Originally Posted by Badmamajama
On further reflection, it’s not that I don’t want to be in it at all. Anyone who sees us says we work tremendously. Our sense of humour, life goals, sexual chemistry all line up orders of magnitude beyond anything I’ve known before. Arguments are rare, are forgotten within minutes and it feels entirely right with her.
Thorns from the past though, well the way they link to this problem are pretty clear. My first girlfriend was very experienced sexually for our age and liked to use that as a weapon, for example texting me at night to say she was getting a ride home from her ex or had been chatting in a nightclub some guy she’d once slept with. We were both very young, but the past was a weapon for her, one to create the kind of drama immature young people often think is needed in relationships.
My next relationship lasted 10 years and this time it was the opposite. She’d not had much romantic experience, had crippling insecurities and effectively expected me to block out any existence of the life I’d had before her, everything from past girlfriends to family and friends. At the end, she brought it up constantly how she never felt she compared to my ex girlfriend, whom I’d never mentioned in 10 years and who I’d spent only one largely unhappy year with, when I was little more than a kid.
So, from different perspectives the past was dredged up constantly in prior relationships, either as something to cause an argument or something I felt I had to hide.
My current gf has a relatively normal past. A few boyfriends, a fiancé when she was too young but nothing out of the ordinary. I have my own past too and beyond the odd little pang of morbid curiosity early on, she has handled it in a rational manner. Somehow I struggle internally to afford her that grace, perhaps because this is my first time deaing with an actual adult with the maturity to process what’s gone on in her life before. Everything she’s done this far suggests these experiences have no negative effect on her and I.
You were right, the plumbing comment wasn’t about her comparing me to an ex and in the cold light of day as I processed it, I felt like a nutcase for treating it as such. As you can probably tell, I didn’t eject and actually had a nice time with her last night, as I have done every night I’ve ever spent with her. Just like every other night, I didn’t let my inability to handle the fact she was a human being with a life before me affect us and she continues on unaware about this purgatory I’ve created in my head. Ultimately that’s what the problem is.
Perhaps I am too crazy underneath to handle this, but I’ll see how I get on. Appreciate all the replies on here, even the harsh ones!
I’m also aware how nuts I have come across in this thread and do trust me, I’m nothing like that irl. For me this is a good way to vent our internal, unhealthy and often unfounded frustrations that I know aren’t healthy in the real world.