Tag: lovers past

No Drama Please in Love Relationships

If you have been in a past relationship that had a lot of drama in it, you may have come to a place of unwillingness to accommodate any drama from anyone who may present themselves to you as a potential mate. No one is saying this is a good thing or a bad thing, it just is what it is. This is a form of protection for the sake of self-preservation.

If this applies to your circumstance, at some time in a potential courtship, you may notice one or more apparent inconsistencies which will sound off alarms in your heart and mind. Many a potentially loving relationship was cut short by an early warning detection system raising red flags, which can be found everywhere you look. (This is a natural neurological condition referred to as the reticular activating system or RAS for short.)

If this bit of neural psychology is correct, if you’ve been hurt by someone, you will have reviewed all the little clues that you missed that would have been apparent and available to you consciously had you been more aware or suspicious. In many cases, you miss these signs due to the surge of the hormone Oxytocin which causes rosy retrospection otherwise known as having donned rose-colored glasses.

This is to say, if you are in love, the red flags that may have alerted you to something being amiss were overlooked and misinterpreted as cute inconsistencies or eccentricities or seen as having little meaning or threat.

Upon review following a failed relationship, all these warning signs become painfully apparent which may lead to a condition called pistanthrophobia that presupposes that the victim will be unable to trust anyone who presents him or herself as a potential suitor or suitress.

You want to survive the next relationship, so you’re constantly reviewing the data you’ve processed and measure against your observations of your next potential mate, ever looking for clues that there is trouble amiss.

This is a necessary method of self-preservation. It’s what helps us survive and is a logical way to avoid another bad relationship. The downside?  Pistanthrophobia will likely sabotage all potential future relationships, because it can color normal abstract human behavior as threatening red flags. And the mind will go to great lengths to take the reigns of the imagination and build up cases against any potential romantic relationship on the flimsiest nuggets of misinformation.

This will have the unfortunate consequence of assuring failure after failure for romance for the seeker of true and lasting love, as unsubstantiated clues are met with Miss Interpretation leading to Red Flag Obsession.

Sufferers of pistanthrophobia will prematurely end a potential relationship with a positively loving individual who may display a moment of weakness or a slight misstep that sounds emergency alarms all over town in the life of the overly cautious and protective seeker of true and enduring love. The result? The extermination and loss of a true love potential.

What is the answer?

A qualified family therapist or relationship coach can help an earnest seeker of love, dig up the roots of love failures of the past, process the lessons learned, and move on securely in faith, trust, and true love, a love that starts with one’s self, then overflows into the hearts of others.

All those negative experiences?

Successfully harnessed can help lead you into the powerful love relationship you are looking for.

Don’t give up. Get help. Heal. Get strong. Open your heart, and let your love flow.

Trust and the Past

The longer you’re with a partner or get to know a potential partner, the more you will discover about their past. Even though you know the past is the best predictor of things to come, people do change. So, it’s important to note the past and look for clues that they have changed since then, or not.

Haven’t you done things in the past, that have taught you valuable lessons? Haven’t you changed since then? We all learn lessons from mistakes and sometimes their effects are life-changing.

Sometimes people do not learn the lessons and continue to make the same mistakes over and over. That’s why you must keep your wits about you and be observant enough to see if your partner has changed. Even so, you need to know that he or she is not likely to have a relapse.

You want to look for patterns that repeat themselves.

How they talk about their ex may be a clue about what you may be facing. If they have nothing good to say, chances are when they are done with you, they will have nothing good to say about you.

On the other hand, if they are transparent about the things that went wrong and the part that they played in a past relationship, this is a good sign the next relationship (potentially yours) may benefit from the lessons they learned from their past relationship.

If they intimate details about physical abuse in their former relationship (even if they make it sound like a joke) this may be something to take note of. If it looks like he or she loses his or her cool and has a tendency to fly-off-the-handle, this may indicate trouble down the road. You might want to think about ways to protect yourself or avoid the situation altogether.

You will never have to tolerate and abuse in any relationship. Thankfully, in our modern day and age (unlike in the days of our grandparents) you can simply opt out or an abusive relationship and move on.

Some things that you learn about your partner may feel like a bigger deal than they are because of fear, jealousy, or deeply buried wounds that you’ve collected over time. Do not make your potential or current partner pay the price for someone else’s sins.

You might get a twinge of fear or are emotionally triggered because an ex- had more previous partners than you and moved on too quickly for your taste and hurt you in the process. That doesn’t mean that everyone who has had a lot of partners in the past isn’t going to love you incredibly. If you think you’ll have a tendency to overreact, best just let it be.

Be careful about the questions you ask, and if you don’t like the answers, try not to be too judgmental if you don’t get the answers you expected. Allow your partner to have the available bandwidth to be honest without feeling that the (potential) relationship might be put at risk for the sake of openness and honesty.

What if your partner had a checkered past or a previous occupation or vocation which might be questionable? You might jump to the conclusion that such a person might be untrustworthy. Not necessarily. Being able to be open and honest about your past is a key ingredient in successful relationships. And like it or not, people are not just simple two-dimensional beings. They grow, change, and evolve if given the opportunity. Some more successfully than others, but it happens all the time.

It’s very rare that anyone stays exactly the same all their life, though some are consistently predictable much of the time.

When you’re talking about the past, you can get furious about exes. You can ask (maybe start by telling something about your’s first, a bit of quid pro quo) but be careful not to confuse that twinge of insecurity for your intuition. It’s a common mistake that anyone could make.

It could rob you of any potential you and your partner might have had. Keep your fears in check.

Trust is the most important thing between you. If you want it, you must think about giving it first. Set the example and given the opportunity your partner will rise to your level of trust.

You need to figure out what you can and can not tolerate. This is your life.

Love like it’s the only thing that matters because it is.