159. Even mature daters must think anger works, but does it ever really help?
At this more mature stage of life, even though we feel we’ve learned some things about living, dating can often be a daunting experience. Feelings are often pretty intense; there seems to be a lot on the line. The problem can be that unless we examine old behavior patterns in dealing with people they don’t change. The way we behaved when we were emotionally hurt at four or five is the way we behave at 65 except that at 65 we don’t throw ourselves on the floor and scream. Instead, our tantrum is expressed in more adult terms such as with angry, cutting words or withdrawal. But it’s still a tantrum.
Wise spiritual teachers over the centuries, and today, have seen that the trouble is we’ve taken on the idea that the world (and the people in it, of course) should function according to our beliefs. When you apply that to dating it means that we think we know how people should act. When they don’t conform to our imagined standard we’re disappointed and hurt. Relationship issues are often quickly magnified when we’re dating because we’re often conspicuously vulnerable. We’re often wearing our hearts on our sleeves, as the saying goes. So it’s really easy to feel hurt.
Here’s an example. This happened to Glenda, a friend of mine a number of years ago. She was dating a dentist in his late 50s. He came down with the flu and Glenda offered to bring him soup. He declined so she took him at his word and visited him without soup in hand. He was instantly angry at her.
Apparently he felt if she really cared about him she’d have brought soup anyway, despite what he probably figured was a polite decline of her offer. In short, she didn’t meet his expectations. The pattern looks like this: We have our view of how our date should behave and we know we’re right: “If she loved me she’d do this,” we think. All is well when she happens to do what you wanted. But when she doesn’t there’s hurt.
And how does hurt usually show up? Just like the dentist, we very often get angry. Instead of investigating the situation our old childish habit springs forth and we throw our tantrum. How did Glenda feel when her dentist friend got mad at her? She told me she felt confused and pushed away. It didn’t make her feel closer to him. Instead, it made her question whether this was a healthy relationship. As it turns out his angry outbursts over the months continued to make her feel pushed away until eventually she realized it was time to stay away, and the relationship ended about 8 months later.
If you’re a person who gets angry and hurt at your date you don’t have to be a victim of that little-kid reaction within you. The solution is pretty simple - though not always easy at first - and it’s this. Suffering always shows up in the body somewhere. That’s why we call it suffering. The body suffers. It can be in the form of sadness, anger, jealousy, insecurity, sense of unworthiness, etc. That suffering may not be so easy to recognize for some of us because we’ved lived life with so much turmoil and inner hurt that we hardly notice when we’re suffering. But there’s always some sign of the judgmental thoughts – a churning stomach, an instant headache, a tension in the shoulders. There’s always something that doesn’t feel comfortable, peaceful and happy. And we know that. It doesn’t take thought to recognize it, we know.
That suffering, however, always comes because we believe something should be different. We think something shouldn’t be the way it is. (By the way, don’t just believe this. If you’re interested, check it out for yourself in your own life.) Thoughts about how to boil eggs or cook potatoes aren’t painful. They’re what you might call working thoughts, very different from judgmental thoughts. As soon as we make judgmental thoughts, thinking things should be our way, however, we hurt. So the suffering in our body is really a great reminder that our thinking is off track.
If the dentist had checked his own thinking when he got angry at Glenda he might have noticed that what happened didn’t need to be judged at all. He asked Glenda not to bring soup. She honored him by not bringing soup. That’s pretty simple isn’t it? Instead, he instantly tried to make her responsible for his hurt feelings, and in doing that he turned himself into an instant victim. Of what? His own thoughts, nothing more.
For any of us the circumstances will be different but the pattern is the same. Your guy, for instance, might show up late for a date. You might feel immediate hurt and anger: If he loved me he’d be on time. But without that judgment you could just notice that he’s late. Period. You might choose not to date him again because you like people who are on time. But where’s the need for judging him as wrong and feeling those hot, angry feelings you impose on yourself?
Our dentist friend might also have noticed that probably there’s not a single time in his life when his anger really worked, unless perhaps he was able to temporarily manipulate someone with it by beating them into submission. In the long run, though, we know it always backfires. Even when manipulation works for awhile can anyone say it brings two people closer together? And isn’t being close what we really have relationships for? Moral of the story: When we’re suffering we can investigate our beliefs and opinions or we can buy into our judgmental thoughts and hurt ourselves and our relationship.
Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer
