If we’ve felt great pain in past relationships, we probably have some strong beliefs or biased love based on those impressions. How can we go beyond our past conclusions in new circumstances? If we believe ‘this’ about women and ‘that’ about men, the real events around us we see through those beliefs like a colored lens.
If we don’t understand ‘my side bias,’ we won’t know when we create our own evidence e.g. questionable matters seem proof of past conclusions. Such beliefs often continue when contrary facts prove the beliefs flawed or even false. When this happens sometimes a friend not wearing the lenses may point out we are ‘acting crazy’ because they see important facts outside of our past conclusions.
I am not saying we should stay in a circumstance that is destructive. I’m saying if we suffer a biased love we can imagine a scary old-bogey under the bed and in trying to protect ourselves, we take a stand on old conclusions that seem solid because they rest on strong feelings; feelings that arise every time the old stories play in the theater of our mind, with the new people and events as players and props. The similarities between people, and the wish to avoid fear of the unknown make it easy to make the hasty mistake of thinking ‘this is orange, therefore it is an orange,’ as if nothing else could be orange.
If we want truth in our relationships and wish to avoid destructive emotional pathos born of a biased love; beliefs we replay in our mind, the question will not be ‘how can I know if my emotionally charged conclusions are true.’ The question we must ask is ‘how can I know if my emotionally charged conclusions are false.’ This takes the attention away from the old stories in our mind to look anew at the people and events around us, we may find good and beautiful things beyond the definitions of our experience. Now that is living in the adventure of the new events.