Dear Scott:

I am back following a little break of… sixteen hours.

A summary of what you wrote in your original post, I am paraphrasing your problem as presented here: you often think and visualize (as pictures and scenes) your girlfriend’s sexual past: who she had sex with and what was her sexual behavior with other men, and you compare the latter to her present sexual behavior with you. You think less of her for having that sexual past and you feel jealousy (an angry feeling). At times you see her as  “the one I love and care about and the one that loves me” and at other times, you see her as “a slut (or some other sexual being)”. You “feel like shaming her for the experiences she had that were so ‘promiscuous’”. You care about what your girlfriend wears, “trying to prevent this ‘slutty’ behavior or appearance”.

You try very hard to not think and feel these things but when you are tired, when she is moody or is drinking alcohol, this problem returns.

You wrote that as a child, following your parents’ divorce and your mother getting together with another man, you were “very upset with my mom for being with my step dad and I would think that they weren’t supposed to have sexual relations or that she didn’t love me as much”. Around puberty you asked your mother if she had sex with her new husband, your step father. She said yes. That set you “into this spiral of sadness and sickness”. You “then wanted to have control over her and would always have her promise me she wouldn’t do anything with my step dad”.

You wrote about a sexual encounter with a step cousin that you had. You wrote: “this did not feel wrong at the time”. Later on, in counseling, you examined “what was right and wrong and how I was innocent and that I wasn’t gay”. You had a motivation at one point to be with a woman so to prove to yourself that you weren’t gay.

And now, my input:

1. Regarding the sexual experience with the step cousin: I believe that in itself it didn’t bring about the problem discussed in this thread (and in previous threads). At the time it didn’t feel wrong because, in itself, it wasn’t wrong, as I understand it: there was no violence involved, no significant age difference, no fear involved, no trust betrayed (correct?) and therefore no innocence shattered. It is only later that this experience was reprocessed in the context of other experiences and the teachings and attitudes of society. It is not a positive experience in your life only because of what it meant later: fear of societal disapproval, fear of being gay. (To me such an experience does not at all indicate sexual orientation. What it indicates to me is sexual curiosity and sensations, sensations that can be stimulated by anyone and anything, male, female or an object).

2.  Regarding your experience with the thoughts of your mother having sex with your step father- this is It, as far as I can see. The problem you have with your girlfriend is the same problem you had with your mother, continued. You thought you forgot or got over the problem with your mother, but you didn’t. It got reactivated as it got projected into your current relationship.

That “spiral of sadness and sickness” that came about then, is the same spiral you are experiencing now, plus, added to it the details relevant now. The reason you asked your mother to promise you that “she wouldn’t do anything with your step dad” is because the thoughts and images of them doing those things caused you much distress, just like the thoughts of your girlfriends doing those things is causing you much distress now. And just like you “wanted to have control over her (your mother)”, you also want to have control over your girlfriend, not only have control over what she wears but over her past.

It is as if you think that if you think enough of her sexual past, you will be able to change it.

Frued came up with the concept of Oedipus Complex: the son/ father (in your case it would be step father) competition for possession of the mother. Wikipedia states on the subject of Oedipus Complex: “when children become aware of their bodies, the bodies of other children, and the bodies of their parents, they gratify physical curiosity by undressing and exploring themselves, each other…The boy directs his libido (sexual desire) upon his mother, and directs jealousy and emotional rivalry against his father—because it is he who sleeps with his mother”

From my experience, for a child, be it a boy or a girl, the mother, the primary caretaker, is Everything, The Most Important person in the world. There is nothing a child wants more than to be loved by his mother. Nothing sexual, I believe (unlike Freud). When a child doesn’t get enough of the mother, enough attention, approval, time, the child craves more. To this craving, add the complexity of a child’s sexual development, experience, societal input… and you get to where you are, experiencing this problem that this thread is about.

Please re-read this post attentively and reply after some calm consideration.

anita