I dated a guy for two months and everything seemed perfect until he told me that his last relationship was three months ago. That relationship was a year long, so when he started seeing me they had only been broken up a month. Once that was out in the open he started distancing himself and I eventually broke it off because I was over the inconsistency.
I typically don’t like bringing up the past. I feel like the past should be left alone. But after my last experience I think it’s an important thing to know so that I don’t put myself at risk and end up the rebound girl.
So when you should ask a guy when his last relationship/serious dating/fling was? And how can you do it without it coming off in a negative way?
How recent his last relationship was isn’t a problem in and of itself.
His relationship with you is what it is… your relationship isn’t a thing (like a stone or purse or car).
A relationship is like music: it is what it is as it’s being experienced. In the same way, a song on your iPod isn’t the music… you hearing and experiencing the song in the moment of listening and feeling it as it pulses through you and spreads through your body, pounding through your consciousness… that is the music. And that is your relationship. You feel your experience of the relationship as the music is playing.
When you’re with a truly compatible person, you can feel that happiness in the center of you… you can feel it spreading through you… you can feel the joy of wanting their presence, loving their existence, and their way of being.
In that way, I can’t imagine that your relationship (and his presence in your life) felt that way…
Sure, I can imagine that you might have felt your relationship with him was very significant, important, urgent, etc. But I can’t imagine that you weren’t simultaneously feeling a growing sense that something was wrong when you were with him… that something wasn’t quite right. I don’t know exactly what you felt, but whatever it was, I know it didn’t feel good.
Maybe it felt like worries… or paranoia… or resentment… or insecurity… or anger… or a feeling that you weren’t enough or worthy of him… or something else that just didn’t feel completely and purely good.
And this is one of the most confusing parts of our journey towards finding pure, true, complete love: We must learn the difference between being intoxicated by a relationship with another person and being truly happy with another person.
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What does it mean to be intoxicated by another person?
It feels like your relationship is spiked with a kind of poison. You feel this urgent, suffocating, disturbing kind of feeling when you’re with them… and it usually gets worse and worse as the relationship goes on. But it also feels like you have to win over that feeling… defeat it… destroy it… find a way to finally “solve it” so that you can have the relationship and have peace… relief…
This creates a sort of emotional roller-coaster effect, which is the heart of emotional intoxication. When they do or say something that allows you to stop thinking or feeling the negative thoughts you were having, the ending of that negative feeling brings you tremendous relief.
And here’s the most important thing to understand: We misinterpret the feeling of relief that comes with the ending of the negative feelings as the relationship giving us a good feeling, when really we’re only feeling it because the relationship normally feels so bad.
We don’t realize it, but choosing to be in an intoxicating relationship is about as silly as intentionally wearing extremely tight and uncomfortable shoes for hours only to get the “pleasure” that comes with taking them off.
When we don’t see this, we unknowingly end up in relationships that become the greatest sources of misery in our lives.
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Even when we do realize this, cutting off a toxic relationship can feel like we’re giving up or “losing.” And so, even though we’re miserable… even though our minds are screaming at us that we’re on the wrong path… we mistakenly believe that dropping the poison is a loss or would make us less, when really, it would finally give us the peace, joy, and fulfillment that we’ve been trying to get (but have felt like we could never quite reach, because the poison we’re subjecting ourselves to is the cause of the lack of joy, peace and fulfillment… not the path to get to it).
The point is, it doesn’t matter when his last relationship was or when you bring it up. If it’s a good relationship, it will work. If it’s a bad relationship, it won’t…or it will be incredibly unpleasant and stressful for a while and then it will come apart.
If two people are in a good place in their lives and can bring that into the relationship, there’s nothing to worry about and no issue that needs to be solved. You’ll be able to trust what you have and won’t be bothered by what he had before you. It’s all about being in the right place internally and putting your focus on managing your mood and your happiness, not figuring out the right time to ask him a certain thing.
Hope this helps,
eric charles
Written by Eric Charles
