Romantic Relationships We Had Before Marriage

By ANGELIQUE VACCARO

 

When we get married, we bring together two new creations: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17) Marriage brings us together with a sacred covenant that binds us forever. We make the commitment to be faithful, honest, loyal, and to have eyes and thoughts for our spouse only. We make the decision to do life together, to build our future together, and to renounce to certain things from our past including the people we had romantic relationships with. These past relationships should not matter anymore, they are often baggage both spouses must get rid of to have and maintain a healthy marriage. Past boyfriends and girlfriends have no place in our married life, whether they are brought up in conversations, contacts on our phones, or friends on social media… they should not get in between us. We must leave them in the past and forget about them because they represent a potential danger that could jeopardize our marriage on many levels.

 

Leave the past in the past

In marriage, there should be no secrets between husband and wife. We must always be transparent and always speak the truth. Our spouse must know everything about us and vice-versa, including our past relationships. It is natural and very important to talk about it so there are no surprises down the road, (it is best we learn things from our spouse rather than someone else.) We have the right to know what happened before we met each other, if we dated other people, if we were sexually active, or if we are still in contact with someone we once had an intimate connection with… This is something we should talk about once, and then bury it in the past end never bring it up again. Because we start new with our spouse, we look to our future together and do not allow the past to stand in our way. “Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:13-14)

 

Do not compare your spouse to your exes

There is nothing more disrespectful than comparing our spouse to our exes. Our spouse does not need to be reminded of how it was like with our past relationships, this is not healthy at all and could crush our spouse’s spirit. It will create in them insecurities that were not there before and make them feel unappreciated, not good enough and thereby become discouraged! The message we send while comparing them to our exes is negative, unloving and inappropriate. It can make it sound like we have regrets, that we made a mistake marrying them…and that is not what marriage is about. It can only bring division and trouble in our relationship. It can kill love and destroy everything we worked so hard to build together.

I have a friend who always talks openly about her past relationships and the different sexual experiences she had with men, how much she was in love with them and how wonderful her life was… Sometimes she talks about it in her husband’s presence. It makes me very uncomfortable and I could see it made him uncomfortable too! She keeps comparing him to her past boyfriends in various areas of their marriage and it sounds like he is a lousy, boring, and unloving husband. How can one do this to their spouse? It’s like stabbing them directly in the heart! I could see that my friend was very unhappy in her marriage and did not heal from her past. She can’t accept that it did not work out with some of her relationships and was stuck in the past devoured by regret and making her marriage suffer because of it. This is an issue that must have been dealt with sooner than later, because it reveals a weakness in her heart which led her to make bad choices that almost ended her marriage.

It is important to heal and let go our past relationships and heartaches. We must do it for our spouse but also for ourselves! Let’s not embarrass or disrespect our spouse nor complain about their flaws and weaknesses to other people! This is not loving, and other people don’t need to know these things. We must remember when we married our spouse we chose them! We saw things in them which drew us to them. Even if they are not perfect, they are now “one” with us. So, let’s bring up everything that is good about them, everything that we love about them and make it about them every day, not about our past boyfriends and girlfriends! Let’s show our spouse how much they mean to us, how much we appreciate them not any regrets we might have. Let’s show them that there is no better place than by their side, enjoying life together!

 

Do not stay in contact with an ex

Spouses should not have close, personal friendships with people of the opposite sex, even more so, if this person is an ex! When we stay in contact with someone we had an affinity for in the past and still communicate regularly with them, it can lead to disastrous consequences. Even if we don’t love them anymore, we could still like them very much and that is a red flag on its own! Let’s be honest, these people can never be “just friends” because they never have been. Stalking our exes on social media is also a very bad idea; it looks desperate and creepy. It is fantasizing about the life we could have had with them if we stayed together and this is so wrong! We must reject any relationships that can compromise our marriage or hurt our spouse. There was a deep connection in the past we can’t deny, but if we keep a friendship with our exes, we could put ourselves in situations that may turn into something we will regret. We should never feed these kinds of relationships. We must avoid anything that could tempt us or take us away from our spouse. We must set up boundaries right away and refuse to stay in touch with our exes. 

 

Marriage means moving on from our past relationships and moving forward in our life together as husband and wife. We must do everything we can to have a successful marriage meaning leaving the past in the past and building our future together as new creations.