Should You Tell Someone New Everything About Your Past?

October 2, 6:41 AMRelationship ExaminerKristen Houghton

Previous Next

7 comments Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Relationship Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

Should You Tell Someone New Everything About Your Past?

by Kristen Houghton

A new relationship, a prospect of love, a new beginning; should your past stay in the past or do you have to confess everything about your life to someone new?

The answer is debatable. It depends on what you have to tell.

Meeting someone new and beginning a relationship is wonderful. You want to know everything about each other; your likes, your dislikes and, if you’re like the trillions of people worldwide who enter into new relationships every year, you both are curious about each other’s pasts.

Some things we are more than willing to talk about, other things not so much. There are people, situations, and painful issues that we may feel should be relegated to the past permanently and never mentioned to anyone period.

There is no need to discuss an abusive past boyfriend or a time in your life that you’d rather forget.

A woman I met at one of my Relationship Seminars, a gorgeous redhead with an enviable figure, sees no need to tell her current boyfriend that she was eighty pounds heavier five years ago.

“I wasn’t happy with me and made a change for the better. I no longer relate to that old me,” she told me. “This is the woman I am now and this woman is who my boyfriend knows."

Nor do you have to go into detail about any messy break-ups. If asked, a simple, “it just didn’t work out for us,” should suffice.

That worked well for another woman who told me,

“It took me two years of therapy to get over the emotional abuse from my ex-fiancè. I agreed with my therapist that I needn’t bring that part of my past into a new relationship. It is emotional baggage that I don’t need.”

There are other issues in your past, however, that you should disclose and those have to do with health. Certainly if you have contracted genital herpes from a previous partner you are required by conscience and by law in some areas to be upfront and forthright about it. Your new partner should also be told about any STDs you may have and for which you are being treated.

Apart from infectious health issues, what you tell anyone new about your past is entirely up to you. After all the past is the past and you want to concentrate on your present and future.

***

Get more “Relationships!” Subscribe to Kristen Houghton’s column.

Questions? Want to see a certain relationship topic addressed?  

Add a comment here or email me at:  kch@kristenhoughton.com

Copyright ©2008 by Kristen Houghton. All rights reserved.