Drop Your Baggage at the Door 

There are many types of emotional baggage that we carry into our relationships with other people, but they all stem from our past experiences, and might not still be serving us today.  It is important that we come to terms with not only what we are carrying, but also why we are carrying it, and look to drop it if it is not to our benefit. 

When we do this, it hurts our ability to find our match or effectively communicate when we do have one.  Most of the time it is not something we are consciously doing, but it would benefit us to be aware of it for our own good. 

 Too often, we are so quick to point out other people’s red flags that we forget we are carrying many of our own. 

I learned this, not from judging other people, but from looking inside myself.    

I was married too young, and my first wife and I lived with infidelity.  Do I blame her?  No, we were both stupid children, who should never have been married.  However, being so young and malleable, it stuck with me, albeit mostly subconsciously.  At the time, I was young, glad to be free, and didn’t give much thought to the potential impact that I would carry with me into future relationships. 

How many other of my relationships since then have been affected by that baggage?  How many other women have come and gone in my life where they have had to deal with the hypervigilance that was created? 

The answer is all of them. 

How many of them deserved it?

None of them.   

To my knowledge, I have not had the same experience since.   Yet I put that into every single new relationship thereafter.  Not only was this unfair to them, but it really hurt my ability to have significant connections and healthy relationships.  It wasn’t until I stopped looking at their problems and focused on my own, that I am now able to view people in their own light and not in the shadow of my past. 

Think about this…I have lived another 25 years, and every single woman since has had to reconcile this in one fashion or another without my reconciling it within myself.  What are you carrying around that might be impacting your connections, and can I help you not take 25 years to figure it out? 

The best part of identifying this stuff is that you can fix and modify your own behavior.  Focusing on other people’s issues, flags, or baggage is worthless because there is very little you can do to change them, but you can change yourself. 

I’ve found that everyone carries baggage like this.  We all have past experiences that might be negative, and it is important that we do not carry them into our new relationships.  I know a lot of people identify this filtering as “recognizing red flags” or helpful in avoiding future heartache, but you are robbing yourself of the opportunity to get to know someone without looking through this veiled lens of your past.  While instinctually it makes sense to “get burned, avoid the flame”.  We are all well past living our lives in terms of the fight-or-flight response anymore. 

We are complicated, other people are complicated, and not everything is cut and dry.   

When you hear someone talking about “red flags,” they’re really just mirroring what they have experienced in the past and projecting it onto others.  

Imagine someone who comes from a controlling relationship in his/her past, he/she might see any assertiveness as a “red flag”.  Interestingly enough, another person who always had to carry the weight of all the decisions in their past relationship might find that same assertiveness a positive: same quality, different judgments. 

The problem is that that judgment is based on your own past rather than the actual person you are involved with. So the next time you see what you might think is a flag, think about where that comes from.  Is it based on the other person’s action alone, or is it a combination of that action PLUS your previous experience?  If it is the latter, then you may need to check your fear.  They don’t deserve it. 

Now, I am not saying to not have standards or even preferences.  You are valuable and worthy of being selective when it comes to your heart.  Just don’t be blind to your reasoning.  There are certainly red flags worth avoiding.  Drinking, drug addiction, gambling, violence, etc.  However, most of the time, we just focus on slight behaviors that may resemble what we experienced in the past. If you remove the past from your judgment, you might find these behaviors to be less important than you originally thought. 

Remember,  you are not your emotions and more importantly, neither are other people.  Don’t make someone pay for your past, and don’t allow them to make you pay for theirs. 

Most people just want to love and be loved.  It’s in our nature. 

The best thing you can do for someone you care about is to understand yourself and identify your own flaws, and you might just find that you’re lucky to have them 🙂   

I love you, Bear

Happy Valentine’s Day!