Late one night in November 2014, around 2am, I was pacing back and forth in the lounge-room of my ex, tears pouring down my cheeks, as he slept peacefully in the next room. I was trying to make sense of his behaviour that weekend and how he seemed to be turning into someone I didn’t know. I didn’t know he was already checking out of our relationship and was building up to a deathblow he’d sensitively deliver the next morning (literally around two minutes before he dropped me off at work).

As I paced the room, assessing my own behaviour, I wondered if I was doing something to create the situation. Could it be my fault in some way? As a woman of 40-something years, I’d been in relationships before and could, with a bit of objectivity, see that maybe I was bringing some of my emotional baggage forward. I don’t think that’s a particularly unusual state of affairs. After all, we are all shaped by our experiences and it’s sometimes hard to leave those behind when we begin a new relationship.

Eventually, as I often do, I turned to my writing to process the situation and wrote this blog on my phone where it has remain hidden until now. So here are a few of my thoughts on the ghosts of relationships past. I did read this to my ex as we drove to work the next day but I guess he didn’t really get it. However, perhaps my words will provide you with some interesting insights (or amusement).

I sometimes think our exes are like nosy new neighbours who don’t know when to leave. You move into a new relationship/house and everything seems great. There’s more room than your old place and you’ll feel much more free and happy. ‘Yeah,’ you think, ‘this is going to be good’.

Then the neighbours show up. ‘Yoohoo!’ they’ll cry as they stick their heads around the front door you foolishly left ajar. ‘Can we come in?’

Before you can say, ‘No! No! Come back later’ (or preferably never) they’ve strolled in and started going through all your stuff including the new boxes you’ve just started unpacking.

‘Oh, remember when we…,’ one of them will say.

‘Oh you know you always made that such an issue with me,’ another will reminisce.

And so on they will go until you feel like you’re going to scream.

You don’t want them there in the new house with you, those old relationships you thought you’d left behind. You don’t want them affecting your new relationship. But, unfortunately those ‘neighbours’ are always going to live next to your house, wherever you move. You can never escape them completely and they can cause trouble in your new house if you let them.

The trick is to hear the lessons they remind you about but always know when to push them unceremoniously out the door and turn the locks behind them. A good set of sensor lights will also catch them in the act when they next try to sneak onto your property.

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