Baggage

At a certain age, saying you want someone with “no baggage” is a little like shopping for a used car and insisting it have zero miles.

Good luck.

By the time we're dating in our forties, fifties, sixties and beyond, life has usually left something in the suitcase.

Divorce.

Children.

Exes.

Aging parents.

Loss.

Money problems.

People we've loved.

People we wish we'd never met.

The question isn't whether someone has baggage.

It's what they do with it.

My Problems Have Explanations

One of the peculiarities of dating is that we're usually much better at recognizing someone else's baggage than our own.

My problems have explanations.

Yours have warning labels.

In Episode 3 of The Disposable Heart, I spoke with two people who see baggage very differently.

Cindy is 62, divorced, with a grown son and two grandchildren.

She isn't looking for a man with an empty suitcase.

She wants to know what's inside it.

A complicated relationship with a child?

She understands.

Been hurt before and need a little time to trust?

She can work with that.

But if every ex-wife you've ever had is crazy, every boss was an idiot, every friend betrayed you and every relationship ended because the other person was impossible, Cindy starts noticing something.

There's one person who keeps appearing in all those stories.

You.

That's when baggage becomes something else.

As Cindy put it:

“Baggage is something you carry. Drama is when you keep unpacking it in everybody else's living room.”

I've Carried Enough

Then there's Ken.

He's 70. A retired pediatrician. A widower. Three daughters. Five grandchildren.

Ken has spent a lifetime carrying things for other people.

He raised children.

Took care of patients.

Helped his daughters through problems.

Buried his parents.

Buried friends.

And buried his wife.

So when someone tells Ken that relationships mean helping carry another person's baggage, he has a different reaction.

Why?

He's carried enough.

Ken isn't pretending he has no history.

There are still pictures of his wife in his house. He loved her. He still loves her.

But he doesn't expect another woman to compete with that memory.

His attitude is simple:

That's my bag. I'll carry it.

And he'd like to meet someone who's carrying hers.

Then Life Happens

It's easy to understand both of them.

Cindy says that if someone is worth it, she'll occasionally help carry a bag.

Ken says he'll carry his and you carry yours.

But there's a problem with both approaches.

Life doesn't hand us all our baggage before the first date.

You can meet someone whose children are doing great.

Their parents are healthy.

Their finances are fine.

Their ex has disappeared into the distance.

No drama.

Carry-on only.

Then life happens.

A parent gets sick.

A child moves home.

Someone loses a job.

Someone gets scared.

Suddenly the person who wasn't asking you to carry anything needs some help.

What then?

Grab the Other Handle

Maybe this is where our obsession with finding someone without baggage becomes dangerous.

With another profile always waiting behind the screen, inconvenience can start looking like incompatibility.

Why deal with this person's problems when someone easier might be one swipe away?

And that's where the baggage may become disposable.

Not the baggage.

The person carrying it.

There is a difference between someone handing you their suitcase and expecting you to carry it for them...

and seeing someone you care about struggling with one and reaching over to grab the other handle.

Relationships are inconvenient.

Families are inconvenient.

Love can be incredibly inconvenient.

None of that means we should spend our lives cleaning up someone else's mess.

But maybe a good relationship isn't two people who never need anything from each other.

Maybe it's two people who carry their own bags...

and know when it's time to grab the other handle.