295. If you want painless dating in these mature years try this

Because dating, even in these mature years, is so personal and it so easily pin-pricks into our self-worth issues we can often have heart-wrenching pain and suffering as we go about meeting new people and attempting to find a new partner. In these articles I’m suggesting what is a radical idea to most people, and it’s this: All – and I stress the word all – of our emotional suffering comes only from our thoughts.

Nearly everyone thinks suffering comes from the outside. In dating we think it’s caused by what our date or partner says or does. But when we look closely we see that thoughts are the cause. We see what is, think it shouldn’t be that way, and suffer. In short, we make up our own stories, our own fairy tales and fantasies about how life should be. We believe our story, and since we can't get our way and change what is we hurt.

A simple example: You’re at a dance with Joe. Joe decides to dance with another woman and you’re hurt. It’s your thought, not Joe, that caused your pain because if you didn’t know Joe was dancing with another woman you wouldn’t hurt at all. So it’s not his act but your thought that makes you hurt.

“Yes,” you might say, “but when I find out he’s dancing with another woman it hurts because that obviously means he’s not very interested in me.” But if you didn’t believe your story that he’s not interested in you would you still be hurting? Maybe you find out that he felt sorry for a woman he’s seen sitting alone all evening. He cared and just wanted to give her a chance to dance. His dancing with her had nothing to do with you. You could still choose to hurt because you might feel he still shouldn’t have danced with her. You might still think if he really cared about you he wouldn’t do that. But that would be entirely your projection. Can you really be sure that Joe isn’t just caring about someone and that it has nothing to do with his lack of interest in you? If you turned it around you might even feel more love for Joe because you can see what a caring, thoughtful man he is.

To me, the simple proof that it’s always our own thoughts that cause us to suffer is this: When we go to sleep at night there’s no suffering, except possibly in a dream. We may be in the middle of horrendous heartache when we go to bed. But when we fall asleep where is the pain? The circumstance hasn’t changed but we’re not projecting our interpretations and judgments onto it during those sleep hours.

We think we know how life should be, and especially how our life should be. If someone we love leaves us we know they shouldn’t. We know we could be their perfect partner, and we feel the emptiness and craving for their love because we think we know how it should be. To relieve that pain ask yourself if you can be certain that your thoughts are true.

Can you absolutely know life should be your way? Is it possible that the Power behind your breathing and heartbeat, and that keeps the stars in place, knows what it’s doing? Are you 100% sure that this woman who left you would be your best life partner? How do you feel when you stop believing you know best and just see life as it really is? There is peace and simple happiness. Then dating is an interesting, fun adventure. And isn’t that what you really want? – happiness right now?

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

292. A love companion can never fill your emotional void or make you happy

Some years ago I dated a woman for a short time who was very successful in her career but she admitted that when it came to relationships she always ended up choosing the same kind of person and it was a disaster. On the outside her two husbands and other committed dating companions she had had were quite different. But on the inside, it turned out, they were pretty much the same. They all filled a hole in her for a short time but eventually the game was up and things flew apart.

Until we understand that always the primary relationship we have is with ourselves, we’ll be looking for another person to complete our lives or make us whole and we’ll never be happy. Successful relationships don’t work that way. Unless we bring a healthy, happy emotional grounding to any relationship we’re always going to be victims of that person we choose.

We end up manipulating our partner or date because we think we need to keep them in place so they’ll continue to give us what we lack. If they don’t show love in the way we think they should, for instance, we get scared. That fear can turn to anger with our partner for betraying us. Or we may find we’re bending ourselves into a pretzel to do everything we think our partner wants so we won’t be abandoned. Both are just different forms of manipulation. And of course it pushes your partner away because you’re expecting them to do your job, which is to make yourself happy.

What it comes down to is that we attract to ourselves the kind of person who fills the hole in us. For example, if we’re needy we attract a care-taker. If we’re controlling we attract a pushover. It’s simply the nature of how life works, this time showing up in relationships: you can’t have up without down or in without out. And you can’t have needy without a care-taker. But the care-taker and the pushover can only exist in that environment for so long, then all hell breaks loose when they can’t stand their roles any more.

Then the needy, or controlling, or care-taking one moves on to the next date or partner and the cycle repeats, complete with all its pain. Seeing it this way it’s clear that relationship problems aren’t ever about “them.” Any emotional hurt we ever feel is always about us. That’s why we get such a huge payoff when we’re willing to look honestly at the realities of life and question our beliefs. If we’re needy we can look to see if it’s true that we can’t take care of ourselves. If we’re a controller is it true we need to control so we won’t feel fearful and insecure? One question you might ask, for example, is this: Is there security in this world?

If you’re a person who seems to end up with the same kind of problem in virtually every romantic relationship you have, you can stop all the pain by just turning inside rather than jumping to someone outside to make you feel good. Find out the truth of who you are and stop telling yourself the lies that keep you victimized. Finding someone to fill your emotional holes just ain’t never gonna work!

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

285. You can’t let go of painful thoughts but question them and you can end the hurt

Let’s say Laurie is at a party with Dale and she sees him talking and laughing with another woman. Without a judgmental thought about it Laurie can be happy that Dale is having a good time. But often we don’t see things just as they are. We see them as we think they are and form judgments: “That’s not right; that’s rude, he shouldn’t be flirting like that,” and on and on our stories go. With those thoughts comes pain. Emotional suffering always comes only from thought, never from a situation, object or person. It’s always what we think about the situation or person that makes us hurt.

So it would appear that to get rid of our pain we have to get rid of thinking wouldn’t it? But no one has ever been able to control thoughts. You can’t get rid of them. They come and go on their own. If we could let go of thoughts we’d all have done it when they started instead of suffering for days, months or years about something.

We can’t let go of thoughts but we can question them to see what’s true. And when we understand life as it is instead of getting locked into our stories of how it should be, thoughts let go of us. They were never real in the first place. They only appear to be real because we believe them. Is it true Dale shouldn’t be having a nice time with a woman? It may look like flirting but do we know he’s not just being friendly? Even if Dale is flirting is it true he shouldn’t be? Do we know for sure how he should be living his life? Is it true that Dale’s actions can threaten Laurie? If there’s no threat would there be any reason to judge him?

Once we see what is, without our interpretations, analyses, opinions, and judgments, suffering is gone. It’s that simple. All it takes is investigating our thoughts to see what’s true so we can live in joy and harmony with things as they are.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

281. We don't "need" love when we discover that feeling loved is an inside job

We hear all the time that we have to love ourselves before we can love others. Or that we don’t need love from others when we truly love ourselves. The problem is, how do we truly love ourselves? Most people find that the way they try to get love from themselves is the same way they try to get love from others – by manipulation. When we try hard to give others what we think they want – to get their love through flattery and deceit – we’re manipulating. We’ve also made ourselves victims, waiting for someone else to make us feel happy and loved.

When we try to give ourselves what we think we want we’re also victims, hoping something we do will make us feel acceptable and worthy. You can take all the cruise trips you want, and soak in a perfumed tub with flowers and candles, but those methods of manipulation don’t do anything for self-love. Loving ourselves isn’t doing something, it’s being something. And what we’re being when we love ourselves is a spontaneously peaceful, happy person, content with life. Self-love and simple being in life are what’s always been there when we see through our self-loathing.

So, how do we love ourselves? We question our beliefs to see reality without our painful stories. At first that may pose a seeming problem because the things we don’t like about ourselves are the things we don’t want to look at. But that’s because we think when we recall what we loathe about ourselves we’ll just be reinforcing self-hatred. “Look at this terrible thing I did, and think about that cruel thing I said. Obviously I’m a terrible person.” We don’t want to think that.

But there’s a way to look at our past and see that it’s not something to regret and hate ourselves over. What blocks us from loving other people is judgment, and it’s the same with ourselves. We judge ourselves by believing our thoughts about how bad we’ve been. Then we’ve trapped ourselves into trying to find someone to love us so we can feel worthy. Of course it never works. Who’s going to love you when you, yourself, think you’re unlovable? That’s what you project. No, self-love is an inside job, not an outside job. And we’ll never see that unless we’re willing to question our beliefs and thoughts about ourselves.

What do we regret having done? Are we willing to look? Did we do the best we could at the time? Is it true we really wanted to hurt someone? Or is it more true that we were so hurt and confused that we lashed out as the only defense we knew then, the only survival technique we thought was available at the moment?

After we’ve questioned our long-held beliefs, and when we see that they’re not true, what’s left automatically is self-love. We don’t have to do anything to gain love. It’s what we are naturally, just as a light shines naturally when we clean the mud and dirt off the bulb.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

263. Loneliness doesn’t exist except as a thought we believe in

Single seniors and mature men and women often feel lonely. It feels like we’re lonely because we have no partner in our lives. We think if the external world would change and give us a partner we wouldn’t need to feel lonely any more. But the external world is all our own projection. It’s like a mirror. You can’t look into a mirror without seeing your own reflection. It’s impossible.

In exactly the same way you can’t look into the world without seeing your own reflection because you project onto the world what your thoughts are about it. Two people can listen to the same music and one likes it, the other dislikes it. Obviously the music was just a fact. Our perception and projection is what makes it good or bad for us.

Back to loneliness, if we think we should be with someone we’re lonely. If we don’t think that’s necessary we’re not lonely. It’s all about believing our thoughts, and that’s where inquiry comes in. When you look at reality you see that you don’t have a partner. Should you? Do you know more than God? Obviously right now you don’t need a partner or you’d have one. Are you absolutely sure you should have a partner and that you wouldn’t be lonely if you did? In my first marriage I was lonely, and I’m not the only one who has experienced loneliness while having a partner.

There are more than six billion people on this planet. Is loneliness really a problem or is it just thinking that’s the problem? You can argue with “what is” but you can’t win. You can’t even be sure you’d be better off if you did win!

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

256. There’s one thing in your life that will make dating peaceful and happy always

Everything in the life we know is transitory, changing. We search for new experiences, new sensations, new objects, new loves – anything we think will make our lives happy. Yet every single time they fall short because every experience of happiness leaves us sooner or later, and it’s usually sooner. When it goes we’re back to the search again.

Psychologists tell us there are people who are addicted to romance, or to sex. They find a new romantic partner and in that first blush of romance they’re thrilled. But then the rose fades and they’re disappointed. So they’re off for a new romance. It’s a constant circle of win and lose for them. Relationships with any object, whether it’s a new plasma TV, a new car or a new partner, will always leave us wanting. The thrill is short-lived and transient. Nearly everyone on earth lives their whole lives on this wheel of win/lose, then win and lose again. We strive for something, get it, and then lose the joy it temporarily brought.

There’s good news, however, and it applies directly to dating. The good news is that there’s one thing in your life that has never changed and is always peaceful and happy because it doesn’t take us out on a search again. That one thing is awareness or what we could call presence. You have a sense of being present. You know you exist. That knowing you exist isn’t a thought or belief. You don’t have to think if someone says, “Do you know you are?” Through all the changes in your life – the physical, emotional, mental, and experiential changes – that sense of being, that knowing that we’re present, has never changed. It’s never been affected by any circumstance or experience.

That sense of being or simple awareness is who we all are. No one could say “I’m not” because even to say the words you’d have to “be”. But when we learned the idea that we’re a separate person who has control in life, that’s when our troubles began. “Being” just watches life without judgment, desire, opinion or interpretation. It’s what you feel when you’re immersed in gazing, without thought, at a sunset or mesmerized by a project you’re deeply engrossed in. Small babies live in this empty beingness all the time, never discontent unless they're physically uncomfortable.

The times when we’re in emotional pain over dating are the times when we think we’re in control and believe our thoughts – thoughts that something should be different. That’s why questioning and investigation is so useful. It helps us realize that we don’t really know the answers to life, even our life, which we thought we knew. Eventually we begin to see that anything we add to that awareness of “I am” is trouble. Because that’s when we start dividing things into two – man/woman, good/bad, lucky/unlucky, right/wrong, should/shouldn’t, good/evil, pretty/ugly, etc. Immediately we’re judging that life one way – our way of course – is good and the other way is bad. Even at the moment it looks good to us we only have to wait awhile and it’ll be bad. We all know this. This is nothing new to anyone. The moment we’ve created right we’ve also created wrong. With “good” we’ve created “bad”. But there’s no such thing, except in our thoughts. We put the labels on and then suffer because of them.

To be at peace, content, and happy is as simple as just noticing that every thought, experience, or object appears somehow. What does it appear in? It appears in the clear space of presence or being. The being/awareness is the silent, still background that allows for everything without judging or rejecting anything. We live in that natural state of being or presence when we just witness life as it is. The alternative is to follow thoughts and beliefs out into the world of wants and needs and that never-ending win/lose wheel.

Whenever you have a disturbing thought you already know, from direct experience, that it will change. The mind jumps from one thought to another like a monkey in a tree. But the empty, space-like awareness that allows for thought is never affected and is always content and happy. That’s your true nature and it can watch thoughts without sticking to them or believing them. How could they be real when they’re changing all the time? Their fickleness is proof of their falseness.

When you live in presence/awareness and bring that to a relationship you’ll always be happy, no matter what’s going on with the relationship. Because whatever is going on is just another changing object that appears in the never-changing, always-content beingness of life. That's called living happily and harmoniously with what is.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

250. You can be happy, but it won’t come from finding a partner, strange as that seems

Nearly everyone dating in these mature years is dating with a goal. We want to find a partner. But that’s really a middle goal. The ultimate goal is the same as the goal for virtually any activity we pursue: We want to be happy, or at least happier. So if the final goal is to be happy why not just skip the middleman – getting a partner – and go for happiness? That sounds kind of nuts doesn’t it? But if we examine it a little closer it may not sound so crazy.

What is happiness? Is it really getting something we want, whether it’s a partner, a new car or that next cruise? No, we can see that that’s not true. If getting something made us happy we’d be happy forever once we had that thing – a partner or a new car, for instance. But are we? No. After awhile we’re on the search once more for some other thing to make us happy.

And while we’re searching we’re not happy. Oh sure, some people say they find a lot of joy while they’re working toward something. But we’d have to say, if we’re totally honest, that the nagging feeling of wanting and not feeling quite completely fulfilled isn’t what we’d call happiness.

Since we’ve temporarily eliminated a partner as our source of happiness where do we go to find the happiness we want? We thought finding something new would be it, but we’ve just looked and noticed that’s not true at all. So what is happiness? Well, ancient and current people who have really examined and investigated life have noticed something interesting. Happiness isn’t getting something, even though we do feel happy when we’ve gotten it and it feels like that thing or person is the source of our happiness.

Actually, a closer look reveals that it’s not the object we’ve gotten but the lack of that nagging, striving, seeking desire for a short time that is the real source of happiness. When there’s no desire for something to be different the mind is peaceful. It can be present with simply what is and that feels happy. In sleep, for instance, happiness and peace is always there because there’s no nagging thought of what should or ought to be, or what we want to be different from what we have.

Even during waking hours we all have those moments when we’re totally peaceful and happy. Those times usually occur when we’re so totally engaged with something, whether it’s a project we’re working on or watching a gorgeous sunrise over a lake, that we’re just “lost” as we sometimes call it.

Another point: We tend to think that happiness comes from the object of our desire. A car is a good example. Does that metal and glass and rubber really make happiness? For a person dying of cancer giving them a new car wouldn’t mean a thing. So it’s the subject, not the object, that provides the happiness.

As one well-known East Indian sage, the late H.W.L. Poonja put it, “To have true peace you have to be alone, separated from everything you enjoy and love as separate objects. This bliss, the bliss that does not depend on enjoying an object or an experience is imperishable, permanent. No matter what else is destroyed this will remain. Nobody knows where this happiness is because everyone is looking for it in the wrong place.”

So, how does this apply to mature dating? It simply means that if we live in our natural state of being, that state before thoughts and desires, we’re simply being in life. If your natural impulse is to date you’ll find yourself dating. But you won’t be dating with a goal, with that stress and pressure of making your life work in some way you don’t even know is best for you, really. Instead, you’ll just date for the fun of being with someone in the present, with no futurizing.

Having a partner may or may not happen. But why be miserable while you wait for something that may never be when you can be happy in the whole process of dating and living now? Then we just let the unfolding of the universe take us where it wants, which is what it’s going to do with or without our hopes and nagging, pressure-filled desires.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer