by Joseph Whalen

Created on: April 04, 2008

Communication is paramount in a healthy marriage. A wife who is unwilling to speak of her past immediately draws suspicion from her husband. Husbands who have no interest in their wives past can never fully understand the person they married. Our past relationships are not things to be ashamed of or jealous of. A successful marriage stems from understanding your partner as well as you understand yourself, something that is impossible to do if their past is shrouded in mystery.

All through life the decisions we face shape the people we become later in life. Two people faced with identical situations can make entirely different decisions for reasons that even they may not fully understand at the time. Living with the consequences of those decisions is what helps us grow and mature. It is this more mature person that we eventually fall in love with and marry. Our chosen spouse is a person who is shaped and developed through their experiences all throughout their life, not someone who just came into existence the first day we met them. Ignorance of your partners past is a recipe for disaster. Even though you may not totally agree with the path your partner has taken through life, knowing the choices they had and the situations they faced help you to better understand the person you have chosen to spend the rest of your life with.

Men in general can be extremely over protective of their loved ones and this in turn can lead to feelings of jealousy when they feel their role in a relationship has been threatened, even if the threat is a perceived one from the past. As such many men may willingly choose to either ignore or simply disregard any experience their partner has had in the past that they find to be uncomfortable. While this may serve to cushion one's ego for the immediate situation, in the long run this is a caustic attitude that will eventually eat away at the relationship and cause a resentment that neither party could foresee at its onset.

The fundamental differences between men and woman are varied and complex. On one hand women tend to care very little about their partners romantic interests of the past and instead tend to focus more on the present and future. Ensuring fidelity, commitment and honesty in their current relationship often takes precedence over concerns about their partners past. To a large extent this is a healthy attitude to have. There is little purpose in agonizing over relationships your significant other engaged in prior to your unification

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