188. Is your mature dating giving your mind and emotions a stressful workout?

For many of us the mind really gets a workout when we’re dating doesn’t it? Normal life, that we sort of take for granted, shrinks into the background and questions and high emotion often surges to the forefront when we get involved in dating. Often the mind seems to be on high alert when we’re with a date, watching every nuance, noticing every facial expression, keyed in to decipher the meaning of every word. At that point it’s a high-octane state of affairs that takes a lot of energy and can be mighty stressful. No wonder so many seniors and mature daters think dating at this age is brutal. The mind cranks away and your stomach churns: “Did he mean this?” “Did I say the right thing?” “What if she says no?” “I wonder if this will become permanent.”

You can back off from that high-alert position and just enjoy dating as a wonderful experience if you watch thoughts come and go without getting attached to them. We can’t believe our thoughts because they’re always changing, and they’re hardly ever based on reality. When we believe them we’re in a world of hurt. Besides that, thoughts are not even ours. We don’t create them, they just show up. One minute we think he’s great, another minute we think he’s not. One day we worry that we won’t find someone, another day we’re convinced we like living alone.

The easy way of living is not to pay any more attention to thoughts than you would to people talking in the back of the bus you ride. You hear voices but pay no attention to the words. We spend a lot of energy wondering and worrying and it’s totally unnecessary. Every moment and every movement of life happens as it does. As Nan, a friend of mine says, “That’s just the way of it.” What we need to know we know at every moment because reality shows up for us in the form of what is. Do you want to know what should happen next? Watch… there it is!

You don’t have to be concerned with doing it right when you date. If you can just be yourself, without airs, with no pretense, without trying to impress or make yourself appear to be what you’re not, dating can be a wonderful adventure. If you’re supposed to end up with this guy or gal you will. If not it will be someone else. Or no one at all. Why? Because that’s the way it is – period.

Making life happen is not in our hands. We can either sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride or struggle and force and try to push life around. But either way it’s going to be the way it is. Taking the ride without a struggle seems so much easier. So settle back and be at ease with dating. That’s when it’s fun… when there’s nothing to do and no goal to accomplish. You don’t look for a prize at the end; the prize is in each moment of each date, just as it is in each moment of each day.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer