Dealing with my partner's past!

Let me start off by saying I'm 29 years old and have been happily married to the love of my life for almost four years now. As you can gather from the title I recently have had some issues dealing with her sexual past. The crazy thing is that she has virtually no significant past. She has slept with one other guy (college bf of 2 years) and I have slept with only one other girl (hs gf of 4 years). The thing that is bugging me is that she dated a lot through hs and college and ended up having oral sex with 9 of these guys she dated. I know that when you date for any period of time in hs or college this is bound to happen, but for whatever reason this just recently starting really making me angry.

Don't get me wrong I am thrilled to be married to someone who has only slept with one other person, but still for some reason this other stuff is really getting to me. We are very open and communicate well and have discussed in detail both of our pasts. The bottom line is that I really have fallen so in love with her over the past couple of years that when I think about her with other guys it makes me sick. Let me add that I have had oral sex with 10 other girls, but for whatever seem to only focus on her. Another thing that really bugs me is that I was her first, as far as oral sex goes, and then all these guys came in a four year period when we were not together. She wanted to be with me from the start but I was a stupid, selfish, immature kid.

I sometimes wonder what I was thinking not dating her back then and get upset with myself for that. I know that she is the most trustworthy person in the world (never cheated on bf's or really ever lied about anything) but through hs and college I was a big cheater. It's like I want to find something out about her that will make me feel better about my past which is rediculous. I know that most of the replies will focus on leaving the past in the past, and the decisions we made then led us to where we are now but I'm just curious if anyone has dealt with a similar issue and could lend some advice on how you got over it. It's easy to say just don't think about it until the next time something pops into my head. I know the more I talk about it with her the more it negatively affects our relationship so I need to put it behind me and move on. Thanks in advance for any replies.

what you feel is totally normal. it wouldnt matter if she had slept with 50 guys, just one, or no sexual contact at all... bc youd be jealous of a guy you knew she had a crush on in 8th grade ahah.

there is always going to be some jealousy. its normal. you think, does she still think of this guy. did she enjoy that more than me. im guilty of thinking of all the things my bf did/said before we were dating. i was the friend first so i got the real info. saw him check out girls on the street, talk about past girls. now, i think about it. it upsets me; makes me sad. but then i think with my head not my heart and think that the past is the past and he could very well be thinking the same things about me. he knows my past. im sure he thinks about it, but we know that we are together for a reason and we shouldnt fret about our pasts... and you shouldnt either. as long as she is not giving you any reason to believe all thats not in the past. just be happy! youre going to think about it, but when you do try and rationalize your thoughts. it makes me feel better.

I am pretty much like this. I get really insecure and jealous over a girlfriend's sexual past. You and I both know that saying something to her isn't going to help the situation. She's a good girl, and you are lucky to have her. What has helped me is being able to talk with someone else (not the girl) or going hiking or fishing or whatever until I deal with that selfish, immature part of me. Don't let that childish part of you ruin a good thing. Maybe just tell her that you really don't want to talk about her past again, and leave it at that. And then do what you have to do to grow that part of yourself up. Hope this helps in a little way. I know, I sympathize, I've been there. But the bottom line is it's just a immature part of you that you have to parent out of this. She sounds like a really good girl.

I have and still am going through the same problem as you are. I hate the thought of of anyone else even touching my fiancee in the past, and it does cause me distress and anxiety. Looking back, I would have been much happier with the "ignorance is bliss" philosophy and not know anything about her ex's.

But you've gone down the same path I have and asked too many questions that your probably really didn't want to know. I know I ask a lot of questions of her past that I am better off not knowing or having those pictures in my head.

I guess what you are looking for is a solution. There are two strategies that that I have used to some success and one which I am still going to try.

The first is talking to your partner. Many times we fear these past encounters of our partners due to some insecurity we have within ourselves. For myself, I am insecure of how I am in bed. How this insecurity displays itself in my case is my jealousy of her past lovers. While this may not be the case for you, it is a likely culprit. What you can ask them to do is to reinforce how good you are and how much they love you. It really doesn't matter if they tell you white lies, the point is that if you hear it enough you will start to believe it. Have her tell you things like "your the best I've had" or "no one compares to you", etc. With enough repetition you will believe it, and if she doesn't lie then you really should believe her.

Second is a type of rethinking exercise. This is very good if there are triggers that make you think about her past. For example, she might have told you how she went down on a guy behind a TGIF, so now every time you drive by that place you get bad thoughts. Well this can be changed by something called cognitive restructuring. The basic idea behind this is changing the link of that TGIF currently has to something new. So the next time you see that place, you force yourself to think about some happy memory you have of just you and her. This may seem silly at first, but repetition can literally change the physical connections in your brain. I've done this myself with mild to moderate success, it just takes some discipline. I also tend to avoid places where I know she spent time with her ex's, but that just goes back to my ignorance is bliss policy.

The last strategy I'm going to try is therapy. Not necessarily because I want to solve my deep issues (although that would be nice), but more because I want to learn new techniques to deal with this issue. Therapists are not only trained to solve problems, but have many tools and techniques that can help you change certain habits or thought processes. That's what they are trained for, and I hope to pick their brain and get some new ideas.

It can be tough, and it really sucks knowing about your partner's past and wasting time and energy on it. But there are solutions out there, you just need to seek out what works best for you. I am no where near where I want to be, but I've made progress (thanks a lot to my understand and loving fiancee) and I hope to be free of this burden one day.

Hey I know it's hard, I'm just like you. I have a hard time dealing with my boyfriend's past and it's not just who he slept with...it's all those girls he "fooled around with." He told me that he made out with over 20 girls but who knows how many gave him head etc. I get SICK thinking about it, but he has told me over and over that he loves me and is with me now and doesn't want to be with anyone else. You and your girl have to focus on the now, how much you love each other. It seems as though you both have a sexual past, but those other people aren't with you when you wake up and see her beautiful face in the morning. Yeah, they got one stupid night with her...I know its awful to think about because we want our partner to ourselves. We don't want anyone else to think about the the experience of them giving or receiving any kind of sexual pleasure to anyone besides ourselves. But she didn't know. You didn't know. Now that you are in love you have to let it go otherwise it will consume you, like it consumes me from time to time. You get to be together for a lifetime. How wonderful is that?

Sounds like you are insecure. Why? Worried she will cheat? Sounds like you're confident she will not. Worried about how you measure up against these past guys?

Do you expect the guys currently with the women in your past to be obsessing about what those women have done with you? If not, why not? I ask this because answering these questions for yourself may help you figure out why you are obsessing over her past sexual experience.

What has happened recently that might explain why this is only now an issue?

I agree with you that discussing this with her too much does more harm than good because she will probably see this as you lacking self-confidence.

Thanks for all the responses. It's nice to know that I'm not the only crazy person out there that has this issue. I'm realizing more and more everyday that it's just silly to get caught up in things that happened almost a decade ago. Sure I wish she never would have dated another guy because I'm now her husband, but I know that's completely unrealistic. It's almost easier to kind of just laugh it off whenever I think about it. Sometimes when we talk about our pasts she just laughs because she comments on how tame she really was, and how I probably would never find another girl that I had such a connection with that has only slept with one other guy. Also on the positive side of things the girls I dated and the guys she dated made us realize just that much more how much we loved each other and how much of a connection we really had. She tells me all time how passionate she always was about me, but I was a * * * * * * * and wouldn't commit to her so all of this is pretty much my fault anyways if I want to look at it that way. Anyway things have gotten better so I guess my advice to anyone else that has to deal with this issue is to just be patient and be realistic. Your not going to find a girl with absolutely no past unless you date someone from middle school on and marry them, so love and respect your partner because true love is hard to come by and if you lose it over something stupid you may never get it back.

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Me and my fiancée have had to go through this same topic. We were going over and over again the same questions: "why?" and "what was your motivation?". Well, for her, it was 7 years ago before we met. She only mentioned it to me, because she didn't want it to come as a surprise later in our lives. In a matter of fact, she stated something suggestive on the very first day we met and said the rest after we got engaged. What she did is irrelevant, but what seemed to matter to me was that she did something.

To me it seems like, according to a human's evil nature that it is easy to blame the other one and point fingers and feel self pity. It unfortunately is something that people tend to do easily (a very bad habit). One day we found a solution, I think. We decided: lets make it a clean start for both of us. Lets wipe our past records and try not to remember them. If someone asks, lets claim that we haven't done anything. Seems like a silly idea, but why couldn't we both have a clean start? Past doesn't seem like the ground that we can build on, so lets wipe the table clean and start building on us.

It seems like a neat solution; it is awesome to have an "innocent" girl who is rather good at stuff... naturally gifted? Well, who cares It works for us. So I'm really suggesting for you guys to try it out too.

One other thing to mention about our case is that most of her past is in Zimbabwe, where as only one of her pasts is in London, where we live. (Note: I'm European). Thus it has been an easy solution for us as there is none of them nearby. I'm really hoping that you guys can get back to your girls and see her as pure as snow and enjoy her for the days you have on this planet.

If you happen to be a Christian or of some religion. For us it helped that we prayed and asked Christ to help us. For we believe that He connected us together and made us for each other in the first place.

P.S. You will soon find out that you have to really try to think in order to remember any of it. It becomes difficult to remember.

My personal opinion is past is past

I've had times of too much information regarding past partners - I found a videotape of my gf from 15 yrs ago engaging in some fun, and while it did bring up a few insecurities at the time, at the end of the day it was before my time. Your significant other is with YOU now and likely wouldn't be unless they wanted to be. Other experiences came before you, without you in mind, and I feel it's best to just wipe the slate clean and enjoy them for who they are to you now, not who they were to others before you.

Good luck