Past, present, and future

I began the new year in a new relationship. But,as much fun as the past few months have been with him, he puts up this wall that I can’t seem to break through, and I know it’s because he’s been hurt in the past. In an attempt to be comforting, caring and optimistic, I have told him not to let his past keep him from finding happiness. But, recently, I have realized he is not the only one stuck in the past.
A guy I used to like accepted my friend request on facebook. I ended things with him last summer because he had two jobs, and time was not on his side. As I looked at his profile picture, I couldn’t help but remember this time last spring, when we were texting each other almost every day and hanging out whenever we could. I also found out he is currently in a relationship with someone. When I found that out, I thought, why her? What did I do wrong? I couldn’t believe these thoughts were going through my head, because I thought I had moved on. I am seeing someone else and, to top it off, on June 11th I am graduating. I guess I feel this way because deep down I know since he never said we were dating, it meant he didn’t want to date me. I can’t say I blame him since I was the busy, emotionally unavailable one when we first met.
But it made me wonder how much baggage we carry from one relationship to the next? Unless you are in middle or high school, chances are the person you are with has some sort of dating history. When a relationship ends, whether on good terms or bad terms, it always sucks because when you start a relationship, you hope it will turn out for the best.
I have always heard that it is best not to talk about the past because the whole point of a new relationship is to hope for a better future. But I know we can’t help but talk about where we’ve been. With that said, I also know that when we dwell too much on the past, we are sad because we think about what we did, what we didn’t do and what we could have done. So maybe when we think about our past relationships, we just have to remember there are reasons why they didn’t make it into our future.