Picture this: You’re watching a suspenseful movie… the nice (but painfully naive) young man hears a sound at the door, gets up, and against his better judgment, and certainly with no encouragement from us, goes over to the door and asks “Who’s there?”
No one responds and despite how much we squirm and try to make him not open that door, he opens it and, sure enough! he’s face-to-face with his worst nightmare. We knew it would happen. It has happened before.
That’s the way life is. The longer we live, the more we’ve seen what will happen if we make certain decisions. At least we assume we know what will happen.
So, the older we get (or shall we say, the more maturity we have), the more we tend to do things based upon what we have experienced in the past. That’s fine when it comes to not making the same mistake more than two or three times.
Sometimes, though, we’ll judge new people in our life, based upon the actions of others before them. One man does you wrong and you assume that all men will do you wrong, and treat the next great guy with utter disdain.
Does any of this sound familiar?
“I don’t trust women. My wife cheated on me, and I won’t give another woman a chance to hurt me like that again.”
“I gave him the best years of my life and he took up with some little bimbo, nope, I’d never let a man take control of my life like that again.”
“I used to think love lasted forever, but when my marriage failed, I learned my lesson. No thanks, once was enough.”
Bitterness should be a phase to be worked through, not a lifetime career. If you hold every person you meet accountable for what one person in your past did to make you unhappy, you will miss out on many enjoyable relationships.
A few years ago I was invited to speak to a local singles group. Generally I like to ask a few questions, get everybody talking, exchanging ideas, interacting. This group of about 25 mostly senior ladies and gentlemen was more than willing to share their dating experiences. I thought that by the time someone got to retirement age, they’d have dating under control. I was wrong.
Many of the ladies were adamant they wanted to date, but they didn’t want to date any “old” men. In other words, they didn’t want to date someone their own age, they wanted younger… much younger!
“I’m not going to spend all of my time playing nursemaid to some sick old man,” said one 70-something woman.
A gentleman of 75 loudly announced that he could never find any worthwhile women to date. They all wanted to get married and he wasn’t interested. I wondered if he was reacting to the other woman’s remark about older men.
A young 30-something woman, visiting from another singles group, stood up and recounted some of her dating stories, all with bad endings. She was fed up with dating, lamenting that there just were no suitable available men, just “creeps and bums.”
What I saw as I looked at the people within the room, as I listened to them talk, were men and women who were carrying bitter baggage that was hampering their opportunities to enjoy new relationships.
One woman said men her age were too demanding. She’d had a demanding husband and now that he was gone, she didn’t want to get herself into the same trap again.
One man said he’d already buried two wives and he planned to get himself a young one so he could die first.
With but a few exceptions, these people had such fixed opinions there would be little chance that anyone else would be able to get a word in, much less become part of a conversation with them.
I was hearing them say they wanted to learn how to meet people but I was hearing even louder that they didn’t want to take chances on anyone. They’d been there, done that, had one too many hurts and knew that life would kick them again. Their past emotional hurts, that old “baggage” was right there, plainly visible. They didn’t see it. They didn’t want to see it.
So many of these people had built walls around themselves so they wouldn’t have to face the pain of divorce, the pain of death of a spouse, the pain of being left alone again. In the process, they closed the door to any chance of a new relationship, perhaps the best relationship yet.
This is where life is the biggest gamble. The only way to possibly have any chance at all of winning is to take the gamble, and continue to take the gamble, each and every time, until you find the right combination.
And, to make the trip easier, leave those heavy emotional bags behind.