Crazy talk

At what point in a new relationship should romantic history be brought up? And how?

Of course you don’t want to start off a new relationship by comparing it to your previous ones. But past experience informs – sometimes to a large extent – present behavior. And knowledge of someone’s past experience can explain their present behavior – not necessarily excuse it, but make it more understandable. (“Oh, thaaat’s why she does that…. She needs to get over it.”) So telling a new boy/girl friend a bit about your past might be useful for explaining seemingly crazy behavior and getting through those first tenuous weeks/months.

For example, and this is a minor example in my personal arsenal of crazy, when my guy and I go dancing, I tend to watch him and be aware of where he is as much as I can. Part of it is that I really like watching him dance – he’s a good dancer and very fun to watch – but the other night I was watching him and thinking about it and realized that a part of the reason that I watch him so much is because of the time that I was abandoned at a dance by a date who left with someone else. [People who have ever talked to me about my love life may remember this story as “the date who brought a date to our date”.] Obviously that is not the full reason (he’s really fun to watch!) but it is a part of the reason.

And that’s not the only example. I have any number of paranoias – and I say paranoias deliberately because intellectually I know that they are irrational – about relationships. I know exactly where they come from – almost to the day in some cases. I can recognize their effect on my thought patterns and I am sure that they affect my actual behavior to an extent. Being trapped in them, I can’t objectively evaluate their impact on my behavior, but I’m sure it’s there. And I feel like it might help if people involved with me know about these paranoias and the triggers for them, so that they know that I’m not trying to act like a lunatic. I just don’t know what the best way to bring it up would be.