Letters to the Editor
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My boyfriend can't handle my past
In other words... tell him to go fuck himself.
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Cary's right. And now you should break up with the jerk
This won't stop. Now, this dickhead boyfriend is being controlling about this woman's past. What if he starts to become controlling about her present, her future? Believe me, it happened to a family member, when a demanding, "old-fashioned" husband who wanted a "pure" wife kept her a virtual prisoner for years because he wanted her to conform to his idea of what his wife should be.
So maybe I'm being dramatic. Let's take another tack:
You're young, it hurts when he talks to you like this, you love him and want things to be "right" again. So you feel ashamed when he aasks you to. But, the only problem here is his inability to see you for who you are.
Also, you say the sex is good. Well, the best sex we're having is always the best sex we've ever had.
There are other men out there who respect you for who you are no matter what you did before you met them. Go meet them, really. You'll feel stronger, not ashamed, and you'll find a better sort of love--of yourself and from another--in the process.
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I get it.
I can certainly recognize the symptoms. It is not so bad that he feels this, the bad part is that he asked. It is like the pimple on your nose that you can't stop teasing and testing although you know damn well it's going to make it hurt more.
My wife had an affair recently. I have same sense of physical illness, mental torment and if not a feeling that she is impure, at least the wish that she could be returned to the 'state' that she was in before the affair. I absolutely feel that she is 'tainted,' and that definitely colors our sex life.
In retrospect I should have figured this out when she lied to me about the guy she was seeing when we first met: He's just a friend, besides he's impotent, actually he was bisexual sleeping with her and other men. That I got over, it happened before she met me.
But this is different.
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Re: I liked you better when you were happier and sluttier!
Great letter!
Anyway, Cary's right, and everybody who says to dump the jerk is right.
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The Past - not so much a map as scar tissue and tattoos
Mr. Tennis,
While I appreciate the sentiment behind your advice, I disagree with it. The past absolutely shapes who we are - the whole concept behind "emotional baggage" (an annoying term, true) is based on it.
Your motive is undeniably kind - to tell this young woman that she has no reason to be ashamed of her past behavior. You are obviously a nice person, but in your niceness, alas, you're putting forward a myth, namely: that the past does not effect the present, and I think it is equally undeniable that the past not only effects it, but in some cases can dictate it.
Please excuse me for offering you advice, but I believe what you should've focused on instead is the boyfriend's hypocrisy. He slept with twice the number of people his girlfriend did. He engaged in a threesome, too. Why is he haunted by his girlfriend's sexual past, when, by his own confession, his is more extreme?
There's something there. An assumption about women. Maybe he's insecure, and dreads the idea that a sexually experienced woman might not be satisfied with him (the Chasing Amy syndrome)? Or maybe he believes that a sexually experienced woman is not to be trusted (the Femme Fatale syndrome)? Or perhaps something you and I couldn't possibly fathom?
Whatever it is, it's at the core of their relationship problems. Probably, since the issue seems quite painful and humiliating for him, he's not going to be quick to own up to it, but regardless, Shamed and Frustrated needs to find out what it is. Having her boyfriend ruminate on it by the ocean is not going to solve the problem (it brings him great pain - even to the point of making him physically ill. If he could've solved it by himself, he would've done so by now).
Shamed and Frustrated has the right to find out what the real issue is - what her boyfriend's obsession with purity is really all about. He's already used it against her (as well as himself), and if their relationship is to have a hope of survival, it has to be dealt with directly. Of course, because it's a sensitive issue, she needs to be compassionate in her approach, with an emphasis on sympathy and understanding, but still, she can't afford to sweep it under the rug by simply claiming "I'm not a phone card," and in essence further humiliating him.
He's not feeling this way in a cynical fashion. He's not agonizing over her lack of "purity" because he's coldly attempting a power play - he's doing it because he's been wounded in some way by a woman or women he perceives to be impure. It's not a rational response, so you can't react to it in a rational way. It's a deeply emotional, associative response, illogical and confounding and perfectly human, and exactly the sort of thing one must deal with in a relationship from time to time.
Basically, I feel she needs to discover what an "impure" woman means to him. What are they capable of? What is their nature? And how have they hurt him? Only then will she understand how he now sees her, and whether or not it'll be worth it to attempt to prove to him that she's nowhere near all that.
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There's only one good answer to the question...
... of how many sexual partner's you've had:
"Why do you want to know?"
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Smartalek Really Is Smart
Smartalek wrote that no one should be ashamed of their "number," no matter how large or small. I agree wholeheartedly! We are sexual beings and we do sexual things, sometimes in the context of a "relationship," sometimes not. But, aside from the issue of STDs, the number is completely irrelevant to subsequent interactions.
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right on
dump him
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My first partner
I remember the physically ill part. I was on zero, she was on 10. I knew almost all of them, and was especially weirded out by her habit of being in two or three intimate relationships at once. (That was unfortunately the case with ours, and IMHO wrecked it.)
If this boyfriend were inexperienced, I could understand chagrin that the letter writer hadn't "saved" herself for him. I could understand that he would be worried that she treated the gift of her body as a triviality and he wouldn't be able to accept or reciprocate on those terms. But a guy who has had twice as many partners!? His own three-way!? What are we joking about here?
Add me to the Dump Immediately vote. And the letter writer sounds like a wonderful, charming woman to me. I don't know what her number is, but they were all damned lucky.