When I was 23, I was dumped three times in a row by three different men for other women. Now that is a good way to start a story!

The first was my then fiancée who left me six months before our wedding for another woman. The next was a work friend that I started dating who left me for a woman he met overseas the previous year who came to visit him. The final man was another work colleague who after dating me for a few months left me to go back to his previous girlfriend.

Seriously!!! WTF!!!

It would be fair to say at this stage I was starting to get a complex. I contemplated conducting exit interviews.

Emotional Baggage

Now you might think it was understandable if I retreated from the dating scene altogether. Perhaps I should have become a Nun! At the very least you wouldn’t be surprised if I was extremely wary of men in the future or if I entered the next relationship with trust issues.

But I decided I was not going to take emotional baggage with me into any future relationships. It just doesn’t seem fair to not trust one person because someone else betrayed your trust. This is making another person pay for some total stranger’s actions.

The approach worked and if you have been following my work you will know that Steve and I have been married for 26 years. 

We All Get Hurt

I still recall one of Steve’s mates saying he was coming over to our place in the afternoon. Before he arrived, his girlfriend came knocking on our door demanding to know where he was. I said he hadn’t arrived yet and she went off her head, yelling how much of a liar he was and that he was cheating on her. Like seriously it was a bizarre reaction considering he was coming to our place and he was just a bit late. I asked her what was going on and she calmed down a bit and told me her previous boyfriend cheated on her so now she doesn’t trust men.

I asked,

“Your previous boyfriend screwed up your last relationship, why are you letting him screw up this one?” That is exactly what happened. Ironically, our friend was out buying her a birthday present, and it would be fair to say that relationship did not last.

Regardless of whether it is a personal or professional relationship, we all get hurt at some stage.

Perhaps it was an employee who ripped you off or a client who refused to pay an invoice. These things can and will happen. While you can learn from this experience, you want to be very careful how much baggage you take into new relationships.

For example, don’t become a micro-manager because someone ripped you off once. Don’t make your payment process with your clients cumbersome because someone refused to pay an invoice once.

Stick to a Carry On Case

According to Sabrina Romanoff, PsyD, a clinical psychologist, and professor at Yeshiva University in New York, the term “emotional baggage” refers to unfinished emotional issues, stressors, pain, and difficulties we’ve experienced that continue to take up space in our minds and affect our present relationships.

Sometimes the pain and hurt are so severe it is hard to process. In that instance, you really should consider getting help from a coach or counsellor. As the great philosopher Kylie Minogue says,

“We all get hurt by love and we all have a cross to bear.”

So, it is inevitable that we all carry some amount of emotional baggage but when you take that into a new relationship, try to avoid a massive suitcase and aim for a light carry-on.

P.S. This was the focus of one of our episodes from the Keeping it Real with Jac and Ral podcast. You can listen to that episode here or watch us here on YouTube… Jac calls it a griefcase.