Jenny Block on keeping the past in the past
At some point, you have to decide whether you are going to focus your life on looking backward or moving forward. I think about that a lot. I think about it not only in terms of my romantic relationship — my marriage — but also in terms of my familial relationships and friendships. It can be challenging to resist “healing” the wounds of the past with the relationships of the present. But the attempt is equal parts dangerous and impossible.
I wasn’t popular in high school. At all. I know, I know — I wasn’t doing myself any favors with debate team, drama club and a perm that wasn’t a good idea even in the ’80s. Because of feeling like a bit of an outsider back then, I can be super, duper sensitive now, taking things personally and responding to things in a way that is more representative of teenaged-me than adult-me.
When I do that, it always ends badly. It’s me overthinking past wounds and snubs and missing out on current opportunities. I fear being rejected so I don’t approach people. Thing is, that only makes people think I’m being standoffish. I don’t follow up with people because I assume they were just being polite. Others even think I’m being just plain thoughtless or rude. I have to remind myself: These people are not the stupid kids I went to school with.
Some people do it with their parents, too. They have real or imagined wrongs and so take their frustrations out on their own children or parents. Not calling. Withholding grandchildren.
Telling horror stories of their childhood that are miles from reality. I feel fortunate not to be guilty of that. My wife lost her mother too soon. With her support, I have formed a friendship with my mother for which I am eternally grateful, and I have a relationship with my 20-year-old daughter that even she and I recognize is fan-damn-tastic and far better than most (despite my having perfectly predictable empty nest aches).
When it comes to my wife, I have to catch myself. I can feel myself wanting to act out the past. The partners who failed me or were abusive or who were just not willing to meet me where I needed to be met appear like specters, beckoning me to battle them through her. Sometimes I feel myself appeasing them. When I do, it is always a disaster. I hurt my wife, and I disappoint myself. But if I can recognize and fight it, I always feel super glad I did.
What does this look like? Well, maybe you had a controlling partner in the past and so, in the name of never being controlled again, you refuse to take any sort of suggestion from your partner, even if clearly the best course of action. Or maybe your last partner never did anything for your birthday, so you refuse to make a big deal of your current partner’s birthday. Or perhaps a past love demanded to always know where you are or what you were doing or what you spent money on, so you hide people and places and things that you have no actual need to hide.
In other words, progress is all about not cutting off your own nose to spite your face.
It can be incredibly difficult to leave our pasts in the past. In so many ways, we are our pasts — the sum total of our experiences. But it is how we choose to learn from and use those experiences that is a true measure of who we are — as people in general, and who we are as partners in particular. It’s not easy to let the past go. But it is no longer ours. It is impossible to change. And the negative parts of them only serve us if we use them as learning launches, lessons that we gained and used to propel ourselves forward instead of holding ourselves back.
I don’t want to punish my wife for the sins of another. I also want to be gentle when she battles her own past relationships and experiences. We all fall and we deserve partners who are ready, willing and able to pick us up. Each day is a new chance to say, “Today I choose to look forward, to forgive my past and to remember that my partner loves me and chooses me and is not responsible for those in my past who did not.”
I’m lucky. My wife always stands by me. She is aware of my past and equally cognizant of her own. We are never perfect at leaving the past behind, but we are always conscious of it. And that is the commitment I challenge every couple to make: Focus your love and your life on moving forward not looking back. The past no longer belongs to us. But the future of our relationships is ours to shape.
Contact Jenny Block at GirlOnGirls@gmail.com.
