104. Does desire for a partner make you deaf to alarms and warning bells?

It happens pretty often in relationships that one person expects the other to take care of his or her feelings. Jill may say something that triggers strong feelings in Russ and he lets her know he’s unhappy, and “it’s her fault”. Of course it’s never the other person’s fault if we’re unhappy but unless we’ve examined life a bit it can appear that way.

I’ve dated a few women where that was evident quite soon; my choice was not to be with someone who wanted me to be responsible for her happiness. The other day I was reminded of a friend Patty I knew some years ago who had met a man she said “gets fired up when I even mention other men." They were both in their 70s, an age when we might think we’d have learned to deal with jealousy but that’s another myth. After my mom died, and my dad, in his late 80s, began to attend a seniors coffee klatch once a week he told me lots of tales of jealousy among the 70 and 80 year olds there. But that’s another story.

My friend Patty was a woman who had told me earlier she liked men and she liked to flirt. She did it in a harmless way but she enjoyed the banter of joking and teasing with men under the right circumstances. That was an obvious part of her character. When I asked her how she felt about her guy’s jealousy she said, “I just have to keep my mouth shut.” Her plan, after five months of dating, was to move to another state and marry this man.

Isn’t that a red flag? Isn’t it a warning signal that maybe here’s a man whose jealousy could lead to a lot of controlling behavior? I can’t recall the numerous times I’ve been told by single women and men about problems in a relationship that seemed to just pop up out of nowhere. But when I’ve asked, “Did you see no red flags at all before this happened?” the answer every single time – and I do mean every time – has been, “Yeah, I saw them but I didn’t want to admit it to myself.”

We’re not blind – unless we want to be. Unless we think we can control life and we’re going to make it conform to our way. Desire, no matter what the desire is for, always has its opposite when we rely on its attainment for happiness. The other side of desire and want is fear or loss just as the other side of wealth is poverty, or the other side of light is dark. Getting something we want always has its flip side. For starters, there’s the worry of losing what we’ve gotten, if nothing else. And in relationships there’s the possibility of suffering as we sometime struggle to know each other. Do we really want to start off a relationship with jealousy that we know will lead to control and manipulation?

Life is about what happens, not what we think should happen or what we want to happen, but what actually happens. What happens is always crystal clear and easy to see when we don’t have blinders on. It always works better when we see reality just as it is because we’re dealing with the truth, not emotion-laden interpretations that can always mislead us. Without our stories of what should be or our fantasies of what we want it to be we can simply see what is. With clarity we have a chance to find partnerships that are free, peaceful, happy and fulfilling.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer