Let Go of The Past

By Marlon leTerrance

A large part of truly loving yourself and rebuilding your self-respect is putting the mistakes of your past behind you. The prospects of your future will always appear a little dim and uncertain when you allow yourself to be constantly chained down and haunted by the ghosts of yesterday. You have to be strong enough to once and for all say goodbye to all those sad and bitter experiences that have crippled your sense of self-worth and confidence.

In order for you to make positive changes in your life, you have to get away from focusing so much attention on your past. Instead, you must concentrate on your future. But this can not be done when there’s a scared and untrusting part of you that scurries away like a frightened mouse at the mere thought of getting emotionally involved again. You can’t convince yourself that men are the enemy, and then expect to feel comfortable around them.

A lot of times you defeat the whole purpose of seeking a soul mate when you allow your past to dictate your views of men. You start hiding behind the ridiculous opinion that all men are dogs. You start telling yourself that there is no such thing as a truly gentle and loving man. Yet, deep inside, you know that such blunt generalizations are both cruel and unfair.

When you point emotional fingers at men, blaming every male for the heartache of your past, you become rather skilled at finger pointing but that’s all. You become a romantic detective searching for deception instead of honesty. Each time you meet a man, you start digging through his character and personality, almost hoping that you find a quality in him that proves to be unsavory. But the price you pay is too great. You end up becoming so good at singling out the negative and unsuitable things about a potential date that you lose your ability to recognize and appreciate a guy for who he is as a human being. You fall asleep at night not knowing what to look for in a good man because you are too busy trying to single out and identify the bad guys.

I have known a lot of females who were so caught up in the pain of their past lovers that they tended to scare away future lovers. These women could not hold a conversation without bringing up all the horrible things that some other guy had done to them. And it doesn’t take long for the depressing stories about other men to tear away at a new romance. I’ve spoken with countless men who find themselves lost in a sea storm almost when it comes to dealing with women who use their ex-boyfriends as the topic of virtually every conversation. As a close friend of mine puts it: "A woman who talks about her ex-husband more than she does anyone else strains a relationship from the very beginning. I hate it. I end up feeling as though I’m not only dating her, but her ex-boyfriend as well. It’s like I’m being forced to prove to her that I’m not like her ex, and this is stressful at best. A relationship that starts out with us both trying to prove things to each other, instead of us merely being ourselves, is shaky and pretentious.”

The worst thing that can happen to a female who has been hurt by a man is that she tends to compound the damage by blaming herself for the situation. Not only is she the victim of rejection, but also, she often feels the need to see herself as a bad person who had this coming to her. She makes her own pain worse by telling herself that it was her fault that things went wrong in a relationship. As a result, a broken heart ends up being shattered because she assumes all the responsibility for the mistakes. She stabs herself with guilt, and then carries that guilt around with her--even to other relationships. The wounds never really heal this way.

And, too often, in her pain and confusion, she instinctively does the wrong thing. She doesn’t feel she deserves to be loved or helped, so she lets guilt, anger, jealousy and self-imposed loneliness make a bad situation even worse.

My final advice to my sister, Tenisha, when she was forced to divorce her husband because of his unfaithfulness, was: "You faced a situation that could easily have broken your spirit, a situation that could have left you a bitter, withdrawn woman, jealous of the female friends around you, incapable of responding fully to the promise of being alive. Somehow that did not happen. Somehow, you found the resiliency to go on loving and caring for other people. Like a lot of women, you faced a scary situation, dug deep inside yourself, and found out that you were a lot stronger, and a lot better able to handle it than you ever would have thought you were. I believe that this, more than anything I can say or do, proves that you are a special young lady who deserves to be loved by a real man who will treasure you and fill your life with joy and happiness."

In many ways, this is your most crucial step. You are now standing at the crossroads of romance; you can either let go of your past and look forward to a more fulfilling future, or you can continue drowning yourself in the heartaches and disappointments caused by former lovers. Don’t wait on Prince Charming to ride in on his white horse to convince you that love and happiness is possible again. You have to be willing to convince yourself. And this is done by letting go of the past and refusing to let it dictate your future.