Most people carry baggage around with them, and I don’t mean suitcases. We all have some history and it tends to follow us around. When we enter into new emotional relationships, that history is part of our baggage.

Some people carry around with them the fact that they are divorced and have children; some people were brought up in broken homes; some might have drinking or gambling problems, and nearly all of us have a number of failed relationships behind us.

What if you found out that your new date cheated on their last partner? Is this a warning notice that you need to be wary of? In my considered opinion, yes, it is something you need to consider seriously.

Don’t react before you find out more

Before you allow a knee-jerk reaction to set in and you beat a hasty retreat, you do need to find out a little bit more about how the cheating came about. That’s not to say that if you feel strongly about cheating that you shouldn’t ditch him/her. If cheating is a cardinal sin in your book no matter what the circumstances, they you should move on.

However, if you are prepared to understand a little bit more about how this all came about, you may well find out that there were extenuating circumstances that you feel could justify what happened.

There are two sides to every story

Every story has two sides to it and you need to try and understand both sides before being able to make a decision as to whether or not you feel the cheating can be condoned. You need to sit down with this person and ask a few questions – questions such as:

How the affair started
How long did it last?
What was it that he/she found attractive about the person they cheated on?
What went wrong with the relationship?
How was the cheating uncovered?
What were the cheaters reactions to the fact he/she was caught cheating?
Does this person have a history of cheating?
Did he/she try to deny the fact he/she was cheating?
Did his/her parents cheat on each other?
How can you make sure this doesn’t happen to you?
Can you learn to trust this person?

By establishing the answers to these questions, you can get some perspective on what happened. Once you have a clearer view about what took place and why, you can then decide to it is worth taking the risk with this person yourself.

See how the person you are quizzing reacts

Asking these sorts of personal questions can be tricky, but it’s necessary. If this person is evasive with answers, or becomes overly defensive, it’s not a good sign. It could easily mean that they haven’t learnt from past experience and it could therefore happen again.

If you feel that is the case, then you know what to do. Get out of there!