Picking through the Bones: Should the Past Have Any Bearing on the Future?

This the very last day of Relationship Week. And this week has been tremendously successful from my point of view. I sincerely thank everyone who stopped by, and I especially thank everyone who contributed to the conversation. I will return later today with a final summation of the week and what I have learned.

The notorious Karrine Steffans, better known by the sobriquet Superhead, has been ubiquitous in the media over the past few weeks promoting her latest book, The Vixen Manual: How to Find, Seduce, and Keep the Man You Want. Whatever you have to say about Ms. Steffans, she has mastered the fine art of selling herself, excuse me, self-promotion.

I watched or heard a few of these interviews, and they seem to follow a common theme. She is more than willing to talk about her current book, but should the interviewer bring up the past, she gets all indignant; she refuses to discuss anything of her past. [Click here to see or hear a couple of these interviews via the blog Witches Brew.]

In fact, in one such interview, she evokes the fact that she is now a wife and a mother of two little boys, and castigates the interviewer for bringing up the most sordid episodes of her life in light of that fact. But at this point she loses me.

Has her husband not read or heard of her first book, Confessions of a Video Vixen, in which she describes in detail her many, and I mean many, sexual exploits with entertainers and athletes of every stripe? Does she have a contingency plan for when her two precious little boys eventually ask her why people called their dear mother Superhead?

And in contemplating Ms. Steffans’ dilemma, I am reminded of a recent incident when I was introduced to the fiancé of my frat brother who moved here from out of town. She must have seen my eyes widen and registered the look of shock on my face because from where she stood slightly behind him, she immediately began to vigorously shake her head as if to say “No, please don’t.”

Back when we were undergraduates, she took her role as a sweet very seriously. She was in heavy rotation among the brotherhood, and word was there was no limit to what she would do to keep up the morale.

So, the question quickly becomes that if you were a man, would you or could you marry a woman like Ms. Steffans who has detailed her past sex life in a best-selling book for the world to see. If you are a woman, would you or could you marry a man if in his past he was, hmm, let's say a porn king. Remember the permanence of the written word; years for now that book will still be available for all to read and marvel. Remember the permenance of film. Who might be viewing his celluloid sexual exploits years from now?

But what of my clueless frat brother? He has no idea of his lovely fiancé’s past (and I ain’t about to tell him), but I know one of our brothers will eventually have one drink too many, and the ugly, naked truth will spill out. How will he react, or better still, how should he react?

When Mrs. Reddick and I got married, I never asked her about her past. I felt that what she wanted me to know, she would tell me. Not only that, an older relative, either my grandfather or an uncle, once told me to never ask a question if I were not sure I could handle the answer. And by the time we got married, I had sense enough to listen to the wisdom of old folks. Plus, I had a few bones in my own closet that I did not want to discuss.

But the fact is that we meet people and enter into relationships with people and fall in love with people without ever knowing their full background. Usually, we know only what they want us to know. And everyone has a few bones in their closet. When you see your special someone again, just look at them. And then ask yourself where they are hiding the bones.

Some of the bones are big bones, like of the tyrannosaurus rex variety, and some of the bones are of the smaller variety like those tiny pesky little fish bones you can barely see that threaten to get caught in your throat and choke you to death.

And if you love someone, I mean really and truly love someone, should the past even matter? True love is unconditional, but in the same instance, to forgive someone you must then forget that thing for which you forgive them. But sometimes things tend to get stuck in your head. Sometimes, whether consciously or unconsciously, the scenes tend to play themselves out in your head over and over again. It’s like a snowball rolling down hill. It just gets bigger and bigger and bigger and then the avalanche begins. What then?

At what point does your mate’s past, or your past, threaten the future?

Do you believe that you should know every little detail about your mate’s past? What if you found out something absolutely horrible about your mate’s past? What would you do? How would you react? How does the past affect the future?