Ryan ChartrandWelcome back, everyone. Hope your three weeks of break were revitalizing and relaxing and other restorative R-adjectives.
New year, new quarter – fresh start. Right?
When the New Year holiday rolls around, emotional propensities may take us in one of two directions: the nostalgic trek back over the last 364 days and previous years, or the refreshing, exciting look forward into the opportunities of tomorrow.
Looking ahead, the future always remains a little hazy, no matter how well we plan each step and each detail, like good college students.
Looking back, each year becomes progressively blurrier as it passes. I have trouble remembering last quarter, much less the entire last year. Time seems to elapse more and more quickly as I get older, and consequently, yesterday becomes more and more difficult to recall.
However, this is not always the case with relationships. The past doesn’t always slip so easily from memory.
Call it what you will: experience, track record, case history. When it comes to personal romantic histories, people either evade all questions at all costs, or won’t shut up about it.
There’s a third, classic hybrid: the friend who says he or she “doesn’t like to talk about it,” but once it’s brought up, spills the entire thing out on the table without warning, starting with kindergarten puppy love and ending with “that one dude/chick from that one party last week.”
Two-and-a-half hours later, restaurant management is giving you the evil eye from amidst a sea of upturned chair legs – and, oblivious, still your friend blathers on.
Clearly, the ghost that is the romantic past doesn’t simply slide away into oblivion. It takes concerted effort to really forget a love gone awry (and if you actively have to try, how successfully did you really forget?).
Even so, the fact of its existence cannot be denied; and neither can we ignore the fact of the past’s influence on the romantic present.
If only we could recall just the happy times. But it’s the painful memories that make a more lasting impression – in the form of an emotional and psychological scar. Try as we might to let it all go, the memories don’t erase themselves, even if we really are “over it.”
And this applies to everyone, current relationship status aside. Maybe you’ve had 12 exes; maybe you’ve had just one great love; maybe you’ve been looking and looking and haven’t found any candidates yet; maybe you know who you want but nothing has come of it.
Regardless, the human need for relationships compels us toward this kind of emotional awareness. We remember how it felt because it involved another human being; we remember the person because it was with him or her that we felt that way. The link between individual and emotion makes past relationships nearly inextricable in our memories.
However, there’s fond remembering, there are bittersweet recollections – and then there’s dwelling. As in, slogging about in the thick, oozing, convoluted muck that is the stuff of relationships past.
And that’s no fun for you. It’s no fun for your friends. And it certainly isn’t fun for the bartender.
We understand if you just went through something tough. We know there are some traumatic events that literally will never go away, and that’s OK.
But there are lesser incidences of having been wronged in love, and wallowing in them won’t garner sympathy for very long. Sooner or later, everyone will start telling you to get over it.
We have any number of clich‚s telling us how we should treat the past. On the one hand we’re told that we need to know where we’ve been to know where we’re going. On the other hand, we’re told to leave it all behind. My personal favorite on Clich‚site.com: “You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube.” (If you live with roommates, please don’t try, for their sakes.)
With relationships and with life, it’s a mistake to think that the past utterly dictates your future.
Certainly, it has shaped your current perceptions of the world and of relationships; but instead of slogging about in said muck, you could be much more productive with it – by learning from what did and didn’t work.
It might take a while to drain it of the emotional intensity with which you once treated it. But once you’ve gotten through the wading, you can start the refinement process. If you can distance yourself enough from the emotional turmoil you once felt, you can try to look at things from a more objective stance.
With effort, you’ll be able to see, and more importantly, understand why things happened the way they did. From there, you can make adjustments accordingly. (Come on, guys. We’re in college now. That’s how learning works. If it works in class, why not try it with relationships?)
The American writer Edna Ferber wrote: “Living the past is a dull and lonely business; looking back strains the neck muscles, causing you to bump into people not going your way.”
Wipe off your shoes and leave the muck behind, and take with you instead some new, self-refined insight. If you’re looking forward, you might just meet someone along the way.
Sarah Carbonel is an English and psychology junior and Mustang Daily dating columnist.