We all carry scars from the past, but how do we keep the emotional baggage from yesterday from weighing down our marriages today?
It happens at odd moments. You’ll find yourself discussing something with your spouse. Maybe you’re not entirely agreeing, but it’s far from a fight.
But then he says something, or uses a tone. And from deep inside you, words and emotions start spilling out and now you have definitely turned your discussion into a fight.
Later, you’ll wonder what happened. Where had those defensive or offensive words come from? Your spouse had looked at you like you had grown a second head, as confused by your out-of-proportion response as you were.
Why did something so innocent get your back up?
Our minds like to play connect the dots
Our minds are complex and they sometimes see connections that aren’t even there. The ability to make connections developed as a survival mechanism, when seeing the danger in a set of animal footprints or weather conditions was the difference between life or death.
But that pattern seeking can also be based on overstimulated emotions and nerves, leading us to conclusions that aren’t right. Carrying emotional baggage into a marriage can be one of those stimuli.
Our minds hear one person say we’re unreasonable and connect it to another who called us crazy or stupid for our ideas.
Our spouse says they’ll be home late and we connect it to a boyfriend who lied and cheated on us.
A friend says she can’t hang out this week, and we immediately flash back to other rejections over the years.
Instead of living in the now, we are being dragging around by the emotional baggage of yesterday.
But how do we let go of it? First, we’ll have to recognize that it’s there.
Identifying our emotional baggage
If you don’t know there’s a problem, how are you going to fix it? Many of us don’t even notice the emotional baggage we carry around. It’s sneaky like that.
Whether it’s something that was picked up from parents or in the schoolyard, from old boyfriends or from past struggles in our current marriages, emotional responses can be subtly integrated into our minds and behaviors.
It took years for my husband to point out that being called stupid, even in jest, is like a red cape in front of a bull for me. He likens it to Back to the Future’s Marty McFly being called “chicken.”
Why does this bother me so much? I have no idea. I can’t think of anyone who ever called me stupid, at least not in a way that stung enough to create that sort of knee jerk reaction. But there it is. And while I could spend hours playing armchair psychologist, it’s not as important for me to figure out the why, but rather the how – how do I keep this reaction from hurting my relationships.
Because disproportionate responses do hurt relationships. They make it harder to communicate and sometimes create bad feelings that are hard to shake.
Here are some ways to help you identify emotional baggage that you might be carrying in your marriage:
- What are your pressure points, the things that make you explode?
- Are there any themes in your past relationships that are playing out now in your marriage?
- Do you and your spouse fight about anything in particular often?
How to keep emotional baggage from weighing your marriage down
So, you’ve pinpointed a few things that are likely culprits from the past that are hanging on to your relationship now. Like freeloading relatives who’ve parked their RV in your driveway, they’re not always as easy to get rid of as you’d like.
We could learn to pack that baggage up and hide it away so it’s not always front and center at every moment, but that’s not always the healthiest route. Or, we can learn to unpack it and put it where it should go because it’s no longer useful to us.
- Start with prayer. Ask for strength, discernment, and guidance when trying to go through old hurts and responses.
- Communicate. Talk to your spouse about what’s going through your mind when he says or does something. He may be able to help, knowing that certain things trigger a lot of emotion for you.
- Seek professional help. Some things are too heavy to carry on our own. Talking to a therapist or pastor can help with some of the heavy lifting.
- Be patient. It takes years for us to accumulate emotional baggage. We won’t be able to just dump it on the side of the road the first chance we get. So be patient with yourself.
Emotional baggage from the past can easily poison a marriage. It can create problems that aren’t even there, or take small issues and turn them into battles because we can’t see past our own emotions.
No one wants to burden a relationship with old pain. Take steps to unload some of those hurts and knee-jerk reactions before they create lasting scars in your marriage today. You and your spouse will both be better off for it.
Do you find your marriage struggling under the weight of emotional baggage from the past? What have you done to identify those old hurts and put them to rest? I’d love to hear in the comments.
Looking for more on marriage and family? Check out these posts:
20 Small Things that Make a Big Difference in Your Marriage
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