I get many letters like this from readers (both male and female):

“I met this guy, and he took me to dinner, and it was really romantic, but he did/didn’t try to kiss me, then he called/didn’t call back, then he asked/didn’t ask me out again, and what does it all mean is he interested what should I do help help help.”

Now, many of you think I have magical powers. And it’s absolutely true. For example, I can make whole plates of pasta vanish in seconds and order beer in 12 languages.

However, reading the minds of your dates whom I have never seen nor met is not one of those powers. I missed that boat of psychic ability.

Additionally, trying to parse each individual situation for an ultimate answer doesn’t work so well, because there are millions of situations and often no ultimate answer.

However, just a few reliable principles can solve a whole bunch of problems. I’ve found the following five principles pretty handy. They form the backbone of the Tao of Dating book for women and men, and here they are:

1. Abundance, or wealth-consciousness.

Anaїs Nin once said, “We do not see the world as it is; we see the world as we are.” Thus you have the choice to see the world with a lens of wealth-consciousness or poverty-consciousness. Do you see scarcity, lack and limitation around you, or wealth, possibility and abundance?

The mindset you choose bears directly upon the success of your love life (and your success in general). Scarcity-consciousness - e.g. “all the good ones are taken” - begets neediness, and neediness is not attractive.

Big-heartedness and self-sufficiency, on the other hand, work much better. Even the Bible has something to say about that: “For he that hath, to him shall be given: and he that hath not, from him shall be taken away even that which he hath.”

Seems kind of mean, but it’s just the way of the world: wealth begets wealth. So even if you don’t have a companion, act as if there is an unlimited supply of what you want available to you already.

And you know what? There is. Because even if only one thousandth of one percent of the 6.5 billion people in this world are cool enough to be eligible for your companionship, that’s, oh, 65,000 folks. That’s enough dates to tide you over for a whole month.

2. Enlightened self-interest.

This one has three words in it. ‘Enlightened’ means that you make decisions by considering the long-term consequences of your actions. Short-sighted decisions - e.g. “I know he’s a bad boy, but it’ll be so much fun” - usually end in tears and/or heartbreak.

‘Self’ means that your welfare takes priority, just like in the pre-flight announcement where they say put on your own oxygen mask first, then help others in the case of an emergency. To be able to take care of anyone else, you need to take care of you first. Simple, totally non-negotiable, and often neglected.

‘Interest’ means that you’re signing up for your fulfillment and joy, not your pain. If a relationship is making you miserable and unhappy - like that of my friend Holly who was being put down and punched up by the man she was supporting financially - consider ending it. Because fulfillment is a feeling, not a person. So if you’re not getting fulfilling feelings in a relationship, chances are you’re with the wrong person.

3. The Be-Do-Have paradigm (vs. Have-Do-Be).

Many people think like this: “If I have a great partner, then I can do the things that people with partners do, and then I can be happy.” That’s actually the tail wagging the dog. The proper sequence is: “If I am a happy, self-sufficient, generous and charming person, then I will have a great life and do things that feel good and make me attractive, and then, as a pleasant side-effect, will have fabulous companions who are naturally attracted to my life.”

Successful change begins at the level of identity and belief, so first, be the kind of person you want to be. From the right beliefs will flow the right actions, or te (the middle word from Tao Te Ching) naturally and effortlessly, from which will come right results.

4. Yin-Yang (Feminine-Masculine) Polarity

The Taoists say that two poles are necessary for energy to flow: the receptive or feminine yin and the projecting or masculine yang. We see this in nature: water runs from high to low; electricity flows between cathode and anode; magnetic force goes between north and south poles.

This is especially true of human relations. Without polarity, relationships fall flat, whether in heterosexual or same-sex couples: someone has to wear the pants.

As a man, if you take on too much yin, you risk turning into an indecisive wimp, which is not necessarily appealing to women. Having an open heart is great; just remember to keep your spine also.

As a woman, if you take on too much yang, you risk turning into a facsimile of a guy, which may be admirable but not necessarily attractive. Strength is great, but remember that femininity is what draws in the masculine.

5. Get out of your own way.

Recently a very intelligent woman wrote to tell me she couldn’t date guys who were less smart than her, because they bored her. And when she finally found a guy who was smarter than her, she found herself competing with him and putting him down out of insecurity, thereby driving him away. Basically, she could not win.

So much pain in dating is self-inflicted and has to do with upholding our own importance or appeasing the ego.

Therefore I will state here without proof that there is no greater waste of your energy than upholding your own importance. Get used to the idea that it just doesn’t matter.

The Buddhists have this nifty concept called anatta, or no-self. It basically means that nothing in the universe has a fixed identity - especially you. If you’re breathing and have a heartbeat and just read this phrase, billions of things changed in your mind and body right now. So you’re fundamentally not the same you were five seconds ago, let alone five years ago. So quit trying to defend something that essentially isn’t there.

Whether or not you fully buy into this concept, it’s a handy notion: with no ego to be rejected, insulted or hurt, you’re much more likely to have an open heart and take risks in love. You’re also more likely to be kind, compassionate, and fun to be around.

When you practice anatta, all the energy that was used for judgment, competition and defensiveness can now be used for a better purpose: practicing the loving.

Waiting for the world to arrange its circumstances perfectly to allow you to start loving, to paraphrase Ramana Maharshi, is like wanting to cover the world in leather so you can walk barefoot. It is much simpler to wear shoes. The time to love is always now.

So if your best thinking got you here, perhaps it’s time to start something new: practice abundance; take the long view; be the change you want to see; and open into even greater loving.

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email: dralex(at)thetaoofdating.com

Follow Dr. Alex Benzer on Twitter: www.twitter.com/dralexbenzer ]]> http://thelek.com/blog/dating-in-la/the-tao-of-dating-5-principles-to-overcome-any-challenge-in-your-love-life/feed/ http://thelek.com/blog/dating-in-la/dating-the-easy-way-to-make-difficult-requests/ http://thelek.com/blog/dating-in-la/dating-the-easy-way-to-make-difficult-requests/#comments Tue, 16 Jun 2009 18:37:22 +0000 dralex http://thelek.com/blog/?p=695 This reader brings up a great question:

Hi! Alex,
I have been enjoying your autoresponder updates.  Thank you!  I am grateful that my friend told me about you!

My question is:

When a man uses vulgar language (mainly the “f” word) around me (and we are just getting to know one another), how do I let him know that I would rather not hear that? Sure, I have heard the word a lot in life (I am 56) and even said it myself a few times (usually softly when no one’s around!), but I feel uncomfortable when a guy uses it in front of me…

Thanks and blessings! Maureen from Seattle

Well well.  This is a universal issue, isn’t it.  How do we ask for what we want when it can potentially offend the person we’re asking?  It also comes up when giving unsolicited (but direly needed) advice: for example, how do you tell someone he or she has bad breath?  Or that her boyfriend is a loser and she needs to dump him pronto?

There are a few motives here working at cross-purposes.  One is genuine concern for the friend.  Second (a corollary to the first) is not wanting to hurt the friend’s feelings.  And the third is to get some relief for yourself.

First of all, I’d like to bring to your attention that of the three motives listed above, only one really matters: your genuine concern for your friend.  Number two, namely not wanting to hurt the friend’s feelings, is still part of the fact that you care.

Forget about relief for yourself and instead frame it thus: “If this person continues to have raging halitosis, his friends, including me, will probably be less willing to hang around him, and his life will be less rich for that.”

Now your selfish concern is an unselfish one, which will make you more empowered to speak your mind and tell him about the stinky breath.  Because now, it’s more like you’re shoving him out of the way of a falling piano instead of just nagging him.

Great!  Now that you’re willing to tell him, how do you tell him?

Since I’m in the business of telling people what’s good for them even when they don’t necessarily want to hear it, I’ve thought long and hard about how to package the medicine such that the patient not only takes it but wants to keep on talking to you after taking it.

What I’ve found to work is to ask for consent first: “Would you like to take care of this problem?  Would you like me to help you with that?”  After you get a yes, then you deliver the medicine: “Well then, this is what I suggest you do.”

In the case above, for example, Maureen would say, “Hey, Mr Occasional Foulmouth.  I was just wondering if you really enjoyed my company and would like to see me more often.”  Why yes, he says.  That’s the part about getting consent.

Then you say, “Well, I just want you to know that I get a little uncomfortable when you use foul language around me, and I enjoy your company a lot more and am much more likely to hang out with you if you used softer language.”

What works best is using a non-judgmental tone that focuses on YOU, not him, and focuses on what you want him to DO, not what you don’t.  Phrase things positively.

Here’s another format that has worked for me: “Would you be interested in some feedback about such-and-such?”  If you get a yes, then you ask, “Would you like me to sugarcoat it, or would you prefer that I be ruthlessly compassionate?”  Then you proceed to tell what’s on your mind, as positively and non-judgmentally as possible, at the level of bluntness that they requested.

Sometimes — most of the time, actually — when you do this, nothing happens.  The behavior does not change.  And that’s when you have to decide which is more important: the company of your friend, or relief from the irritating behavior.

We don’t get line-item vetoes when it comes to friends — you accept or reject the whole package.  And a big part of living a happy life involves accepting the world as it is, versus wishing it to conform to our particular whim.  So if a friend’s habit is truly irritating (e.g. nose-picking in public) or detrimental (e.g. crack addiction), it’s your duty as a friend to speak up.

But, as Krishna says to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, you are entitled to your labors, but not the results of your labors.  So if you will err, err on the side of loving people for who they are instead of trying to fix them.  It makes for a richer and easier life.

For those of you who are not familiar with her work yet, she possesses one of the most lucid voices in contemporary spirituality.  Her 1992 book A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles” is a modern spiritual classic.  There’s a famous quote of hers — often misattributed to Nelson Mandela who read it at his inauguration — that starts, “Our greatest fear isn’t that we are inadequate.  Our greatest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.  It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.”  For all my female readers, A Woman’s Worth (1993) is a must-read which informs much of The Tao of Dating for Women.  In person, she’s a dynamic, engaging speaker.  I encourage you to see her whenever the opportunity arises.

She started the talk by remarking that in medieval times in Europe, towns were built with the church at the center.  Symbolically, that’s putting the sacred at the center of life.  In modern times in the West, the sacred is separate from our relationships, work and finances.  This means that we’re not including the fundamental ground of being in our everyday life.  If we were to start doing that and put the sacred front and center, we’d get a much bigger platform from which to operate.

Much of Marianne’s teachings are informed by A Course in Miracles, which seems to be a remarkable tract judging from her references to it.  In that course, we are a thought in the mind of god (and you can pick god to mean whatever it means to you: creation, nature, The Force).  God can’t create anything other than itself, so we are godlike in that sense, with the only difference being that god created us and not vice versa.  Are you following me?  Good, because this is where things get interesting.

Now in each moment, we can either experience fear — which is the same as being closed, or being in hell — or love, which is the same as openness or heaven.  When you embrace the love, you are in heaven, experiencing peace and joy.  When you deflect the love, you are in hell, experiencing anxiety, fear, and discomfort.  You experience the true Self (with a capital S) when you let the light and love of god in.

This idea of ‘Self’ (vs. the ’self’ and ego) is the Christ-consciousness within.  We all have this notion of pure love inside; the difference is the baggage that comes with it.  At this point Marianne used the example of Michelangelo: when asked how he created his sculptural masterpieces, like Moses, David, and the Pieta, he responded: “The perfect form created by the mind of god already exists in the marble block; I merely remove the excess marble.”  The difference between us and someone like the Buddha or Jesus, Marianne said, was that for them, the loving-kindness, the Self is all they had, without anything extra.

Another one of the principles of the Course in Miracles is that “if it’s not love, it’s not real.” The Course also says that god solves every problem the moment it arises.  I found this to be an interesting premise, so I listened closely to find out how this works. Marianne explained that we all have an internal teacher (which the course calls the Holy Spirit, and we can call our higher self) which gives us an opening, an opportunity in which we tell ourselves “I am willing to see this differently.”  That is the Holy Spirit in action.

She also talked about the ‘crucifixion’ and ’savior’ patterns.  Depending on how we relate to each person we meet, that person can be our crucifier or savior. When we follow the fear-based pattern of thinking without love, that person will be our crucifier (but really, we’re doing it to ourselves).  Do it enough times, and fear-based thought becomes a default setting.  You dismantle that default setting through meditation and prayer.  The more you meditate, the more you will tend towards the loving thoughts, in which case each person you meet becomes your savior — once again, mostly through your own doing.

Here’s what happens in relationships between men and women (or any kind really): if each person is not aligned with god (or the sacred, if that makes more sense to you), then their childhoods and past relationships come into play and collide into one another.  You get a collision of egos, with each person taking himself or herself to hell. This did not sound like a lot of fun — and, come to think of it, perhaps that’s why many relationships aren’t a lot of fun.

Each relationship we have is like an assignment, and each person is a lesson, Marianne explained.  In the first level interaction, ego meets ego.  The physical proximity doesn’t last long, and then the parties part.  In the second level interaction, the physical proximity lasts a bit longer and then ends.  But in Reality with capital R, the relationship continues.  The third level interaction is a lifelong assignment.  It may not even be pleasant, but it’s the homework our soul needs.

This is where Marianne explained the importance of meditation.  She remembered how when she was younger, she’d go see every visiting Indian guru, and would be frustrated as hell when they would answer every question with a shimmy of the head and a single word: “Meditate.” Now, a little older and wiser, she gets it: ‘meditate’ is the answer to every question.  “When you do not meditate, you are a danger to yourself and the world,” were her exact words.  Meditation and prayer is like taking a shower or a bath.  You don’t say, “Well, I took a shower last week, so I should be good for now.”  It’s a daily practice of spiritual cleansing and mental hygiene.

As an aside, she mentioned that women don’t need men, the same way they need food and air.  They desire men, and in any case, that’s much healthier and more attractive (and this audience member wholeheartedly agrees — it’s kinda the basis of this book I wrote). From there, she segued in the notion of ‘male perversity’, apparently something that psychologists have come up with.  This is men’s tendency to resist giving something to a woman if she demands it.  (I thought that was just called being a guy.)  The ramification of that is that you will only get what you want from a man when you come from a place of self-sufficiency.

Self-sufficiency is the opposite of the ’special relationship’, also known as the ‘you complete me’ disease.  The special relationship may start auspiciously and feel really good, but it’s not the same as the divine partnership.  And the same meshing of egos that starts the special relationship often leads to the clashing of egos which spells its end.

The main benefit of the talk for me were the aphorisms Marianne brought up from the Course in Miracles.  You can think of these as useful rules to keep in mind when faced with a relationship question.  In fact, one of them has been on a yellow sticky-note on my desk for quite some time: “Only what we are not giving can be missing in any situation.”  That’s profound.  Whether it’s true or not is unquantifiable and unprovable; but it is undoubtedly powerful and useful.  So use it!  Here are some other ones:

“The Answer (with a capital A) to any question is the state of consciousness in which you simply know the answer.”  This is brilliant.  It’s akin to Einstein’s formulation: you can’t solve a problem from the same logical level it was developed.  You basically have to go to a higher logical level, which can be called a higher state of consciousness.  If you practice this diligently and go to higher states of consciousness every time you hit a challenge — through meditation, prayer, or loving-kindess — not only will all your relationship issues dissolve naturally and effortlessly, all your other challenges will resolve as well.  As Marianne paraphrased from the Course, “The issue isn’t that we don’t know what god is telling us; the issue is that we don’t like what we’re hearing.”

“Every thought you have either takes you straight to heaven or straight to hell.”  We talked about that one already: open vs closed; love vs fear.

“You are 100% responsible for your own experience.  The price you pay for not recognizing that is not to be able to change your experience.”

“Forgiveness is extending your physical senses to see beyond the surface — e.g. ‘You’re a jerk’ — into who someone really is — ‘You’re a child of god’.”

And finally, what may be the central prayer in A Course in Miracles, which could have come straight from the Tao Te Ching: “Let all things be exactly as they are.”