our tears and fears. We don’t want to look and feel like a fool. We’re “tight in bud” and so they never see the beauty or smell the perfume of the flower we really are if we’d let go and blossom. They can’t love the real you because they don’t know the real you. Living in protection we also don’t get to know our lover fully. We hold ourselves at bay because seeing the real beauty and depth of someone may draw us into even more feelings for them. That would mean more pain if the relationship goes sour.

When we really look at life, though, can’t we see that there never will be and never has been security? Your lover could die tomorrow. She could move on to someone else. You’re most likely a single senior because you’ve had a partner who’s now gone, either through divorce or death. You know life and love isn’t secure; it’s not meant to be. Part of the fun of life is it’s uncertainty and mystery. With uncertainty comes it’s freshness and fascination. Can you imagine how boring it would be if we knew what was going to happen next at all times? Living cautiously may save you from a large dose of pain but in turn it gives you the long, enduring, agony of misery and defeat that can lurk in the background for years.

You might even have noticed that as you live and take risks those risks are often captivating and enthralling even while they have an element of anxiety or fear. Newness is always full of wonder! If you find yourself working hard to protect yourself from hurt by not risking getting fully involved in a relationship, let that awareness settle in and ponder it a bit if you care to. Spontaneous, authentic living is free and open and full of life. Safe, risk-free existing is going through the motions. Which do you think will really give you the love and happiness you seek?

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer