298. Let the outcome of your dating be as it is and you’ll find joy in the adventure

When we feel heartache and disappointment in dating it’s always our own thoughts that cause us to hurt. But that’s hard to see. We’ve been conditioned to believe that it’s what someone else says or does that causes our emotional pain. We think it’s because they’ve deceived us or lied to us or rejected us that we’re hurting.

Karl Renz, a spiritual teacher from Germany, who shares his understanding with people in many European countries, says it this way: The mind itself creates the problems it struggles to solve.

“But how is it possible,” you might ask, “that our own minds create the hurt we feel, when we can prove, for instance, that our date or partner deceived us?” Obviously, we think, it’s their deceit that makes us hurt. But in reality their deceit doesn’t make us hurt. It’s only when we think they should not deceive us that we hurt. In other words, it’s our story or our belief about their action that makes us hurt, not the action itself.

So the mind creates our suffering by believing that “what is” should be different. Then the mind struggles to relieve the pain by trying to change the other person, make them wrong, etc.

As we date in these mature and senior years it’s natural there will be times when things don’t go the way we expected. Your date loses interest in you, or you find she’s not the person you thought she was. You might be lied to or cheated on. You may begin to see that your date is trying to control you. A woman I know was dating a man who wanted to marry her. He told her, “If we were together I’d still let you continue the volunteer work you now do.” Clearly, she knew that kind of control wouldn’t work for her.

These incidents may be disappointing or painful. But if they are it’s because we want life to go the way we think it should go rather than simply seeing that it always goes the way it goes. It’s always our own mind that creates our problems by resisting “what is”. Then the same mind tries to solve the problem that never existed except in our thought-story.

But without our stories we can see and accept that life is just what it is. We can begin to trust that what happens is meant to happen because the Energy that powers everything must know what it’s doing, even if it seems to our limited minds that it doesn’t. Then dating takes on a whole new look. It becomes an interesting exploration and adventure, a chance for new and exciting experiences. And we don’t have to own or worry about the outcome. Let the outcome take care of itself and just have fun living.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

297. See which way the wind blows with your dating and you can be happily content

Did you know that baby wolves in the far north live or die depending on the wind? Literally. I saw it on a nature program on TV the other night. (And you won’t believe how this ties into mature dating! ) Here’s how it works.

The wolves are born in the spring and nurse from their mothers until early summer. Then they need solid food, which for the wolves are the caribou that inhabit the same terrain. The problem is the baby wolves can’t travel far and if the caribou herds don’t travel near them there’s no food for the young ‘uns.

What causes the herds to travel in a certain direction? Mosquitoes, believe it or not. They’re so fierce in the summer months that the caribou herds travel into the wind to keep the mosquitoes away from their faces. So their direction of travel is determined by which way the wind blows. If that takes them away from the wolf dens there’s no food for the wolves and the young ones don’t survive.

So it’s a story that reads like this: Baby wolves can’t live without solid food after a couple of months. Why is there no solid food? Because there are no caribou. Why aren’t there caribou? Because the herds are moving in other areas. Why don’t the wolves follow them? Because the babies are too small. Why do the caribou travel in other directions? Because of swarms of mosquitoes. Why do mosquitoes dictate which way the caribou travel? Because caribou travel into the wind to keep mosquitoes away from their faces. Why does the wind blow in a certain direction? Who knows? If you were a meteorologist you could probably trace this back further but eventually you’d come to “I don’t know.”

Now, how the heck does this relate to mature dating? This way: I know from experience that a lot of seniors I’ve dated and know spend a lot of time in anguish, trying to figure out why something happened. They think if they can figure out why, they may be able to come up with a solution: “Oh, he didn’t call me after two dates. Why? I revealed too much about myself too soon. Obviously that was the wrong thing to do.” Solution: “Make sure I hold back and try to say only what I think men want to hear.” You get the idea I’m sure.

The point is this: The question “Why?” is wasted effort. Everything causes everything. In other words, you can try to trace any happening back to its cause and you’ll never find one. We could even get back to, “Why is there a world or a universe?” When you give up questioning why, you also give up the need to try to manipulate circumstances to control the outcome you want. So much effort and turmoil!

It’s much more natural in life and in dating to simply be an observer rather than a questioner. Life is the way it is. How can we know it shouldn’t be another way? It isn’t, that’s all. Should that guy have called again? No, because he didn’t. End of story. End of anguish and effort and suffering. Life obviously has other plans for you.

As that ancient Chinese spiritual text, the Hsin-hsin Ming (The Mind of Absolute Trust) says, “When one is free from attachment all things are as they are, and there is neither coming nor going. When in harmony with the nature of things, your own fundamental nature, you will walk freely and undisturbed.”

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

296. When we stop believing our thoughts dating can be another simple phase of life

Have you known people who get lost in their worries at times and just go deeper and deeper into pain and confusion? We sometimes hear people say they need to get hold of themselves. We can see their thoughts have taken them for a deeply painful ride.

It’s easy to do. About a year ago I was with Pete, a friend of mine, when he got a call from his daughter-in-law, Julie. She had just returned from an overseas trip and was to be met at the airport by her husband, Pete’s son. But the guy wasn’t there to meet her and Julie wondered if Pete knew where he was.

Within minutes Pete was almost a nervous wreck. His son always carried a cell phone and was very responsible. He’d certainly have been there to pick up his wife who had been gone for several weeks, Pete assured me. The next thing I knew Pete was in real turmoil as he worried about what happened to his son. About an hour later he got another call. His son had arrived and was just fine.

A few weeks ago this same Pete talked to me about another matter, this one involving a woman he’s been dating. He had tried to set up something with her and hadn’t gotten any response from her for several days. “This just isn’t like her,” he said. Immediately he knew she must be tired of him and he wondered aloud why she didn’t just tell him she didn’t want to see him any more rather than avoid him. He was in a world of agony and anguish.

A few days later he swung by her house and she met him at the door. She was her usual self, friendly and warm, and unhesitatingly invited him in. During the ensuing conversation it turns out that he had sent her an email and thought he had asked for a response. She, on the other hand, didn’t realize he wanted a response and thought that plans were already firmed up. It was all a misunderstanding.

In both incidents – his son not showing up at the airport and his conviction that this woman had unceremoniously dumped him – it was only Pete’s futurizing thoughts that caused him so much suffering. To this day he doesn’t know why his son wasn’t at the airport.

Even when we get proof that we can’t believe our thoughts, as Pete did twice, we still believe our thoughts. We know a relationship shouldn’t end. We know our date shouldn’t be rude to us. We know we should have a partner. Yet it’s only because we believe we know how the world should work rather than seeing how it does work that we live in such emotional pain and turmoil. When will we ever live comfortably in the not-knowing and simply be with what is, watching it unfold, peacefully and painlessly moment to moment? After all, that’s really the only truth there is.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

294. We shape our dating life like cookies from a cookie press

When you see a star-shaped cookie you know it’s been made with a cookie press. A lump of dough is placed in the back end of a tube, then squeezed out through a disk pattern in the front end that shapes it into a star to be baked as a cookie. The original lump of dough looks entirely different after it goes through the shaping disk of the press.

That’s how most of us deal with what we experience in life much of the time. We innocently and unconsciously shape it into a pattern, based on our own beliefs, without realizing that we’re no longer dealing with the fact of a situation. Our self-shaped story is painful to us because it argues with the facts. We’ve pressed “what is” through our cookie press.

For example, a friend of mine, in her 60s, told me recently that a man she’d been dating suddenly stopped calling. When she called him and left a message he didn’t respond. Immediately she began to feel that he wasn’t interested and that she was unworthy and had failed again as a desirable woman. She had shaped her own story and was no longer dealing with reality, which is that the man hadn’t called or responded to her calls.

Without realizing it she had put his action of not calling through her cookie press and it came out as “He doesn’t want to talk to me so I must not be okay.” But she didn’t know that for sure. Maybe instead he was injured and hospitalized, maybe he was sick, maybe he had a family emergency and had to suddenly leave town.

Even if she could confirm that he wasn’t interested in her any more does that need to be painful for her unless she puts that thought through her cookie press and comes out with an “unworthy cookie” story? Where does that “unworthy” idea come from except her own belief – her own self-created story? He could even say, “You’re not worthy of me,” and so what? That would be his perception, and he has a right to it. But if you push it through your cookie press and believe it means you’re worthless you’re now hurting because of your own fantasy. You’re no longer dealing with reality.

The mind is a wonderful slave but a terrible master. Every emotional pain we ever have occurs because we put facts through our cookie press and believe what comes out the other end. We forget that the star cookie isn’t really a star, it’s cookie dough.

This is why the sages have consistently said, “You’re not in the world; the world is in you.” We each create our own world, pressed out through our own cookie presses. If you want to live more happily and have more fun in these mature dating years just notice when you’re hurting emotionally – feeling disappointed, empty, worthless, jealous, angry. Then ask yourself, “Where have I taken what’s real and shaped it into my story?” It’s always the story that makes us hurt because it’s not true.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

288. Without your unwitting story you might find your partner is more lovable than you thought

We’ve talked about how facts become stories and it’s the story that causes us to hurt, never the fact. Reality is another word for fact. It simply means “what is” just as it is. Most of us have been so conditioned to think in terms of our stories that we don’t even notice we’re the ones who added that story.

For example, you speak to your partner and he doesn’t answer. That’s the reality. A simple fact. The way the story gets added to that is when we interpret that action and attach our completely fictional meaning to it. It happens so automatically and insidiously that we believe the story as though it were a fact. We don’t even notice we’ve unwittingly added the story. It’s all fact in our minds. That is, until we investigate. And what reminds us to question our thoughts? Our pain. You’re suddenly not at peace, and that hurt is the signal to inquire. Do we really know what we’re talking about? That’s why questioning to see reality is such a powerful way to bring us back to peace and happiness and fun in life.

Let’s put our story-making habit into an example. It works like this: “I just spoke to Jim and he didn’t answer and that means…” and from there we add all kinds of stories, such as, “…he’s mad” or “…he just doesn’t care” or “…he thinks I’m too stupid to know what I’m talking about.” We can add a thousand projected stories, depending on our own self-image or conditioning. But the stories are purely our own invention because we’ve decided what it means that Jim didn’t answer.

I’ve added bold face to the words “and that means” because we don’t usually think those words or say them to ourselves. But in truth that’s what we’ve just done. We’ve determined what someone’s words or actions mean without having the slightest idea whether we’re correct or not. In our innocence we don’t notice this, however. Interpreting and judging is natural. To us, it’s how life is lived, and how everyone lives. And for most people it is how they live. That’s why most of us are hurting so much.

Of course after we’ve added our neat little story then comes our judgment: “Just who does he think he is to think I’m stupid!” “Just because I disagree with him he doesn’t need to get mad.” “He’s so selfish and rude; he’s never interested in what I say.” With those judgments there’s your pain. Judging always feels stressful and hurtful.

So how do we get past the hurt we create in our relationships? Stop. Look. Inquire. Do we really know what our partner’s words or actions mean? Are we sure things should be the way we think they should be instead of the way they are? We live in harmony with life by seeing facts as they are, without our interpretations and judgments. If we ask poor old Jim why he didn’t answer when we spoke we might just be told he was so engrossed in his project that he didn’t hear us. Hmm, now wouldn’t that be a revelation! Maybe he isn't such a bad guy after all.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

278. We tend to blame ourselves but we can’t make a mistake in mature dating

You can’t make a mistake in mature dating. When there’s a problem in our relationship it’s easy to think it wouldn’t exist if only we hadn’t said or done something. I know that flies in the face of what many of us think. We think, “If only I hadn’t been so honest.” “I shouldn’t have disagreed with what she said.” “I made a mistake when I asked that other woman to dance.” It’s called regret.

If you’re feeling regret over some action you took or words you spoke in your relationship there’s a simple way to get past that pain. Ask yourself, “Could I have done better in the moment?” If the answer is no, what is there to regret? If the answer is yes, question yourself a little more. It may be that you’re holding on to a belief about what behavior is right or wrong, good or bad. But does that belief square with reality? Is it true in your own experience that at the moment you took the action you could have done better? Didn’t you do the best you knew at the time to get what you thought would be the best outcome for you?

Regret is a waste of energy and robs you of the chance to be peaceful and happy with this moment. It’s the memory of a belief that isn’t true. Could something be different than the way it was? Can you truly know it should have been different?

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

275. You can end stomach-churning suffering that often comes with mature dating

Thinking of writing a book some day, I started taking notes about mature dating some years ago when I realized how much unnecessary pain and confusion I saw in people my age when it came to dating. The disappointment and heartache, in both men and women, is so obvious in dating because those feelings are so emotionally acute and penetrating. The feelings are often knifelike as they stab deep into our guts.

What I had realized by then was that these feelings are always self-created, though we do that innocently. We don’t realize that we create our own world each minute. In dreamless sleep there is no world and no stress or suffering. It’s only when we wake up and say “I” that we suffer. The mind is endless in its capacity to create huge dramas out of passing thoughts. All based on that little one-letter word, “I”.

But when we question our untrue thoughts the stress and suffering they’ve created disappears because there was no reality behind those thoughts. It’s like the turmoil we create for ourselves by worrying about something that never happens. You’ve done it. You know what I’m talking about. Your worry was all a mind game, but what a drama! And what pain that false drama created.

The movies we create are endless when we don’t stop to question thoughts. Are these thoughts true? In dating can we really know what someone thinks or what they mean by their words or why they do or don’t do something? Can you really know your date or partner should do or not do what you think? Are you sure you know what’s best for you in the long run? Can you be positively sure? Does your own history show you’ve been right in the past?

Thoughts are nothing more than a game the mind plays to keep itself alive and entertained. Meanwhile, life – reality, what is – goes on as it does, with or without our opinions or approval. We don’t need to figure it out. We don’t need to know the future, or why something happened in the past. We can live in not-knowing and be contentedly happy, watching life blossom and unfold in new surprises every moment. This is peace. This is the end of stomach-churning suffering.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

262. This one, primary desire is the heart of all suffering – in dating and in life

When you’re seeking a mate, and dating, you know before you start that there’s a risk involved. The risk is that you could wind up with a broken heart. We want not to be hurt. But the primary desire everyone has – the desire that causes all the psychological suffering there ever was or could be – is the desire to have the world be the way we want it to be rather than simply seeing it the way it is.

You don’t need to ponder this idea and wonder if you could believe it or not. All you have to do is look at your own direct experience. Isn’t it true that every time you hurt emotionally it’s because you think something or someone should be different? Judgment is another word for it. We judge – this is wrong, this is bad, this shouldn’t be. Without judging where can suffering exist? It can’t.

So the question is how you get rid of that primary desire to have the world be the way you want it rather than the way it is. If we narrow our focus down to mature dating we’ve all been around long enough to see that what was a broken heart often turned out to be a blessing in disguise. What we knew with certainty at that time, we later realized we didn’t know at all. Wiping out emotional suffering is always a matter of questioning: Do we really know it shouldn’t be the way it is? Could we just allow ourselves to watch life rather than think we should run it?

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

260. Being peaceful and happy is as natural as gravitating toward a mate

Our natural state is peace and happiness. You can prove that to yourself by just noticing that in those moments when you’re just being, without really thinking of anything, you’re perfectly content. Or consider this, before any movement there’s stillness. Stillness has to be the background on which movement appears. It’s that way with noise also. Before sound there’s silence. Notice that you can jiggle a cup of water and when you stop jiggling it goes back to its natural state, stillness. You can make any sound – strike a gong, play a note, say a word – and when the sound stops there’s silence again. Silence is the natural state.

In silence and stillness there’s nothing but peace, no disturbance. It’s the peace we feel when we’re asleep at night. It’s the state small babies live in until they get old enough to have a sense of “me” and begin to believe their thoughts. We suffer, in dating and in other aspects of life, because we’re confused. We resist and argue with life as it is; that’s the confusion. We think life should be different because we’re confused about who we are. We haven’t noticed that living is happening through us not from us. We aren’t the authors of life. In fact, we have no independent power at all. Our very existence and every breath and heartbeat is given to us.

When you feel stress about your experiences in dating just notice that you believe some thought that’s fighting with what is. We don’t argue with gravity, we don’t whine that leaves fall off the trees in the fall, we don’t complain that some flowers have no perfume. This is all just the way life is, and who knows why?

All of life is like that. There’s a name for it when we disturb our natural inner silence and stillness by thinking anything should be our way instead of the way it is. It’s called insanity.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

259. You can’t lose when you see dating as it is, a delightful adventure

This morning I read a comment written by a 70-year-old woman who was saying that being older is not as good as being younger. As you read that do you notice that this is a woman who’s adding a slight stress to her life by arguing with reality? If you question whether something that subtle is stressful put yourself in her shoes a minute and ask yourself two questions:

1. How do you feel emotionally when you think the thought that life isn’t as good as it once was? Just feel that for a moment.

2. How would you feel if you paid no attention to that thought and just let it disappear into wherever it came from? Feel that one.

Even hypothetically, doesn’t question #2 feel better? Living happens, aging happens, spouses die or leave, we find ourselves alone in life. If you think it shouldn’t be this way isn’t that a bit like thinking if you drop a plate in mid-air it shouldn’t hit the floor? You just make yourself miserable.

The articles in this blog don’t say you can find a partner and here’s how to do it. What these articles say is that whatever happens in your dating you can enjoy life with a sense of well-being and contentment when you go with life as it is. Thoughts come and go by themselves. You can only have one thought at a time so any time there’s a new thought, which is every second or more, you’ve also lost the last thought.

If we buy into certain thoughts and nurse them and feed them and pay attention to them because we think they mean something we just create a lot of suffering for ourselves. I’m not even really talking about acceptance here, because to have acceptance you also must have non-acceptance and rejection. I’m only talking about being, before thoughts, before judgments, before attachments. Just see life as it is and you’ll have no pain. Then mature dating is a wonderful adventure and you can’t possibly lose.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

249. Mature dating is a fun adventure when we live in harmony with the way of it

Dating in your senior or mature years is really not much different from any other aspect of life. It’s one slice of life. However, the struggle, strife and suffering that most people experience in everyday life is often magnified and brought to the fore when we’re dating because romantic relationships are so dramatic and intensely personal. The pain of a lost love can be like no other pain.

That’s why it’s so helpful to see that we can back off from life and not take it personally when we realize that we’re being lived and we really have no control. Then it’s a matter of just flowing with life as it happens rather than trying to fight or control what happens.

If these are new ideas to you I understand; they can sound crazy. They did to me too, at first. However, nothing I had ever done relieved the emotional hurt I often felt when life didn’t go my way. And when I read about what the sages have been teaching throughout the centuries it seemed to me that they might just have something. Those who saw the light (enlightened?) were from all parts of the world, all cultures, all centuries, and they all had come to see the same thing, with no input from each other because there wasn’t the communication in those days that there is today.

What they all saw, simply put, is that some Life Force – call it God if you like – is energizing itself into form, and we humans, like every other form in existence, are among the objects brought into existence.

We’re being lived. If you don’t think so try to make yourself do nothing, for example. You can’t do it. Try not breathing. You can’t. Try not thinking. You can’t. Try not blinking your eyes or sneezing or hiccupping. It just can’t be done. What moves your hands when you express yourself as you talk? What just made you swallow? Obviously we’re not in control of this “me” we think we are. Even the very idea of “I” or “me” is no more than a thought. No one has ever located a Me anywhere. This so-called Me has no individual power. It can’t exist for a split second without the power that enlivens it and animates it. So how could it be in charge of how life should go?

Seeing that, what the sages taught is to just relax, see life as it really is, and flow with it. Realize that what happens is obviously supposed to happen, for no other reason than that it does. You’re stood up for a date? Obviously you were supposed to spend that time doing something else. How do you know? Because the time is available and you’re going to fill it some way, whether you like it or not. Your honey decides to leave you? It must be that you’re supposed to be alone for awhile, or be available to meet someone else. Again, how can I know that? Simple. Because that’s what is and you can’t argue with it. You can think it should be different. You can wish it would be different. But in the end, it just is the way it is. So why spend all that energy and misery resisting the way it is? That's insanity, and a lot of suffering.

Flowing with life the way it is may sound like caving in and giving up but it’s not. It’s a vital, snappy, full-of-life, active way to live. It’s a not-doing that begins to recognize the intelligence-energy of the universe as it is. You begin to see the fullness of life that’s always been present and is available for us to realize when we stop trying to control life. And though we're not the doers everything gets done.

In this realization you’re not succumbing and folding up with your tail between your legs. And you’re not crawling into bed to bawl your eyes out and be depressed because life let you down. Instead, you’re watching with amazement as life unfolds in the way it does, which might be much different than you had expected. What a mystery! What a delight! Life sparkles amazingly when we just see it as it is, and realize we're being lived right along with everything else. We're actually that living power showing up now as a human. What a miracle as it changes every second! Dating can be exciting, adventuresome and fun when we simply live harmoniously with the way it is. What the heck! Might as well since life is going to be the way it is whether we like it or not. We don’t get a vote, have you noticed? In fact, there is no independent "we" to ever have had a vote in the first place. How can a drop of ocean spray vote against the ocean?

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

247. You'll never succeed in dealing with the ghost under the bed

Pete was 67 and Alice was a few years younger when they met. There was immediate chemistry and they began seeing a lot of each other. After a few months, however, Pete began to notice some disturbing things about Alice. She seemed to be constantly picking at him in little ways, wanting him to change. This continued and Pete became increasingly unhappy. Friends asked why he didn’t move on and meet other women and he’d say, “Because she’s so sweet. When we first met I just knew I’d met the love for the rest of my life. I don’t want to let go of the woman I know is so right for me.”

When two people first get together one or both of them are often on their best behavior. They may not be very authentic in the beginning. But then with some time they become their real selves, and sometimes that’s not so endearing. Yet people stay in bad relationships, partly because the mind is so tenacious in its belief that it’s right. It doesn’t want to admit that it fell in love with an image, not the real Alice. Yes she was wonderful when she wanted Pete and was showing her best side. But there was also the other side – the critical, judgmental, controlling side that Pete hadn’t seen until later.

It’s painful to be in a relationship that isn’t kind and we often stay because we’ve believed an illusion created only in our minds. We’re not looking deep enough to see the truth. We want to believe we’re right.

The way out of these kinds of mind-entrapments is the way out of any kind of emotional suffering – inquire within and be honest. Ask yourself, for instance, was the Alice I met the real Alice? When I now see the entire picture of who Alice is do I still want to be with her?

When you’re hurting or uncomfortable in a relationship, and if you want to know the truth about it, you have to forget being right. Holding onto old concepts is holding onto pain. Being free of pain means seeing reality as it is, not the way you wish it was or think it should be. When we stop believing our concepts and see life as it really is we can deal with reality. We can never successfully deal with false images. That’s like trying to deal with the ghost under the bed.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

246. The way to end dating pain and suffering seems too simple, but it works

When you think of all the ways mature dating can be painful it’s no wonder that some people say they’re not interested in meeting a partner any more. They’ve been hurt too much and it’s not worth it, they say. Dating pain can range from jealousy, sadness, and anger to emptiness, disappointment, despair, and more. With all these ways to feel hurt it seems unbelievable that there could be one, simple solution that wipes every one of them away. That’s why people often say, “It can’t be this easy,” when they hear about what the sages and masters have been sharing for centuries. Sages say it’s just one misunderstanding that’s behind all emotional suffering.

That misunderstanding is basic and often hard to swallow at first. It’s this: We believe we’re living our lives and it’s actually the other way around: Life is living us. Every beat of our hearts, every move we make, every thought that pops in to wherever we think we think, is that mysterious power expressing itself through us, AS us. Not a lot of people are eager to hear this.

We can see the truth of this easily in babies and very small children. They have no ego judgments or desires because they don’t sense a separate me. They’re never unhappy unless they’re physically uncomfortable. But then around the age of two or so we all began to get a sense that “I’m separate” (you remember your kids going through the terrible twos don’t you?). From that moment on we’re in this fight to control, win, compete, interpret, and judge life.

But the basic sense of being that babies have is still our underlying essence. If you take any painful thought you have and notice that there’s got to be something separate from that thought to even know there is a thought, you’ve taken a big step. Before there is a thought we all know we are – we exist. And that beingness is aware. If someone asks, “Do you exist?” it doesn’t take a thought for us to answer, “Yes, of course.” That basic presence-awareness that sees and knows all objects, including thoughts, must be who we are in essence. That sense of beingness or isness has never changed throughout your lifetime. Ego thoughts, judgmental thoughts, self-image thoughts – all these have changed. But that sense of I-ness that is the space for thoughts to show up in has never been altered or disturbed by anything. It’s just awareness of life as it is.

Next time you have painful feelings about dating at this mature stage of life just notice that the thoughts that bring on those feelings eventually change. When we ask ourselves if we’re absolutely sure life should be the way we – at any moment – think it should be we have to say no. If we’re honest with ourselves we know we can’t answer yes to that question because so many of the thoughts and beliefs we held so firmly in the past have crumbled over time. Reality shows us we can’t really trust what we think and feel. We’ve proven that to ourselves again and again.

What we can do to date peacefully and happily is to just see life as it is. It doesn’t even take acceptance because acceptance means there would have to also be non-acceptance. Seeing life as it is doesn’t include good/bad, right/wrong, should/shouldn’t dualities because there could be no such thing until the so-called “mind” invents it. “What is” is just life, showing up moment by moment, without any suffering at all until we impose our wants on it. If you’re thinking, “This is too simple,” I don’t blame you. I only invite you to take a deep look and see for yourself.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

239. Could it be that your mature dating pain is self-created?

Someone told me the other day about a bumper sticker she'd seen. It read:

REALITY IS NOT WHAT YOU THINK!

How true that is. Most of us look at reality through our filters of good/bad, right/wrong, should/shouldn’t and other opposites. Reality is just what is, as it is. It’s neither good nor bad until we put that label on it.

In mature dating the moment you think, “He shouldn’t be so friendly with her,” “She shouldn’t be dancing so close with him,” “If he cared he’d call,” or make any other judgment your experience is not based on reality. You’re viewing life through your “belief” filters and you suffer. Your experience, then, is a self-created myth.

Loving life as it is, full of mysteries and surprises, is living in harmony and peace. Before judgmental beliefs can even appear you’re the beingness that allows the appearances to show up, like space permits objects to show up.

That beingness or presence has no opinions or judgments. It’s simply love and uncaused joy. Questioning your painful beliefs reveals that unborn love and joy at any moment because it’s who you naturally are before you lay on your judgmental thought-filters and start looking through them at the skewed world you’ve created.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

236. Hiding hurt feelings is dishonest and a recipe for failure

You’ve lived long enough by this age to have had the experience – probably with a spouse – of resentments and angers building up over time. You’re probably nodding your head “yes” as you read this. But have you ever thought what it really means that hurt feelings build up? To have something build up it has to accumulate over time doesn’t it? Ah, and there’s a huge problem. We let things build up.

In other words, we’re dishonest in our relationships. We don’t tell our partner when something bothers us. Why? Because we want something we’re afraid we won’t get if we tell what’s true for us. Yes, I know, that sounds harsh doesn’t it? We don’t like to think of ourselves as manipulators who want something. But question it for a moment and what other conclusion could you reach? Even if you say I don’t tell what’s bothering me because I don’t want to hurt my partner, that’s not quite true. We don’t want to see someone else hurt because that hurts us. So we’re still back to wanting something, subtle as it may seem. We don’t want to hurt seeing them hurt.

In the end, though, stifling our real feelings never works anyway does it? Our partner is eventually hurt anyway, usually a lot more than if we had dealt with feelings as they arose. We know that from experience. Feelings pile up and eventually there’s a volcanic eruption. And your partner says, “What the heck just happened?” She doesn’t see that your eruption has almost nothing to do with the current issue and everything to do with resentments from the past that she couldn’t deal with because she didn’t know about them.

Since it’s pretty easy to recognize that piled up hurts don’t help. And since we can also see we let those feelings pile up because we want something or we’re afraid of losing something, what’s the solution? The solution goes back to what sages have been saying for eons: question life and see what’s true.

Ask yourself, what am I afraid of losing or not getting? Do I think there will be a big blowup? Am I afraid of my partner’s anger or hurt feelings? Then ask yourself if believing those thoughts and covering over your hurt emotions has ever worked. If not, maybe you’ll start to see that you’ve been fooling yourself. The old way of hiding feelings is just a recipe for disaster. And that can be the death of a relationship when resentments are so big you can’t feel any love for your partner any more. Then you can say, “Was the hiding and dishonesty worth it?”

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

235. Give up control and see what a fun adventure mature dating can be

Have you ever noticed how much most of us try to control life? That idea is so habitually pervasive that we don’t even notice it. Yet when we’re trying to control and can’t succeed it leaves us with an ongoing stress and uneasiness that serves as the background for all our waking moments. We carry that disappointing grayness with us everywhere.

Here are just a few examples of how we try to control situations pertaining to dating:
o We work hard to say the right thing or look the right way so our new date will approve of us. (We’re trying to control what they approve of.)
o With anger or withdrawal we try to make our partner live the way we want them to live and be who we want them to be.
o We lie and spread on compliments we don’t believe so we can get something from our partner.
o We fail to say no when that would be honest so we can gain the favor of our partner.
o Our partner ends our connection and we feel sad and hurt because we can’t make life be the way we want it to be.
o We use jealousy as a tool to try to control who our partner allows into her life.

In these ways and countless others we make ourselves miserable by trying to control life, without realizing that life is living us and we have no more control than a flower has over when it opens or a tree controls when leaves bud in the spring.

If this doesn’t make sense question just the ordinary everyday happenings in life and things might look different for you. How much control did you have over the weather today, or the instant you fell asleep last night, or the moment of your birth or your height, eye color or hair thickness? Did you control when you last got sick or the last thought you had? If control really worked wouldn’t we have pretty much everything the way we want it by this age in our lives?

Life has been as it is for centuries before we got here and will probably continue for centuries after we’re gone – all without any control by us. Don’t you think we’ve come on the scene pretty late to exercise any control over how life decides to be? Since we, as humans, are another expression of life just being itself maybe we could just notice that, and watch instead of trying to control. If you try this you’ll be amazed at how simple life is and how happy you’ll be while dating at this age of your life. The stress, anxiety, worry, disappointment and despair can all be gone. If they show up again they’re just the perfect signal to remind you that you’re trying to control life again.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

228. It's hopeless to want someone to like what we like, yet we do it all the time

When we’re feeling hurt about our romantic relationship we naturally want to tell our partners. Actually, we usually want to blame our partners. If they would just be the way we think they should be everything would be fine.

But they are who they are, just as we are who we are. To expect them to change to meet our demands is hopeless. Let’s say you want them to like going to the symphony with you and they don’t. They have natural preferences for life just as you do. What if they asked you to like going to the fights and you don’t? Can you change what you like? Well, they can't either.

Freedom in a relationship means we’re free to be as we are, without getting verbally pummeled by a partner who thinks we should like what we don’t. In freedom, he goes off to the fights, alone or with a friend, and she heads for the symphony the same way, each wishing the other a happy time.

Reality always wins, and when we see that the real world is just the way it is, our hopes, dreams and fantasies naturally disappear, They were just wispy, misguided thoughts in the first place. Seeing life as it is, is happiness. It's also love... wanting your partner to want what he wants, and being at peace yourself when you don't argue with reality. That's called self-love.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

227. Questoning your thoughts can bring relief from mature dating pain

“Is that true?” “Can I absolutely know that it’s true?” Those are the first of four questions Byron Katie offers in the simple process of investigating our thoughts that she calls The Work. Those questions, or any other deep questioning of your thoughts, will prove almost magical when you’re feeling stuck or hurting as you’re dating in these senior and mature years of life.

The reason a few simple questions are so powerful is that they make us stop and see reality, which is just the way things are. We’ve all heard of people who express thoughts like:

• I really need a partner.
• If he loved me he’d do what I want.
• It’s better to settle for him than to be alone.
• Love never lasts anyway.
• If I tell him how I truly feel he’ll be mad (or hurt).
• I don’t want to hurt her.
• If he really cared he’d know what I want.
• If I get angry enough she won’t do that again.
• If I do what he wants, even when I don’t want to, he’ll do what I want too.
• This bothers me but I won’t say anything because I don’t want to cause trouble.

Maybe you’ve even believed thoughts like this yourself. But are any of them, or a thousand more you could ask, really true? Is it really true you need a partner, for instance? I once knew a woman who said she got into one unhappy relationship after another simply because she believed that thought. She was unable to see that the relationship wasn’t right for her because she thought she needed to have a man. Eventually, though, each connection unraveled anyway, she told me, and she’d be off desperately grasping at the next wrong man because she thought she needed someone.

Every belief we have about relationships can be questioned. Many times you realize that, even though you’ve believed it all your life, what you think just isn’t true. With questioning you don’t have to try to use will power to change yourself. All you do is see reality and change happens automatically. It’s no different than walking down the road to get water from a mirage. You only have to see once that there’s no water there, and never again will you pick up a bucket and head for a mirage. It doesn’t take will power. It simply takes seeing what is.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

225. Pain-free mature dating is about seeing life clearly, without our stories

When you see life as it is, dating in these senior and mature years is a lot more pleasant and pain-free. It’s when we want life to be our way that we have problems and hurt. Wanting life to be our way means telling ourselves stories, such as:

1. She should have called.
2. He could do better than that.
3. A thoughtful woman wouldn’t say that.

Seeing reality, or life as it is, however, turns those statements into:

1. She shouldn’t call until she does.
2. He did the best he could do. (In the moment don’t we all do the best we can to make ourselves happy? Isn’t happiness the result all actions are aimed at?)
3. This woman said that.

In the first three statements there are judgments we can’t prove. Those judgments are always stressful and painful because we’re fighting the way life actually is.

The second set of three are just statements of the way things are. How do you know they should be that way? They are. Isness is the built-in proof and when we live in harmony with isness we’re happy and peaceful.

When we see life clearly, without our judgmental stories, we don’t have to be in a war with our partners. They are who they are, doing what they do, and they have every right to be just that. All we need to do is see them as they are, and then either naturally move toward them or away from them just as any animal naturally moves toward pleasant surroundings and away from unpleasant ones.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

224. Make-believe isn’t just for children, it’s rampant in mature dating too

Expectations in a mature dating relationship can kill the relationship – and hurt like hell. Expecting is laying our imaginary picture on an imaginary future. For example, you meet someone and you begin to fantasize who they are and how they’ll make you happy. I know of a man in his later 70s who recently met a woman after having been widowed about three years ago. He’d been deeply mourning the loss of his life-long companion and then a new woman comes into his life and suddenly life turns for him.

He begins to feel young and alive and within weeks he’s planning trips with her and giving her all kinds of gifts, some very intimate and romantic. He tells her how much she means to him and it’s clear he’s fallen in love. But without realizing it, he’s fallen in love with his image of this woman and his make-believe picture of their future together. No matter how wonderful she is, he couldn’t have fallen in love with her because he doesn’t know her. He only knows his picture of her after being with her a short few weeks.

The mind is tricky and can run all sorts of games of fantasy and illusion, as when you work yourself into a frenzy worrying that someone hasn’t come home on time. Thoughts come on their own and we can’t stop them. But we don’t have to pay attention to them either. Instead, we can step back into the pure, simple awareness that sees thoughts come and go. That awareness is never affected by the thoughts that show up, any more than the sun is affected by clouds appearing in the sky.

Clear awareness just sees life as it is. That’s reality. Without our made-up stories reality is never painful. It just is. But let the fairy tales run and you’re probably in for a world of hurt because reality eventually becomes clear and our dreamy expectations rarely match it. Reality always wins because it’s simply what is. When we don't add our fantasies life is smooth.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer