Letting go of the past

Life’s motto seems to be the popularly circulated, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again,” or “It doesn’t matter how many times you fall down. What matters is how many times you get up.”

In that case, what is the slogan for relationships/love/dating? “After eight unsuccessful dates, he’ll still be full of himself.”

Or, “Date for three years, then she’ll finally figure out what she wants.”

Or, “The sex screams ‘Caliente!’ in the beginning, so count your lucky stars if it stays that way 10 years down the road.”

Or, “You’ll most likely adopt your parents’ relationship traits-beware.”

On that note, I was thinking about the past the other day and whether or not there’s an effective way to extinguish all the bad stuff from it without resorting to witchcraft or voodoo. (Remember “Teen Witch” from the 1980s? It worked for her.)

When speaking about past failed relationships, people always apathetically tell you, “Don’t look at it [the best sex you’ve ever had, a.k.a. your ex] as a failure or a waste of time. It was a great love, and you learned something from it.”

Well, sure. But, the real question remains: How do you let go of it?

Some people cope by hitting the bars and immediately seeking out new prospects, while others retreat to their own Waldens and take time to reflect upon the whole experience.

Okay, so let’s say that both techniques are pretty effective.

It still seems as though a part of us will continually be running from our pasts.

The more and more I thought about this, I kept coming back to our parents.

While my aim is not to use our parents as scapegoats, I hope to better understand why we are the way we are.

There are those of us who will go through life and love with a textbook story.

And then there are the rest of us left to untangle our parents’ relationship web and to rebuild from scratch, especially those of us with divorced parents.

And, folks, the results are in … Surprise, surprise! They’re unpleasantly unpleasant. Forty-three percent of marriages will end in divorce.

Knowing that statistic in addition to witnessing your parents’ unsuccessful quiet or argumentative marriage, it almost seems as though there’s not much to look forward to.

Some of us will prove this theory to be correct by molding ourselves into our mothers and fathers.

Our communication problems will bleed from our last relationship into our future ones. Maybe our hearts will remain closed for eternity, for we fear what our relationship may become.

And, maybe we’ll sabotage the best opportunities for love because we just don’t know what to do, for we never had semi-perfect models.

Perhaps your parents aren’t divorced or unhappily married, but maybe you’ve leapt into that game we like to call love and gotten a scrape or two. We all have dating woes and wounds engraved on our hearts.

But, the more I thought about the past, I realized one thing. It will always chase you if you’re afraid of it.

If you’re conscious about the issues at hand, you’re already two steps ahead.

I say we create our own mottos for love. And no, I’m not referring to those cheesy chick flick never-gonna-happen ones.

We should think realistically with a side of hope and faith, topped with the notion of trial and error.

My motto is, “Love can and will bite you in the butt, but every now and then it can be the best sting of all.”

Stacy Seebode writes a weekly love advice column. She can be e-mailed at [email protected].