Dating someone with a checkered past
Checkered Past
Related Articles
It is easy to pass judgment on someone’s past, but it is not where you are coming from it is where you are going. An unknown past can be scary when you first start dating and you may ask yourself, is this person genuinely good, or do they have skeletons in their closet? Although a legitimate concern and one that does deserve study, it is unfair to judge someone’s worth exclusively by their past and unfair to yourself too if you are discounting a potential love match before giving it an open minded and honest chance.
Could you overlook a person’s past if you found out they had, at one time participated in a polyamorous relationship, or engaged in homosexuality? What if a mother surrendered custody of her children, or a man had in the past committed a theft, or spent time in jail? These scenarios would all cause serious concern for a relationship candidate, but again, it is not where you are coming from, it is where you are going. The amount of self-reflection, growth and internal work a person does should influence your relationship decisions more than their past.
During my matchmaking with Perfect Search, I had a client who was concerned about a woman who had surrendered custody of her 9 year old son and moved to another country. He wasn’t sure if he should continue dating her after learning about it. I encouraged him not to pass judgment. Her marriage had been a suffocating one and she was stifled by her controlling husband. He, however, was a good parent and good provider for their son, so she determined that her need to grow and explore as a woman could be done with out uprooting her son from a stable home and school environment. Although it may not have been the choice for many mothers, it was a rational choice and should not immediately indicate a flawed personality.
Another example was a story I heard from a man who was driven and ambitious but born into a troubled family. He had grown up in a rough neighborhood and and had spent time in jail for several petty theft charges. He was tenacious, scrappy, and conniving as a young man and lacked morals in many of his early decisions. Through self refection, therapy and honest analysis however, he was able to overcome the opportunistic methods of his past and achieve success by channeling that creative energy into the positive business practices that now reflected his current success. If someone were to ask him of his past he was always honest, which scared many women away when dating. After all, who wants to date someone who has a rap sheet? But again, my opinion is, that it is not where your coming from but where you are going.
I had another woman join my candidate pool who had just been dumped by her boyfriend when she confided in him that she had previously been in a polyamorous relationship with a man and another woman during her 20s. The three of them lived together, loved together and slept together. It was an experimental phase in her life that was satiated with time, and was no longer relevant. Her current boyfriend however, could not cope with the history and abruptly ended their relationship when she told him.
So how much information about your past should you share, and when should you share it with a new love? Should history be a mystery, or is an open book the best policy in a relationship? The answer lies somewhere in between. It is best to be preemptive and share a checkered past with your love or you run the risk of them finding out and being shocked as in the polyamorous example. Especially if it is something that you will want to discuss as part of intimacy and sharing. However, telling someone too soon, as in the jail bird story, is not a good idea either. You have to first set the hook and get the other person to fall in love with you before you drop a bomb like being in jail. As for the example of the mother who left her child to live abroad, this was something that should be shared with care and received with an open mind. Remember, it is not where you are coming from, but where you are going.
For more information, contact Melinda Maximova, matchmaker with Perfect Search
Send $15. and I will answer any relationship, sexual or dating question. I will spend up to 1/2 hour on the question.
Yes, it’s a tricky thing to decide what is the right course of action. I think that generally speaking it’s a good policy to be upfront at the beginning and disclose any details that you think your partner might find unappealing. If they do, and they decide not to remain involved, it’s much better that it happens earlier, when the pain will not be as great.
But to do nothing and assume that you can keep these things secret is a mistake. There are so many ways that people can find out about your past (and present) now, particularly online!
Comment by Matt — October 7, 2009 @ 8:41 pm