There’s nothing like a fraternity formal to keep you up to date on which freshman girls your exes are currently dating. No matter how over someone you might be (read: how long it’s been since you stopped checking their Facebook profile), you just can’t avoid those 30 seconds during which you look their date up and down and do the standard self-to-replacement comparison. It’s not that you’re jealous of this new person, because you don’t necessarily want what they’ve got. It’s just hard to accept that a piece of your past can be someone else’s future.

Having attended a formal this past week, I can honestly say that, while some freshman girls deserve their reputations, there were quite a few there who impressed me. I practically did a double-take when I heard one of them commenting about her date, “He’s been with so many other great girls. Why would it work out with me when it didn’t with any of them?” In the moment she said that, I envied her. Not because of her date or because her shoes were cuter than mine — they were, by the way — but because she had grasped a concept that I would never have even considered my freshman year: Disturbing as they may be, our sexual and relationship pasts are the blueprints of our sexual and relationship futures.

For better or for worse, our sexual histories have made us into the lovers we are today, and learning about your partner’s past could help you to anticipate how they will behave in the future. Unfortunately, for some people, with the knowledge of their partner’s sexual history comes a set of insecurities the likes of which they could never anticipate.

You could choose to just ignore your partner’s past, adopt the ever-convenient what-I-don’t-know-can’t-hurt-me attitude and optimistically approach the future. But optimism can lead us into a fantasy world where all men are angels, chocolate has no carbs and orgo prelims are easy, which can, in turn, lead to major disappointment. It would be naïve to think that the way to avoid feeling insecure or jealous is to ignore information that can help to make informed decisions in relationships.

Rather than allowing our fear of the unknown to keep us from valuable information about our partners, we could, instead, learn how to interpret sexual pasts and understand what they tell us about the future. For example, suppose you are dating a senior whose last relationship was in preschool when one of the little girls recruited him to be the dad in her game of “house.” In other words, what should you think when you find out that the guy you are currently dating is The 21-Year-Old Virgin?

For one thing, you can safely assume that he won’t be comparing your sexual performance to anyone else’s (Score!). You might also want to ask yourself what kept him from being involved with anyone? If he’s never before had the confidence to approach a girl, this relationship is probably a pretty big step for him.

But, what if he’s just never wanted to commit before? What if you aren’t dating The 21-Year-Old Virgin, but are actually dating a former serial dater?

If you find out that your partner has, in fact, had lots of partners but never settled down with anyone, you might want to ask yourself what it was that kept him from doing so? And, more importantly, what has caused his sudden retirement? It could be that he just never found the right girl until he met you. Or, he might have just never been ready for a relationship. Or, maybe, this relationship is just one of his rest-stops in between rounds.

What if you find out that, in the past, your partner never took breaks in between rounds and just cheated during previous relationships? We’ve all heard the phrase, “Once a cheater, always a cheater,” but how do you know when the phrase actually applies? If your partner tells you that they’ve cheated before, it’s important to think about what their reasons for telling you were. Were they trying to warn you that they have a tendency to slip-up? Or, were they trying to show you just how much they’ve changed since making that mistake?

You could drive yourself crazy attempting to answer all of these questions. A lot of people might reject optimism for the safer, pessimistic route. But, what these people fail to see is that, while it is important to consider the worst-case-scenario when making decisions, if we assume that it will always come true, we could be missing out on opportunities for positive things to happen.

Like everything else in life, the key to handling sexual histories is moderation. If you can establish the happy medium between optimism and pessimism, you can make well-informed decisions considering both the ideal and the worst possible outcomes. If you are at the point where you want to have sex with someone, you should be able to trust them about their previous history. Once you can accept someone’s sexual past, you can understand and enjoy your relationship with them in the present. And, then, the rest is history.

Nikki Nussbaum is a sophomore in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. She can be contacted at opinion@cornellsun.com. Cornell Unzipped appears alternate Tuesdays.