Ghosts in Your Closet

Do you have any ghosts in your closets that are keeping you from a relationship right now? Let’s face it, we’ve all been in relationships, or even marriages. They leave their mark on us, but we don’t have to keep their baggage in our home or heart.

I remember when my mother got remarried to a widower. He insisted on placing a poorly painted self-portrait of his dead wife on the wall of the living room. Most of you think a man wouldn’t be so insensitive. You’d be surprised. Plenty of people have framed photos of their exes with children in their home. They defer getting rid of the picture because their children are in them. You mean to say, there are no pictures of just the children? I really see no reason for you to have photos of your ex around. It implies you’re keeping them because you like to look at them, you might get back together, or you felt he was a catch and like to show off his photo.

Maybe no photos, but you have other things from the relationship. The table the two of you bought at an auction one rainy Saturday. The sexy black dress you wore on your honeymoon. Diamond earrings you use as your go-to jewelry.  Why should you get rid of these things? Every time you use it or wear it, you revisit buried memories.  These usually aren’t bad memories. They are of a happier time; you rewrite your old relationship making it more like spaghetti sauce commercial with al fresco dinners and green hills in the distance. Your current relationship suffers in several ways. The time you spent on rewriting old scripts isn’t employed on making memories with anyone new. No one can measure to this rewritten man and times. You may even overlook the things that drove you apart. No man enjoys sitting on another man’s couch.

Put the shoe on the other foot. His favorite tie is a gift from his super sexy ex. You hate the tie and think it should go. Is he wearing it because he misses her? Does he think about her when he puts it on? You might insist he get rid of the tie. He refuses and now you think the ex is more important. See why it is never good to have physical reminders hanging around?

People dispense energy anywhere they go. Often when you go to battlefields, prisons, even concentration camps you have the sensation of oppression and despair. On the same hand, you can go to theme parks and immediately have a sense of excitement because so many of the visitors left all that energy behind.  When a relationship ends, whether it is due to death or circumstance, there is an energy imprint.  Usually it is the last emotions you experienced which were probably grief or betrayal. That’s why it is so important to move to a new house or apartment when starting a new relationship.

A friend had to move into her fiancé’s ex-wife’s house. Her fiancé had lived in it for several years.  She walked through the houses recognizing another woman’s stamp. She’d wondered if they often fixed meals together. Maybe rolled around on the living room carpet. She certainly could imagine what they did in the bedroom. You might say she could have thought these things without living in the house, but why would she? There would not be constant reminders of the ex-wife everywhere she turned.

I am a practical person so it is hard for me to toss valuable items. When I entered into my new marriage, I did not want ghosts from the past to be hanging on. I made an effort to clean house of unwanted memories, as did my husband. I sold items on Ebay and Amazon. My daughter took a truckload of furnishings to her new home. All the rest went to Goodwill, local missions, and DAV making it a tax write-off.

Getting rid of all the items was surprisingly freeing. I believed I had jettisoned all my old relationship stuff before I was amazed how much stuff I still had. I not only moved out bad memories, I made space for new good memories with my husband. It is surprising how much negative energy a pair of forgotten boots, television set, and paperwork generated in my home.

The two of us started over in a new smaller home without any reminders of previous relationships. It is good to walk through the front door and know what we have is exclusively ours. I did bring with me family heirlooms associated with my family only. I specify this to let people know you don’t have to get rid of a necklace your grandmother gave you because you wore it often with your ex. You only rid yourself of what is significant to the prior relationship.

Some people have a hard time of letting go of something an ex gave them. If that is the case, maybe you aren’t ready for a new relationship. Other people don’t have the money or resources to buy all new stuff. It doesn’t have to be new. It only has to be devoid of association with your ex. My sweetie kept furniture he bought after his divorce since I was the only woman who ever used it. He could look at the couch and not remember another chick perched there. If you can’t totally clean house, do what you can, then replace one offending item at a time.

Maybe you think things shouldn’t have this power over us, but think how you felt when you bought it together, or when your ex gave it to you. Do you want those ghosts in your home? Do you want to be haunted by a previous relationship?