Whenever you start a new relationship, you’re going to bring along some baggage. But the good thing about a fresh new relationship is that the person you’re dating has never hurt you. All of your baggage is from past relationships. Whenever you start to feel insecure, you can remind yourself this person is not your ex. You can remind yourself not to blame them for what someone else put you through in the past.
However, when you get back together with your ex, the person who brought you baggage is the person standing in front of you. You can’t reassure yourself when you start to feel insecure. You can’t convince yourself this person would never hurt you because they already have.
The worst part of getting back together with your ex is knowing what they are capable of doing to you, knowing how much pain they can cause, knowing how easy they were able to walk away from you. Even if you honestly believe they’ve changed for the better, you know there’s always a chance they could change back, they could put you through hell again, they could screw you over again, they could break your heart again.
When you get back together with an ex, you can’t pretend they’re completely innocent. You can’t pretend they’re too nice to hurt you. You can’t pretend they love you too much to ever break your heart because they showed their true colors in the past. You saw their worst side, and as much as you want to give them the benefit of the doubt, as much as you want to believe they have changed, there will always be a piece of you wondering whether they are going to hurt you again.
In order to make your relationship work the second time around, you have to truly and completely forgive your ex for what they put you through. You can’t keep bringing up old arguments. You can’t keep harping on how they hurt you three or four years ago. You can either move passed the mistake they made — or you can decide what they’ve done is unforgivable and date someone else, someone new.
If you’re thinking about getting back together with your ex, you’ve probably been saying thing like we’ll start over, we’ll wipe the slate clean. But you have to realize, as much as you want to start fresh, that isn’t going to happen. You can’t erase your old memories of them.
As much as you want to put the past in the past, your history will always be a part of your relationship. You can’t take back what happened before. You can’t erase the pain you brought onto each other.
You might want to forget what they put you through in the past, but you’re always going to remember. What matters is whether or not you dwell on it. What matters is whether you are able to live with knowing they hurt you or whether you are still having trouble swallowing it. 
