"I keep bringing old baggage to my new relationship"

Hi friend!

Welcome back to Ask Liz, the weekly column where I answer your most pressing life questions. These are the questions you’d ask your most knowledgeable friend if she happened to have done a deep dive on literally everything (including digging into ALL the newest science and interviewing top experts in her field).

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Now, let’s get into it!

Dear Liz,

I want to start by saying that I feel so lucky to be in a relationship with an actually wonderful guy. He never leaves my texts on read, always says the right thing when I’m upset, and makes me laugh SO HARD. We’ve been together for nine months now, and I really do think this could be the person for me—but I’m seriously struggling with letting go of baggage from previous relationships. My last boyfriend cheated on me, and the one before that was verbally abusive. Unbeknownst to my new BF, I’ve gone through his phone before (I didn’t find anything and am in no way proud of this), and I feel like I always think he’s going to yell at me when I screw anything up even slightly. How can I separate this great new relationship from my terrible past ones?

— Weighed Down by Baggage

Hey WDB,

Wait, this guy seems amazing!! Like the actual unicorn all my single girlfriends are dying to meet. I love that he makes you laugh, because I honestly think (and have heard from experts) that a shared sense of humor, and the ability to laugh when things get hard, is one of THE most important components of lasting relationships.

First, I want you to know that I’ve been in your shoes, or something like them. I dated this one guy who lied to me about small, dumb things constantly, and another who made me feel like I had to brace myself before every conversation. So when I finally landed in a truly good relationship with my now-husband, my body DID NOT get the memo. I found myself waiting for the other shoe to drop, scanning for red flags that weren’t there, basically running old software on new hardware.

So, let’s get into what’s really happening and what you can do about it.

You already know that secret dig through your boyfriend’s phone wasn’t your finest moment, so I’m not here to pile on. What is interesting to me—and I hope is interesting to you, too—is why it happened.

I talked to sex and relationship therapist Dr. Tammy Nelson about this exact pattern when she was on my podcast (you can listen here, if it’s helpful), and she told me trust isn’t really something a partner hands you; it’s more of an inside job.

When you’ve been burned before, the thing that actually breaks isn’t your trust in other people—it’s your trust in your own intuition. You stop believing your gut can accurately read a situation, so you go looking for hard evidence instead, even when part of you already knows the answer.

So that phone scroll wasn’t actually about suspicion of him; it’s basically just a symptom of not trusting yourself anymore.

That flinch you feel when you mess up—the bracing for him to yell—is a completely understandable response to what an old partner actually did. The problem is your nervous system doesn’t automatically know the difference between this amazing person you’re with now and the one who hurt you. It’s just pattern-matching, and you're reacting to a threat that's no longer actually there.

A good partner should help regulate your nervous system over time, not keep it on high alert. So if you’re consistently anxious around someone who has, by your own account, given you no reason to be, that’s worth discussing with him.

I know you don’t want to, but instead of building a case in your head, I’m going to have to suggest you talk to him about it. If he’s really as amazing as you say (and it seems like he is!), he’ll be open to it. You can try borrowing a trick from couples therapist Zach Brittle, whom I had on the podcast. He makes a distinction I think about a lot: “I feel like you’re upset with me” isn’t actually a feeling—it’s a judgment wearing a feeling’s clothes. A real feeling stays about you: “I feel anxious.”

So instead of monitoring for signs he’s mad, try just telling him what’s happening inside your head and body. You can say, “I’m feeling anxious about this, and I know it’s left over from stuff that happened before you—can you just tell me you’re not upset?”

Zach’s other move for this is separating the behavior from the verdict: you can say, “I don’t think you did anything wrong, but I noticed myself getting anxious when X happened—could you tell me you’re not upset?” That’s a completely different move than surveillance, because you’re being vulnerable instead of trying to outsource the reassurance your own gut used to give you.

This is also a great use case for a therapist, if you’re open to that. Untangling “what my intuition is telling me” from “what my old trauma is telling me” is very hard to do alone, and therapists are literally trained to do exactly that.

For now, I hope you can find a way to enjoy this guy—because he really does seem wonderful.

Now I want to hear from you: have you ever caught yourself bringing baggage from a past relationship into a good one? What helped you finally set it down? Let me know in the comments.

Leave a comment

Love you,
Liz

Looking for your next podcast episode? On Monday, I asked an important question: Is being in a relationship with a man even worth it?? Women are dating less than ever, and whether you are happily or unhappily single, or happily or unhappily married, this is a really interesting episode to explore a societal moment that is happening right now. On today’s episode, I talked to Dr. Nicholas Epley, one of the most respected behavioral scientists in the world, about the one habit that will instantly make you more likable and how to have better (and more!) social interactions.

🎧 Is Being In A Relationship With A Man… Worth It?

Listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

🎧 The One Habit That Will Instantly Make You More Likeable

Listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

You guys HAVE to see The Invite, the Seth Rogen/Olivia Wilde/Penelope Cruz/Ed Norton movie that I did not expect to hit this hard!

Go see it with girlfriends, on a date, or (even better, honestly) on a double date, because it gives you SO much conversational fodder afterward. Esther Perel was actually a consultant on this movie, so it’s a fascinating showcase of totally different relationship dynamics playing out on screen.

I saw an early screening on a double date, and we went to dinner right after—and the conversation was genuinely one of the best we’ve had. From the trailers, I thought it’d be kind of a bummer (relationship movies can go there), but it’s actually laugh-out-loud funny and so much smarter than I expected. 10 out of 10, and be sure to watch it with people you’ll want to talk to after.

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