We are only human. We all have our flaws.
What’s the point of bringing old baggage into new relationships anyway? Why is it that so many of us continue to allow ourselves to be bogged down by the past? Why are we okay with the fact our past just continues to hold us back from everything that we want for ourselves in the future? Why do we constantly allow this to happen?
Well, the answer isn’t really as complicated as one would be led to believe. It’s just plain and simple. It’s so much easier for us to cling to things that are familiar to us even though these are things that are toxic and destructive in nature. It’s just so much easier to confront something that we’ve grown accustomed to than to open ourselves up to the instability of the present and the uncertainty of the future. In a sense, we’re more comfortable with a toxic past than we would be with an unpredictable future. And that’s what’s wrong.
We are only human. We all have our flaws. A lot of us will be too proud to acknowledge our own mistakes and shortcomings. A huge bulk of us will not want to recognize the fact that there are plenty of aspects to our personalities that need constant development. We are so quick to pass the blame on others because we would never want to believe that we could ever be capable of doing anything wrong. And this can get particularly tricky when we get into new relationships. New romances are supposed to be renewed opportunities for us to pursue love. But we often drop the ball because we refuse to learn from the mistakes that led to us having experienced failed relationships in the first place. We carry all the toxic aspects of those old relationships into our new ones and it ends up becoming an endless cycle of failed romances that we can never seem to escape.
We get too comfortable with the familiarity of a toxic routine we end up forgetting that it’s still toxic nonetheless. We want to cling to something that we’re so used to even though everything that we’re used to is the reason we’re unhappy.
In order for us to really move on to a place of health, joy, meaning, fulfilment, and happiness, we have to be honest with ourselves. We have to be able to take a look at the toxic aspects of our past, point them out, and leave them where they truly belong in the past. Because they have no place in the present or in the future. It would be downright foolish to be bringing in unnecessary baggage into our present. It would be downright toxic to be bringing unnecessary baggage into the future. We not only hurt ourselves by doing so, but we also hurt our relationships.
You have lost control of the past but that doesn’t mean that you no longer have control of your future. What’s done is done. But what is yet to come is still up to you. You can’t afford to let your past dictate what happens to you in the future. You can’t let the emotional baggage of your past keep you from being happy at this moment.
Just because you’ve had bad experiences with terrible people in the past doesn’t mean that the people of your future are going to be the same. You can’t let your resentment of the people in your past cause you to act terrible to the people in your future. You can’t let the pain that people have caused you in the past be the reason for your reluctance to open yourself up to love in the future. You have to recognize that just as the chapter of one relationship closes, it can also serve as the opening of the chapter of a new relationship. The story of your love life is yet to be complicated and you have full control of where the narrative is going to flow. So don’t make the mistake of letting the story of your past dictate how the story of your future is going to play out. It doesn’t work like that. It shouldn’t work like that.
You need to be strong. You need to be able to detach yourself from the things that don’t add value to your life. You have to learn to just let go of the things that are keeping you from being who you want to be and going where you want to go. You really have to make it a point to be your own person; to live your own life according to how you want to live it.
If you have baggage, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s only bad when you continue to let it rule you. Be brave. Let it go and just dive right back into the unknown. It’s scary. But it’s also liberating. It’s what you need to do to find love again.