him5322 asks: I love a girl and she loves me back truly, but when we first met she shared about her past relationship and her physical relationship with her ex. For some days I had no problem with this. But now I can’t even sleep well thinking about her past relationship and what she did with her ex. I haven’t broken up with her because I don’t want to break her heart. But if I decide to live with her in the future, even then I’ll not be happy with her because of her past relationship. What do I do to get rid of this serious matter? Give me a solution that helps.
Hi him5322 –
I respect your honesty, admitting that her earlier relationship bothers you. I hope you’re able to tell her your feelings about it.
And it makes sense – you want a committed relationship with her, and the fact that she was intimate with another guy before you feels like it cuts into that.
But I want you to
get over it.
There are two reasons why. Firstly, you didn’t say in your letter whether you’d ever had any interaction with another girl before her. Even if it didn’t go as far as she did with that guy, have you dated another girl? Held her hand? Kissed? Anything that would be considered really wrong if she caught you doing it with a girl today, while you’re together?
If so, then you’re falling into a very old trap called a “Double Standard,” where there are different rules for boys and girls, or for men and women. And that might have been okay in 1765, but it’s 2019 now, and rules have changed. So even if it bothers you (and again, I fully respect your openness about it – and hers in telling you the painful truth!), you simply need to get past it somehow. The fact is, if you two commit to each other for the rest of your lives, that’s the greatest gift anyone can give to a beloved, and she didn’t give that to any other guy before. And that’s really all that matters.
But then there’s that other reason. If you two stay together, most likely your first months together will be delightful and magical and feel perfect. But after a while, problems will show up. And at some point, one of you will do something that absolutely devastates the other one. Maybe one will fall for someone else (even if they don’t do anything about it), or you’ll disagree about work or your families or religion or something that feels unresolvable. Or if you have kids, you’re guaranteed to disagree about something about them, so badly it feels impossible.
And when that happens, you two will have to decide – what’s more important, that issue or your relationship.
It’s hard. No question.
And my point is that it’s going to be hard in just the same way that it’s hard for you to deal with this earlier guy having had intimacy with her. Like, it’ll feel impossible. And maybe it is.
But maybe it’s not. And if it’s not, then you really have a beautiful committed relationship, the kind that can survive anything.
So this is a test. Kind of like when I was a puppy and ate one of Handsome’s favorite old records’ cover while he was in the shower! It wasn’t a good moment, but in the end, it brought us closer together.
This can happen to you. If you’re up to it. And if she is.
I’m really hoping so!
Shirelle