215. Do you really need a partner to be happy? Your answer might surprise you

Wanting what we don’t have is always painful to some extent. I’ve heard people say, “No, it keeps my life interesting. It gives me something to look forward to.” I can hear that. But when you question it you also see that wanting says we’re not happy with what we’ve got right now. I call that unhappiness pain or suffering. It’s certainly not harmony and happiness.

In fact, have you ever noticed that even people who say they’re striving for peace are wiping out the very peace they say they want? Striving isn’t peaceful.

I talked to a woman in her mid-60s recently who’s been divorced many years. She told me she really wants a committed relationship. You know the picture: two people riding off hand-in-hand and heart-in heart-to the golden sunset together. Her desire for the pleasure of a relationship is pain itself. To her, the pleasure of a partner would be the end of her pain. But then pain is always the end of pleasure too. They rotate until people can see life clearly and simply allow what is to be the way it is, without judgment, opinion or expectations.

We tend to forget that when we had a committed partnership life probably wasn’t all roses. (And this is coming from a man who had what I easily described as the best marriage of anyone I’d known until my wife died.) I agree that companionship is wonderful but why not just watch as that Infinite Intelligence, the source of all things, simply rolls out life before us, moment by moment?

When the painful thought comes up: “I want a partner in my life because I know life would be better,” investigate. Ask yourself if you can really know that for sure. Do we have any proof of that at all? Then you may be able to just relax into life as it is. And that certainly could include finding people to date and enjoying the whole mature dating process, but without a need. It’s the attachment to a need that’s painful.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer