Sunday, 12 July 2009
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It's Just a Number... Right?
My girlfriend and I have been together for a little over half a year now. And things have gone great. We met under the most random of circumstances after both having been single for over two years. And our relationship has grown to greater heights than I've ever experienced in my dating history. To be clear, I love this girl. With all of my heart and everything in my being, I L-O-V-E this girl. But something happened a couple months ago that still bothers and disturbs me to this day. We had the conversation that no couple should ever really have. Yes, I'm talking about that oh so dreaded "how many people have you been with?" conversation. The fucked up part is that this conversation actually came up as a result of just a string of jokes. Neither of us actually initiated it. So I didn't even have a chance to brace myself for this. Anyway, it became clear that my girlfriend, now 26 years old, has a pretty colorful sexual history. She didn't give any specifics, but it was alluded to that the number of partners she's had is somewhere in the neighborhood of 50-70. God, it my makes my stomach turn and drop just writing that down.
I've known some pretty notorious tramps, and even their numbers weren't that high. I had originally thought she was joking, but when she noticed I was obviously disturbed and disgusted at even the notion, she broke down into tears. She buried her head into my shoulder, tears flowing, lamenting her past as being "filled with mistakes" and how she "hates who she used to be". She explained that in her younger days she had severe emotional issues, lacking all self esteem and confidence, and that it wasn't until a few years ago that she decided to grow up and treat herself better. I couldn't bring myself to beat the horse any further with her being so distraught. So I comforted her and reassured her that this wasn't something I would end the relationship over. Change of subject, and move on.The reality of this, though, is it still disturbs me. And if I had found out about this in the beginning of the relationship I would have walked away, never to be seen or heard from again. But I found this out after we fell in love. After I realized she was "the one." So now I have no choice but to deal with it. It's been very easy for people to tell me I should just get over it.
"What does it matter? You love her, right?"
"You've been with lots of girls. Should she hate you?"
"The past is the past! Let it go!"Easier said than done. I did a lot of soul searching trying to get to the root of why this bothers me so much. It isn't the fact that I haven't been with as many. My number is well into the 25-35 range. It's not as high as hers, but it's enough. And I'm not exactly a virgin myself, obviously. I can accept the past is the past. SO what is it? Then it hit me. Like an upper cut from Iron Mike, it hit me!
"I've lost my respect for her. I still love her and I still want to spend my life with her. But I don't respect her."
Is this even possible? Can I truly love and be with someone that I don't respect? It's come to the point where I still have nightmares about it. Dreams of her being with other people, doing things that I never want to see in my head ever again. When she shows me old pictures of her I can barely look at them without feeling my heart sink. She sees them as just photo memories. All I can see is that young girl I hate. Screams of "whore!" and "slut bag!" run through my mind every time I'm forced to see anything even a day older than the first time we met. Whenever we're out together and she runs into someone she knows I can't help but wonder to myself if he's someone who's had his way with my girl. If she suggests hanging out with some of her friends I make an excuse not to go. I hate the idea of being in a room where there's a chance some of the guys have slept with her. It makes me want to puke. Let's be honest with ourselves. No one likes knowing the love of their life was once the town pump!
But it still haunts me. In the wild throws of our passionate love making I find my mind still wanders. Her moans of pleasure hurt me, because I can only think of how many others have heard it as well. I worship her body, yet I can't help but feel it's a mountain too many have climbed and just doesn't feel like I have something special. I no longer feel special. It hurts. Every day.
Am I destined to live with this hate and pain forever? Like I said, I'm not willing to give her up over this. I just wish I could find some way to deal with this. To respect her again. To feel like I have something special again. To look at her the same way again. To love her the same way again.
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- From: MurderMeRachael127
Stats: This Week All Time Posts: 0 1 Views: 0 4326 Comments: 0 129 View all posts by MurderMeRachael127
Comments (129)
She's with you now so you should feel special that she loves you.
Talk to her about it. Show her this post! Then she will know. And you guys can talk it out.
Well, from this post alone I don't think that your relationship is all that great. You're referring to your girlfriend as the town pump, a whore, and a slutbag. The lack of respect is very obvious, because if you respected her you wouldn't really be saying any of these things about her. I don't think that a relationship lacking respect to this degree could really be healthy, that's just my personal opinion.
Her numbers are pretty astounding. I mean, so are yours, but hers kind of have the "wow" factor on them, whereas yours just has the speechless look of shock. I can understand you being disturbed by her numbers, especially considering her age.
If you want to be in a relationship with her, a happy and healthy one, you won't really be able to feel this way, no. It'll need to be fixed. Whatever will make you feel better needs to happen, and you'll need to figure out what that is. Perhaps you will never be comfortable with it, maybe you'll figure out a way to move past it. I don't know if talking to her about it would help you, I can't imagine anything comforting that she could say. But if you want a healthy relationship (and to be happy) you'll have to come to terms with this. Also, I'd like to add, I can't imagine "the one" making you this miserable; and you never really know if she's "the one" or not. Time will tell.
Okay nevermind i just read your number and well dont judge her cause like 25-35 partners is alot to sooo it sounds more like a ego thang that she had more sex than you get over it cause your number is pretty wicked to. She can say the same about you.
pretty intense decision. but as tough as it may be i agree that you should talk to her about it. its better than bottling it up.
i understand where youre coming from 'cause if my fiance told me he's slept with 25-35 people, i'd be pretty damn digusted.
I hope this doesn't turn into a "this is why you shouldn't have sex before marriage" fight in the comments.
I agree with the guy above me, just explain to her how you feel. Maybe she has some of the same feelings twoards girls you've been with? In my opinon you can't really love someone if you don't respect them, but time does heal all wounds. The hurt may subside after awhile, and you've had more time to cope with the idea that you are the one she wants to be with not those other men. You have her heart and that's the most important thing!!I wish you the best of luck!
I don't understand how you "don't respect her." If you love her, surely there are some other respectable qualities about her. Her personality, or her mind, perhaps.
Being the jealous person that I am, this past month, I've overcame the same obstacle. Here's the conclusion I came to: If you want to spend the rest of your life with her, and that happens, then you won't be the first, but you'll be the last. You can't have her past, but you have her present, and, if it goes right, you can have her future.
Her standards are different now. What she once was, she isn't now. So you have a right not to respect who she was. But she's not sleeping with all those people now. She's not a "skank" now. She's with you for a reason. She loves you, not them.
Don't let it ruin something so beautiful.
your question is very tricky, to say the least. you say you love her but that you've lost respect for her. does that mean treating her differently? do you look at her differently? do you feel ashamed of her? are you jealous?
"No one likes knowing the love of their life was once the town pump!" -- i find this comment so offensive. though you may not mean it, but with this one sentence, you come across as sexist and degrading and old-fashioned (imo, anyway). you say that you realize you've had your fair number of partners (though not as many as hers) and yet, you don't feel particularly guilty, do you? do you think she looks at you differently? also, do you think she doesn't already FEEL that you're acting differently towards her? please don't take woman's intuition as an old wives' tale.
listen. you say you love her. you say before you found out her "number" she was the one for you. and now, you're punishing her for her past. you're punishing her for something that she cannot change, no matter what. you've just realized a flaw about her, and i'm sure she's noticed some about you. but you know what, that's what a relationship is about. talk it out. move past it. because if you don't, your relationship will be destroyed.
@annawolfy@xanga - ah, your last paragraph! it was exactly what i was trying to say before i became too distracted by true blood. great comment =)
yup, it's just a number.not much you can do other than just accept the figure and let it be.u cant change her past, u cant change who she was and what she did.but she assured you that she's gonna treat herself better and be more mature. that means she's trying to take life seriously and respect herself.help her to gain her own self respect and if you loved this girl so much before knowing about the 'number', why should you lose respect for her because she was being honest?honestly, if i were her, i dont think i would want to reveal the 'number' to anyone especially to you.she's an honest person, respect her for that. and try..try not to think much about the number. just make sure she will not increase the number after this.
I agree with @pillowpixies@xanga - you really have no respect for her if you're calling her all those names. I agree that the number is really high, but if you truly love her you probably will eventually get over it, because love triumphs all. But I understand where you're coming from, the number IS high, but just because she slept with a lot of people doesn't mean she doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt. She's with YOU know, she cares about you. I think it takes a lot of courage for a girl to even admit to her guy how many guys she slept with. She doesn't want to lie to you...it'd be kinda easy, no? Just tell you..."I had been with (insert low number) guys" how would you find out? Her honesty seems something, no?
We all have pasts that might not look that great to other people but I think as long as she is being faithful to you then there shouldn't be an issue. I partially understand your pain because I have breifly felt it with my current bf but I have felt her pain so many times that I really can't feel for you.
My number isn't as high as your gf's but it's not a number I'm proud of and it kinda hurts me that you're holding it against her when she's even told you she hated who she used to be. It hurts me because I've had bf's hold my sexual history against me and they've even called me a slut and other names, refused to have sex with me or told me I had to make it up to them by doing other things I didn't wanna do.
I want to give constructive help but this topic has always hit me personally because I've had to deal with this to and if you seriously look at it are you not the town dump yourself? You say that you're not special anymore but your number is fairly high also so she isn't special either. If we're going by number YOU ARE A SLUT! (this is not an insult this is supposed to make you think, look at the similarities). Also do the math. She's a 26 year old woman and depending on when she first started having sex these guys could be fairly spaced out over her life time. Look at the relationship she had with those guys..where they flings? bf's? crushes?
Sometimes girls and guys for that matter sleep with a lot of different people in the attempt to find love and it can take awhile to realize thats the wrong way to do it.
But, you do have a special girl! You have a girl who was willing to share that information with you, a girl who could feel regret for her past behaviour in front of you, a girl who is a changed woman and one who is wanting to be with you and only you! If you can't see how special that is then you should leave her. You wont do her or yourself any good by staying in a relationship with no respect on your part.
Maybe you didn't lose respect for her, maybe you just lost confidence in yourself that you're the best she's had? Guys seem to judge girls so harshly on their sexual past when they do whatever it takes to get their number higher and higher.
You said you love her, you wouldn't leave her over this, but you don't respect her? Whhhhaaaaaat? It don't make any sense to me. How can you love and be with someone you don't respect or lost respect for? All you can do now is accept it and move on. Communicate with her. Tell her how much this bothers you and try to work something out from there. But then again, the past is the past. There is not much you can do but look past it and see her for who she is now.
So what? She slept with so and so guys but she's with you now. That should tell you something. And even if you knew ahead of time, yeah, you could of dodge it but think about what you'll be missing by judging a book by its cover.
Everyone has a past that they're not proud of but they learn and grow from it. It makes them who they are today.
are you sure it isn't b/c you're slightly jealous....? I understand the whole "town pump" thing as disrespectful as that is, but it is seriously the past, and I KNOW the past is intensely hard to let go of, but over time, you can do it if she really is the "one".
you MUST respect the girl you are with. otherwise the relationship is doomed.
you're a total hypocrite! its not like you're any better than her at all, your number is pretty high too, get over yourself man. personally i think you're an idiot. nothing about her has changed since you met her. everything that you found special about her before is still special now. if you're gonna let her past bother you than you don't deserve her anyway. she needs someone who sees her for who she is, not what she has done.
Now on the one hand, I have felt this kind of jealousy before (and I think it's largely jealousy: I mean, it's "did he do her," "what did she do with those guys," it's that sort of questioning, and those are jealousy questions). I don't doubt that there's disgust and such and so forth, but jealousy is a big unmentioned element here and it can co-exist perfectly well with loss of respect and disgust and so on.
But while her numbers might double yours, your numbers double mine, and for the record, I'm a guy. Are you sure your disgust and "lack of respect" aren't for girls who behaved as I'm certain some of your 30--THIRTY, man--did? Are you sure you're not just seeing certain very temporary girls from your own count, in her, as her? SURELY you were not in thirty fully-disclosed, long-term relationships, no? Are you ok with your OWN sluttiness but not hers? Is it a gender double standard (and you know, of course, that such things clearly exist, yes)?
I'm not saying the jealousy/disgust/respect issues can simply be abandoned and you can just turn into sunshine the next day, but you CAN process this stuff and find out where it comes from and then, with much work, master it. If she's really overcome "the old days" (and she could be correct in that or not, a long conversation or series of them is the way into that one), then you too sort of owe your up-to-now love for her a chance to also overcome "the old days."
That's my two cents.
I think you should start respecting your girlfriend. You said that you slept with around 25-35 people... well, what if your girlfriend had only slept with like 5 people and she'd be the one who thought you weren't respectable? She'd be wrong to do so though. You deserve respect, just like she deserves respect.
Also, keep in mind that there is a difference between who she was in the past and who she is now. She's no longer that girl now... Actually, she's with you now, and if she's staying with you, then that must mean you are special to her (so stop feeling as if you aren't special).
@C_UNIT42@xanga -
Exactly.Does her past really weigh out the things that made you respect and fall in love with her in the first place?
God, you're both whores.
It might be a little easier for me to agree with you if you weren't such a slut yourself.
I don't respect either of you.
@ViciousGrin63@xanga - AGREED!!
She slept with a lot of people. But she's sleeping with one person now. You. For a while I became bothered by the fact that my boyfriend had been with so many before me. I don't know for sure how many, but I'm sure it's up there with her number. I felt like I was inadequate for him because with all there girls he's been with there had to have been several that were better than me, considering he was my first so I had no sexual experience at all before him. I was sure he'd been with girls that say more arousing things while they're getting their brains screwed out or that do things that feel better for him while they're on top or that have longer stamina to keep up with him.
But he chose me. I don't have the perfect body, but when he sees a girl with a bigger ass and more curves he looks and then says he'd rather screw me. No matter how many girls he's been with before, or how many girls beg him to screw them even now, he still chooses me.
She had sex with all those guys. But she stopped. Remember? For years she stopped sleeping around. But now she's sleeping with you. And you alone.
All those other guys she had been with probably meant nothing to her, otherwise there wouldn't be so many. She probably plowed through them. But she stopped at you.
Here goes...
You can love her, but if you can't respect her, it's no good.
Seriously.
You deserve someone you can respect, and she deserves someone who will respect her.
It would be very easy for you to say, "the past is past" and not think about this. Alright, not easy, but it could be done. And you're not. So... get over it or give serious thought into whether you think respect is key in a long term relationship.
To me, it is a dealbreaker.
Either u end it or just let it go dude, nothing u can do about the past, it happened and u just have to move on and live your life. obviously you are letting this get in the way with u guys relationship. Yeah u say ur not going to end it with her over this but Guess what u dont respect her now and it almost to the point u dont trust her because everywhere she goes ur afraid that she might run into one of the guys she had a thing with. I kind of understand where ur coming from because that number is pretty high. now will taking her to go get tested will that help ease things a little bit for u? if so maybe u should talk to her and tell her how u feel and yall should agree that she goes and gets tested. Dont let her past ruin yalls good relationship. your number is pretty high as well I mean no its not as much as hers but geez everyone goes thru alot while growing up and she let sex be the fix of her problems but its obvious that she has change and she is commited to you and only u....GIVE HER A CHANCE.
@C_UNIT42@xanga - Took the words right out of my mouth.
Relationships are based on your past together, the present, and the future. Nothing more. If you can't respect her, seems like you just made her worst fear a reality.
I think you should have more compassion. The past is the past. The fact that she can even pinpoint for you what drove her to have sex with so many people shows incredible maturity and self-awareness and you couldn't give two shits about that. A mature person would appreciate the fact that she has made recent strides in her emotional maturity, and all you are doing is judging her. Clearly you've fallen subject to the double standard that it's okay for men to have a lot of sex and yet women need to keep their legs closed -- which, while popular, is not excusable in my book. What if the roles were reversed? What if you had sex with five more people than she did and she was upset about that? You didn't exactly save yourself for her and 25 is no better than 50 when it comes to understanding that your partner has been with quite a few people before you. How would you feel if she was seeing you through the lens that you are seeing her, and why shouldn't she see you that way? Some people struggle with those images of their partner and their past partner when their partner had only been with one other person. It has less to do with how many people she has been with and more to do with the fact that you don't feel as "special" as you did before. But, in the end, (at least in my book) emotional connections are greater than physical ones. And that's compromised a *great* deal if you can't respect her the way you did before you knew.
You losing respect for her over this causes me to lose respect for you. Not that it matters. I'm just saying.
Wow, you lost your respect for her because she's in the 50+ range and you are in the 25+ range? Grow up. You've both had excessive experience in my opinion. If you can respect yourself but not her, that is your failure and she deserves better.