Does your current love life look like this: You have just entered into a new relationship with someone who seems perfect for you and with whom you see the potential for a long-term relationship.
However, something is wrong.
Even though everything seems great in a new relationship, you can’t relax. Instead, you keep finding reasons to sabotage that new relationship.
You don’t seem to be able to enjoy your new relationship because of your previous relationship.
How to stop your past relationship from destroying your current one? By allowing yourself to heal, not allowing your ex-relationship to interfere with your new relationship, and most importantly, leaving the previous relationship where it belongs, in the past.
All this is clear to you, but you feel that your last relationship ruined you emotionally.
In addition to the fact that you may still have feelings for your ex, you now carry the baggage of disappointments and insecurities into new relationships.
This article aims to help you leave your ex-relationship behind, dust yourself off, and allow yourself to be happy in your new relationship.
Because bad things must fall apart, so better things can fall together.
4 Ways How Your Past Relationship is Currently Ruining Your New One
You must have heard sometimes, “Everyone comes with baggage.”
This refers to emotional baggage and emotional scars from the past.
It includes all unresolved emotional issues, traumas, disappointments, and stress from the past that is transferred to the present.
Emotional baggage doesn’t just apply to ex-relationships, but we’ll only use it in that context for this article.
This emotional baggage is holding you back from enjoying a new relationship. Here’s how:
1. You Are Extremely Jealous in a New Relationship
A certain amount of jealousy is normal in relationships, but what if the jealousy becomes obsessive because of previous bad experiences?
Suppose your previous relationship ended ingloriously, with your ex-partner cheating on you.
You had faith in your ex-partner and your relationship, but you ultimately ended up hurt.
This can create substantial trust issues in a new relationship.
We understand that the past teaches us some important lessons, but what if you don’t implement those lessons correctly.
Your new partner won’t tolerate your jealous outbursts for long because you’re sending them huge red flags that you don’t trust them.
Relationships are especially sensitive to jealousy at the beginning because the boundaries are different at the beginning and later when the relationship has already lasted longer.
You don’t respect any of that and act like a cop to your new partner.
Isn’t that paranoid? You ask them to report where they were during the day, constantly try to snoop on their phone, and check their every like or follow on social networks.
In addition to everything, you may even have retroactive jealousy.
Have you heard of the term retroactive jealousy?
According to sociologist and sexologist Sarah Melancon, the term retroactive jealousy has been used to describe jealousy, resentment, or frustration regarding a partner’s past romantic or sexual experiences.
2. You Calculate With Emotions Towards Your New Partner
In the previous relationship, you gave your whole self. You didn’t spare your feelings because you thought the relationship would last.
Unfortunately, it ended the way it did, and now you feel like a fool for giving yourself that much.
You have decided not to submit your emotions in the next relationship and to be more considerate.
That strategy is somewhat justified because we often rush into new relationships and give too much emotionally initially, under the influence of those butterflies in the stomach. However, we get disappointed very quickly.
However, this does not mean you should completely block your emotions toward your new partner.
They try hard around you and do everything to have a functional relationship with you, but they only get your cold response.
You built an impenetrable wall around you, and hid your emotions, so why are you even in a new relationship?
Emotions towards someone either exist or don’t. You can’t calculate them, and you shouldn’t deliberately deny them to a new partner because you have previous bad experiences.
What if it’s a long-distance relationship? Just because your previous long-distance relationship didn’t last doesn’t mean this one won’t either.
3. You Use Various Mind Games in Your New Relationship
In your previous relationship, you were under the influence of your ex-partner to the point where you felt disrespected.
Your self-confidence was very low because your ex-partner constantly manipulated you.
You put up with all that because you loved them, but that relationship ended, and now you feel like your eyes have been opened.
“My last relationship ruined me, and I will never let that happen again!” This has become your personal revenge oath.
You have told yourself that you will no longer be a victim of anyone’s manipulation or abuse. And that is a good decision because you don’t need to put up with such toxic partners.
However, what is terrible is that you have become someone who uses such dirty tricks in the relationship. This a classic case of “when the victim becomes the perpetrator.”
Your defense mechanism tells you that you need to be the bad guy now so that you never come across as a fool again.
That’s why now, in a new relationship, you use various mind games to establish control and dominance over your new partner.
Now you play hard-to-get, play the victim card to get to the goal, ghost your new partner, or gaslight them.
And you have no problem lying, either.
Ask yourself, did your new partner deserve this treatment?
4. You Compare Your New Partner With The Ex
What if your ex is still on your mind even though the relationship is definitely over?
You never even got over your ex and entered a new relationship unprepared for it.
Wherever you go with your new partner, you mention how you were here with your ex and how nice it was. You may even cry in front of your new partner under the rush of those emotions.
You have no problem comparing your new partner with your ex while emphasizing how the ex was much better than them in every way.
What kind of message are you sending your new partner this way? Your new relationship won’t last long if you keep acting like this.
This may have already happened to you because you tried several times to be in a relationship after that famous ex, but all those new relationships ended quickly.
How to Get Over Your Ex and Get Rid of Past Relationship Memories? 5 Crucial Tips
It’s time to leave your ex in the past where it belongs and allow yourself to move on.
Here are some tips that can help you:
1. Remove Everything That Reminds You of Your Ex
You probably still have one of their sweatshirts in your closet. Or you keep the gifts they gave you in a visible place.
You don’t want to get rid of all those little things that remind you of the times with your ex, but you have to if you want to get out of that circle of nostalgia for your previous relationship.
Also, don’t forget any digital traces of your past relationship, such as all the folders with photos with your ex on your laptop.
Just as removing the clutter from the room is necessary, eliminating everything that makes an emotional mess in your head is also essential.
2. Don’t Follow Your Ex on Social Media
We cannot emphasize the importance of this enough.
Even if you parted on good terms, you should not follow them on social media.
You don’t want to see how they are now living some new amazing life, and you are not a part of it.
Following your ex on social media would be ok if it wasn’t difficult for you, but it is tough for you, so UNFOLLOW.
3. Focus on Yourself
Maybe you were too focused on your ex in your previous relationship, so you neglected yourself, your goals, and your dreams.
It’s time to reconnect with yourself.
Practice self-care, and do things that please you.
Surround yourself with friends and family because you need support.
Also, do something you wanted but couldn’t do in your previous relationship.
4. Don’t Rush Into a New Relationship
Many people base their emotional security on whether they are in a relationship.
When such a major shipwreck occurs, such as the end of a relationship, they must quickly enter into a new relationship to regain security. Or worse, they return to an ex from an even more distant past.
Instead, give yourself time to heal, leave all emotions towards your ex behind you, and move on.
That’s the only way you’ll be ready for a new relationship.
5. Don’t Direct Your Frustrations At Your New Partner
Anger, jealousy, trust issues, desire for control, and similar negative emotions remained in you from your former relationship.
Is it ok to take all your frustrations out on your new partner now? Of course not.
You don’t want someone to do that to you again, so why would you do it to others?
A functional relationship is possible again without playing mind games and respecting boundaries.
Most Importantly – Allow Yourself To Be Happy Again
“Don’t let past relationships ruin your future happiness. Scars remind us of where we‘ve been, not where we’re going.”
Don’t sabotage yourself and your new relationship because of your ex; they don’t deserve it.
Ex should mean: Thanks for the EXperience, but our time has EXpired, now EXit from my life!
And don’t worry about that emotional baggage because everyone has their own baggage. Find and allow someone to help you unpack.
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