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| | We all Have baggage at our age? No Baggage thing...I don't get itPage 4 of 12 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12) | I think of it as the "shopping mentality" When I go out to buy something expensive, like a new TV or auto, I decide how much I can spend and what I want. Then I don't look at anything else. Why drive a Porsche, then try to be happy with a Honda? This is fine for things, they have no feelings or wants themselves.
People, on the other hand, are most definitely not things we can easily measure or categorize, most especially where intimate relationships are concerned. Each lady I meet has her own unique life, history, needs, wants and hopes; the challenge is to mesh hers with mine and that is something we must do together. The only way I will ever know if it is doable is to try.
"No baggage" and the like indicates shopping mentality and I'm reaching for the "next profile" button. Or it means the lady has so great a burden she wants me to carry half of it, same result. | |
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| We all Have baggage at our age? No Baggage thing...I don't get it
Posted: 5/28/2008 11:08:00 PM | When I first dealt with infidelity in a marriage, many, many years ago (hers, not mine), it took me a long time to get close to another woman again, and even longer to trust again. That was baggage. It was something from my past that was completely unrelated to the women that I met from then on that affected the relationships I had with them. I’m not sure what I did – could have been just the passage of time – but eventually, I learned to deal with it, so well that that woman from long ago is now on my ‘friends list’ on another website that I frequent. Now, that memory is just that – a memory, something from my past, and has no affect on anything or anybody in my present. I trust fully, implicitly and in matters of the heart, I have no trouble exposing my emotional vulnerability. It is no longer baggage that I carry, just something that happened to me long ago.
Yes, we all have events in our past. We all have things that happened to us that were terrible. And we all, to varying degrees, learn to deal and cope with bad events in our lives. Those that do this successfully do not carry baggage. Those that don’t, do. To have bad experiences in life is not a criteria for having baggage. But to not learn how to deal with those experiences is, though. And no ... all people have experiences, but not all have baggage – in my opinion, of course.
cdn guy | |
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| We all Have baggage at our age? No Baggage thing...I don't get it
Posted: 5/29/2008 3:27:13 PM | ^^^ Good example and just when we think we don't have baggage, someone could say something to bring up past memories. Of course, if we are mature, we will shrug it off and deal with it immediately.
Sometimes I think it is easier to spot baggage in someone else, rather than look at our own.
JMO | |
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zeeba
| | Joined: 3/27/2008
Msg: 80 | |
| We all Have baggage at our age? No Baggage thing...I don't get it
Posted: 5/29/2008 4:00:19 PM | Oh, goodness, by the time we reach certain ages we all have a lot of experiences we bring along with us! I never was that fond of the term "emotional baggage"; but then, I'm not too keen anyway on catchphrases.
Cdnguy, I like your quote:
To have bad experiences in life is not a criteria for having baggage. But to not learn how to deal with those experiences is, though. And no ... all people have experiences, but not all have baggage – in my opinion, of course.
An example: I am becoming friends with a guy who is my age, and divorced. I actually wouldn't mind going out casually with him; we share the same sense of humor and sort of skewed outlook of life. But, bless his heart, he is SO cynical when it comes to women as a whole! I guess that would be "baggage", or difficulty coping with previous bad experiences. I'm starting to think that the only reason he can be friends with me is by NOT thinking of me as that horrible female type of person! He's very clear about never wanting to be involved again with a woman, and it's too bad because he's a nice person. Anyway, it's been quite enlightening and I've learned through our friendship that I should not stereotype men as "well, they are all the same."
I definitely have had experiences...oh, boy. But, I try to take lessons learned and apply them to new experiences, while remaining optimistic. | |
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| We all Have baggage at our age? No Baggage thing...I don't get it
Posted: 5/29/2008 5:21:11 PM | We don't need no stinkin baggage! lol...
Sorry folks but if you lived past 30 seconds from birth you carry some sort of baggage. Now..how you carry and store it is the question.
I do avoid people who say they have no baggage like a red headed step child..they are convincing themselves rather than me.
Learning to cope and deal with life is a constant learning experience. Some time you can handle it sometime you need a friend or help to understand and deal with excess baggage..
Baggage is one thing but excess baggage can only burden your soul...
dusty | |
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| We all Have baggage at our age? No Baggage thing...I don't get it
Posted: 5/29/2008 6:07:10 PM | Message # 77
Now, that memory is just that – a memory, something from my past, and has no affect on anything or anybody in my present. Well put! This is what separates a "learning experience" from "baggage". Baggage is something that still "controls" you.
For the life of me I will never figure out how some folks can still let someone that they've been away from for 10 years control them.....via, bitterness, mistrust, suspicion and general misery. | |
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| We all Have baggage at our age? No Baggage thing...I don't get it
Posted: 5/29/2008 6:09:33 PM | | I reckon that one could call "life experiences" as baggage, however that is merely a perception. I view "baggage" as unfinished business (emotional). It boils down to how one deals with life, either the glass is half full or half empty. Some folks have carry on, others have a warehouse full of baggage, others may fall somewhere in-between. | |
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zeeba
| | Joined: 3/27/2008
Msg: 84 | |
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| We all Have baggage at our age? No Baggage thing...I don't get it
Posted: 5/29/2008 10:36:26 PM | | The amusing thing is that when you get to know people who make statements like "no baggage" - well it turns out they have tons of it, and the worst part is, many of them are oblivious to their own baggage. I avoid people like that because I think they are living in fantasy land and being unrealistic. Everyone has baggage, but as has already been stated, it's how you handle it without overburdening your partner that matters. | |
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| We all Have baggage at our age? No Baggage thing...I don't get it
Posted: 5/30/2008 2:49:29 PM | Oh pulllleeeeze..... where is the compassion??????? where is the not-holier-than-thou not judgemental section of POF???????
honestly. totally truthfully... i just addressed this on another forum....
so what if i have baggage????? i'm one egg short of a dozen??? WTF??????????
I'm an imperfect human being .... and I am not seeking the perfect person either.... but I do not think anyone would take an inanimate object of value, like a car and say it has no worth at all - let the damn car run to rust, wrack and ruin 'cause the main gas line blew a leak or if the CV joints started to rust and would the insurance company total it because it went a few quarts down on the oil???? Golly, I sure hope not.....I am totally honest and admit to all my faults and failures but I still believe that as someone else put it: We're all a bunch of scratch and dents, sometimes with parts of us missing in mind, heart, or body.
Yeah, a little love tune up WILL get me back in running order.... yes, a mechanic is needed - call me a wimp, a loser,I don't care if YOU think I should be able to iron out all the kinks alone. I've tried alone for 8 years and it is just too damn hard!!!! But I do believe there is still magic under my hood... no, i may not be a Bugatti Veyron, not by a long shot and never will be, even with the best master mechanic, but ya know what? At the other end of the spectrum is a cute little vw bug, the convertible model, who will give ya great gas mileage, lots of wonderful sunshine and an exhilarating ride with the wind on life's journey. No. I am not perfect. But I am salvagable. | |
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| We all Have baggage at our age? No Baggage thing...I don't get it
Posted: 5/30/2008 3:25:44 PM | well jim i am glad someone out there thinks like the old parrothead. great minds think alike and so do ours  i put on my profile something about the whole baggage thing. good grief i am 52 years old, of course i have baggage! we all have had break ups, broken hearts, deaths losses of jobs and kids growing up and leaving home. thats all a part of this mad and wonderful thing called life. i would like to say again for those of us on the far side of fifty its not whether or not you have baggage its how you carry the baggage that counts !  the baggage laden old parrothead | |
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| We all Have baggage at our age? No Baggage thing...I don't get it
Posted: 5/30/2008 3:34:05 PM | well zee, i guess your friend is the definition for what most folks think of when they think of baggage. what my ex did to me and what i did to her has nothing whatsoever to do with you or any other gal i date now. but if i let those nast suspcions grow i can really quickly sour an otherwise happy date or budding relationship. hope old boy sees that before he wastes a chance with you. i guess one other thing i have seen about that sort of baggage is that when i go looking for trouble of that sort i always find it and then proceed to make sure that ever gal i date recreates the problems i had in the past. in another life time (so it seems) i ran addictions groups at a womens prison here in indiana. me being me i had to push the issue of relationships, since they lead women to  or worse1 (lol). one of the things all the gals had to do was make a list of all the major emotional relationships they had with lovers (men and women) and go through a detailed list of history questions. most of the time the short end of the story was they started out with someone they thought was 180 degree different than there recent ex when they got together but by the time the new relationship ended they seemed just the same. in fact one gal told me the only thing she could see in common in all her relationships was that she always dated younger guys with hot or muscle cars. all the relationships ended in cheating and worse. she told me before she got out if (yeah if , lets make that when) she dated again she would at least avoid that problem . anyway guess it all comes downt to this, "every problem i ever had i was there". i either caused all of it, part of it , did not solve it or made it worse but i was always involved in some way. if i work on fixin' me and let the other persons stuff alone i may well find that a lot of "her issues" are my own doing. thanks for letting me blow some steam and remind myself of a simple truth. the old parrothead | |
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zeeba
| | Joined: 3/27/2008
Msg: 92 | |
| We all Have baggage at our age? No Baggage thing...I don't get it
Posted: 5/30/2008 3:47:55 PM | Hey there, parrothead! Thanks for your response to my message...and I really like your analysis here about looking for trouble and finding it. You hit the proverbial nail on the proverbial head. I've done the same over the years with dragging my own "baggage" around, failing to check it, and then muttering, "I knew it. All men are the same!" Yep, I think my friend is also dragging a lot of that old baggage and not even making it easier by using a rolling bag (sorry, couldn't resist!)
Thanks for your comment; I think that he can only be friends with me by not seeing me as a female-type-horrible-Amazonian woman. That's OK, though. Plenty of fish, don'tcha know!
And on THAT note, I'm off next week to a conference, taking a chance on checking my baggage at the airline counter, and walking about happily in the airport, unencumbered by bags holding me back! Look for me if any of you are traveling... | |
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| We all Have baggage at our age? No Baggage thing...I don't get it
Posted: 5/30/2008 5:11:17 PM |
Just because you have had baggage for so long that you can't imagine anyone being without it, doesn't mean that some of us are like you. Not all of us have dysfunctional backgrounds
Little harsh there isn't it.. dysfunctional? People don't have to be dysfunctional to have baggage, and some people who have come from dysfunctional homes have worked to be more healthy than someone who hasn't.
By the way, if you look around, probably everyone has come from some form of dysfunctional background, if they have lived at all.
As far as having baggage for so long, some people claim not to have any but what they have done is hidden it. LOL
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| We all Have baggage at our age? No Baggage thing...I don't get it
Posted: 5/30/2008 7:30:42 PM | I am surprised that so many people in datingland think that having baggage is the norm. Kind on like so many trees in the forest, that it is better just to say everyone has it than work on dealing with it.
I find it harsh that some many say that people who claim to have dealt with their are just hiding it. | |
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| We all Have baggage at our age? No Baggage thing...I don't get it
Posted: 5/30/2008 9:08:11 PM | | You are right on Jim. I don't understand that either! It goes hand in hand with when someone says in their profile" I don't play games, so no players please". GIVE ME A BREAK!!!!!! the entire thing is a game when you really look at it. We post our likes and dislikes...and pics...all over the net!!!!! | |
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| We all Have baggage at our age? No Baggage thing...I don't get it
Posted: 5/30/2008 11:39:22 PM | I have been thinking this one over lately too.
Frankly, my feeling is that once a woman is over 45 years old shes got too much baggage to pursue. I think the same is probably true of men. I dont really think that men and women over the age of 45 are suitable for dating or relationships.
My experiences dating women in my age group are horrific. I feel like I am with a designated guardian. The conversation is terse, uninteresting. Theres a huge wall up. Spontaneity is completely absent.
I think that we all accumulate baggage and really, after the age of 45, relationships are close to impossible to form. Some couples manage it...but i wonder how long they will last. Baggage accumulates, makes us cynical, self important, defensive.
Wish this wasnt true. But I, like many other people, have given up on a relationship for these reasons. The women I meet have far too much baggage and I am carrying too much myself.
Wish I could be more optimistic... | |
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| We all Have baggage at our age? No Baggage thing...I don't get it
Posted: 5/31/2008 2:17:30 AM | Hmm...gave this some thought and decided the word 'baggage' is open for interpretation as most words are. One persons baggage is another mans treasure...its a matter of perception.
I'm sort of with granmabooboo on this.
We all have a past and expect others to have one too, the difference comes in when you go through, learn and move on from things that have hurt you in your past. Take ownership for what 'you've' done as well as what someone else might have supposedly inflicted on you.
But some people get stuck and project their past situations on to you as if all men or women are the same as the one who hurt them  this makes it very difficult to have a real and honest starting point because their past gets in the way of living in the present, seeing you objectively as a separate and unique human being and you simply become a 'symbol' of whatever sex hurt them. It takes time to get past this stage and some never do.
You see this a lot on pof when people first come to the forums; anger, ranting and raving, painting everyone with the same brush...saying 'you' women or men as if none of us could possibly be different from what they've known. That is the kind of 'baggage' that is of no use to anyone. Everything else should be workable with a little empathy and patience. | |
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| We all Have baggage at our age? No Baggage thing...I don't get it
Posted: 5/31/2008 4:24:32 AM | Of course we all have some baggage by this age, I would assume we all had a life.
With life's experiences we are going to collect baggage.
It depends on how you deal with the baggage, and how it effects you, on whether it
is a barrier to having a relationship again.
If a persons baggage fills them with fear to be close to a new person,
or makes them too bitter to even try again, that is when it is a problem.
Some people carry their baggage very close to them, and will not allow a caring
person into their lives.
When baggage stops a person from hoping and striving for happiness , then
it is just too much, and it needs to be dealt with.
When the baggage is so heavy , that it weighs the person down, then it is a problem.
But normal baggage , that has been dealt with, and put aside, is to be expected by
this point in our lives.
I can deal with a persons having lived a life, but until they are ready to close that chapter, and move on to the rest of life, it does get in the way of forming a new,
close relationship.
JMO | |
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| We all Have baggage at our age? No Baggage thing...I don't get it
Posted: 5/31/2008 8:33:29 AM | IMHO, "baggage" gets a bad rap. Or wrap, if I wanted to be punny. We take baggage on airplane, ship, car, bus, and train trips, don't we? And we put the things we need on our trip in those bags, don't we? Clothes, makeup, deodorant, tooth brush and paste, clean undies, a plastic sack to hold the dirties, a good book, some work materials, a computer, our phone....all the items we will need to be beautiful and successful on our trip, right?
So how does having "baggage" conotate a bad thing? NOT having baggage would be a bad thing, no? | |
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| We all Have baggage at our age? No Baggage thing...I don't get it
Posted: 5/31/2008 9:22:10 AM | Seeing this thread still going and reading through a few of the comments, I really must agree with Ms. Moraima and her posts in this thread. I find some of the comments directed towards those that have dealt with their baggage and claim to not have any, very puzzling (and a bit disturbing). I think it’s a ‘given’ that we all have bad things happen to us, and immediately after their conclusion there is an ‘open wound’. This isn’t baggage, per se, but more the period of time needed for healing. But wounds heal, and if care and effort is taken, they’ll heal without visible scars – even the mental and emotional ones. When they don’t heal properly, they become baggage. For example: If going on a date with a man with a black BMW, reminds you of your ‘ex’ and his black BMW and you transfer some of your feelings for your ‘ex’ to this new person ... that is baggage. And to hear people saying that those that claim to have no baggage are ‘hiding it’, ‘not normal’, ‘lying’ or any of the other terms used, is very disturbing. It’s almost as if it is a sign of being normal to carry a pile of past crap with you through your life, and others must learn to accept it. Not only do I claim to carry no appreciable baggage with me today, but I find it very strange that others see this as an impossibility.
cdn guy | |
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