How to accept the past of your partner? It isn’t always easy…

In today’s reader Q and A video, I wanted to offer a few thoughts on how to accept the past of your partner, and how you can approach the question:

Am I dealing with retroactive jealousy concerning my partner’s past, or a genuine conflict in values?

Transcript below

Zachary Stockill: The question I want to address in today’s video is one that I get very, very frequently.

They put the question to me in different ways, but basically, the question is, “How to accept the past of my partner? Am I dealing with retroactive jealousy?” Or, “are my partner’s values and my values incompatible?”

In other words, these people are basically asking me, am I dealing with irrational jealousy, or should I leave my partner? Is there a fundamental deal breaker issue here that I should be taking note of? And does this deal breaker issue mean that I should break up with them?

How to accept the past of your partner?

Now, obviously, we’re all going to have to arrive at different answers to this question.

If you’re grappling with this question now, it’s really a very personal choice, but one thing I’ll suggest is I wrote a long article on this topic. I also made a video about it.

In addition to having a look at that video, I want to address one issue, or one idea that I think might be helpful to you as you make this decision.

Basically, the idea that I want you to consider as you grapple with how to accept the past of your partner is remembering that there’s no such thing as perfection in a person, or in a relationship.

Basically, what I’m saying is there’s always going to be something about your partner or perhaps your partners past that doesn’t sit quite right, or isn’t your favorite thing to think about, or you don’t love it.

We’ve all made mistakes. We’ve all made bad choices in love, in sex, in dating.

It’s hard to be a modern human.

The modern sexual marketplace is really complicated. We all have baggage. We’ve all made mistakes, and looking for perfection, looking for someone who their past is a hundred percent squeaky clean. You tell yourself, “Oh, if they just had a clean past.”

Or, for example, the most common example, I get a lot of guys emailing me who basically want a virgin. They think, “If I’m going to be in a relationship with a woman, I want to be with a virgin.” Okay, fine. Let’s play that out for a minute. Let’s say you find your virgin, your mythical virginal woman. Who’s to say in a year, or two, or three of marriage she won’t get bored?

She’s watching television, she’s watching movies, she’s realizing that the modern woman, or many modern women in society have a range of relationships before they settle down. So maybe she leaves you, and she divorces you, and she goes off to have these experiences that she didn’t have before she met you.

There are a million and one examples like that if you scroll around online enough, and what’s more when you’re grappling with this question of values, and what’s important to you in a relationship, and should you leave your partner, try to focus on what is most important.