Read other letters about this article
I guess I could have been the LW's BF in a parallel universe.
I was a virgin once (who wasn't?) and the girl who I fell in love with and lost my virginity wasn't. Not even close (she was 20 when we got together, I 18, she'd had more than 20 sex partners already.)
We are married now, it's been almost 11 years, we've been together for a total of 16. We have kids.
I had/have low self-esteem, always have. This may explain why I was still a virgin when I met my future wife. She has/had low self-esteem, ironically this may explain why she was so experienced when she met her future husband.
I can relate to feeling jealous, less-than, and so on. I can explain some of the rationality (like, she's done things with other people that she didn't enjoy and doesn't want to do them again; I have never done those things and unless I hire a hooker, never will.)
In the end I can say that it did take therapy. But in this very complicated thing we call life how can I separate the part of me that was damaged before I met wife from the "trauma" of the vast differences between us sexually? In other words, I needed to be in therapy before I even met her. So I can't say that the therapy was to help me get over her past as it was really for me to get over my past and so on.
I do feel bouts of jealousy every once in a while, and guess what? From being in therapy I learned that this is triggered by stress and feeling threatened. So, now I can just say "I feel triggered" and help myself separate the feelings of jealousy from those of just feeling like sh*t about myself.
I am not an expert, but it seems like jealousy is just mis-placed self hatred.
LW: I do recommend that you move on from this relationship but also to learn from it. You have a past, and it is yours, but if it turned out that you would have traded your past for a future with this guy then I'm sure you would take it back if you could. You can't take it back so be much more careful about what you reveal next time. I know it's not fair, but life isn't.