if you want to refuse to engage them so that you can continue to promote an agenda that is fine but it won't change reality. Obviously a lot of people think that if they can exert sufficient ideological control over the discussion things will in the long run work well for the people that matter, or at least better than the alternatives, well who knows. It seems though that that hasn't worked. Oh yeah, there hasn't been enough control. It kind of reminds me of the right wing, if we have the president, then congress, then the media, then the supreme court we will FINALLY be able to make society behave the way it should. Somehow though it never quite works.

"Let's be serious here. The BF may be something of a jerk, but his concerns are not "nuts." "

Fine. Let's be honest here, too. The primary issue is NOT that the boyfriend has concerns about her past. The issue is that he appears to have made a conscious choice: rather than break up with her over his concerns, rather than make an honest attempt to deal openly and honestly with the issue - which she has explicitly asked him to do - he has rejected all possible solutions and chosen instead to torment his GF over her past, a choice that satisfies nothing except his own sense of moral superiority.

The issue is not that he's judgmental; it's that he's a mean asshole.

the issue was the fact that women have more experience and it matters. Someone suggested that men could become better and know they were better and negate the consequences of less expereince without having more experience, for example by reading books or adopting the appropriate attitudes. I think this is unlikely to work in most cases.

"The maturity level here is amazingly low. Plenty of letters from the “if she’s had sex with anyone before me, she’s a slut” and the slightly more liberal “if she’s had more partners and/or kinkier sex than me, she’s a slut” crowd. Not to mention the “once a slut, always a slut” crowd, and the “I’m not getting laid enough, girls can get laid any time but they’re not screwing me, o woe!” emo-boys."

Exactly. As a man I've been amazed and dismayed to read all of these letters by other men who are so bent out of shape about a woman having a 3-way, and/or whining how they don't get laid enough to be good in bed.

If you guys are really that threatened by a woman having a sex life and/or you aren't a decent lay, then I suggest that you look inside for the reasons why instead of attacking and/or blaming others for your problems.

No wonder so many women think that so many men are whiny and immature jerks - because if the letters in this group is any indication then apparently many of them are.

I, for one, alone as I may be in my opinion, cannot imagine punishing anyone for anything, day in and day out, with words and with silence, with glares and with avoidance, with hostile presence and hostile absence, judging, criticising, condemning, reducing the entire world I share with someone into an emotional chamber of horrors -- while doing my best to avoid any honest and open confrontation of the issues.

In fact, I don't think I have the capacity to keep that up for one day. It makes me sad and tired just to think about it.

Yet BF has kept it up for six months, and is showing no signs of stopping. He seems perfectly content with the status quo, while LW is tiring of trying emotional contortion after emotional contortion to fulfill whatever it is he is requiring of her. And rightly so, because the only thing he seems to be requiring of her is constant shame, regret, sorrow, and pain. He has not defined anything beyond that, tacitly or overtly, that she can give to make it right, and I'm thinking there is nothing else he wants.

In fact, I cannot help but conclude that, since he's keeping the pain up (on both sides) for so long, he's enjoying it. Normal people of goodwill can't keep up punishing others that long, and have no desire to.

As other posters have pointed out, he seems unwilling for her to leave. I am reminded of something Cary said to another LW a couple weeks ago; I was so moved by it that I wrote it down. It goes thusly:

For a man who has abused you to complain of the pain it causes him when you leave him only suggests that it is in his abuse of you itself that he finds pleasure and comfort. That is a chilling thought. But it is unavoidable: If the object of his abuse causes him pain when it disappears, then it must be in the abuse itself that he finds pleasure.

How is this different from BF? If it is, I'm not seeing it. He won't let her stay, he won't let her go, he is content to keep her twisting somewhere in between -- indefinitely -- in his resentment and her guilt.

I totally concur with the other posters who sense that the reason he will not leave her is because he needs the breakup to be her fault, and in the meantime is enjoying the stolen fruits of emotional abuse. Her own honesty, goodwill and compassion are the ropes he has tied firmly around her neck to keep her there and watch her suffer.

Regarding the "sin" itself, a consenting threesome is NOT the worst thing in the world, it does NOT have to affect the rest of her life negatively, and past sexual history (minus STDs and kids) only matters as much as you let it. Even convicted murderers such as Ted Bundy seem to be able to find forgiving and willing spouses on Death Row! I can't imagine that LWs "crimes" compare. Don't let it, LW. Leave this loser and run, before you cease to be more, in your own eyes, than the sum of your misdeeds.