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May 19, 2024 at 11:43 am in reply to: My GF keeps talking about her past sex life and I don’t know why it bothers me? #432834
alex
ParticipantDear @anita
To you question about casual sex, she is a hyper sexual for reasons unknown to me. I researched it being common amongst people that have ADHD. It could also be something else but she has confessed the desire and need to be having sex with endless number of men even being a prostitute, since she was like 10. She is very afraid of STDs/STIs and ironically unable to have sex unless she has a strong emotional connection in a monogamous relationship. I now it sounds weird but her weird/nasty desires only come out when she feels safe in a monogamous relationship. So I assume she gets into a relationship and is able to do all this for 1-3 years at a time and then gets unhappy mostly about the man’s inability to provide or be ambitious and starts thinking she can do better. Despite all her materialism, she picks guys that have un-corrupted hearts (her words) and usually they don’t make a lot of money. It’s some kind of paradox. She’s admitted to have tried casual sex but finds its gross and empty.
As for your question about the divine love, I’d say it’s still there as long as we are emotionally connected and not fighting. I have this joke with her that I love her personality after sunset as she is physically tired and her brain is calmer and she is super nice, emotional and connected. She’s agreed that maybe that is her default state and the other overly ambitious strong independent woman that comes out in the morning is because she’s never been able to depend on any man. When we are in a good place, she is super nice to me and says things like I have such a calming effect on her and that I’m so good for her. But all my goodness got away at daybreak when she switches her focus on work, career, ambition, money, material goods etc.
Yes, I did just request a couples therapy session. Hoping it helps.
May 19, 2024 at 10:04 am in reply to: My GF keeps talking about her past sex life and I don’t know why it bothers me? #432825alex
ParticipantDear @anita and @Helcat, if I knew both of you are going to be so helpful with your responses; I would have given a complete context about everything. Maybe it’s not too late. I love reading your responses and no please don’t worry about being harsh with me. I do need a perspective and I am aware that I am a deeply flawed person.
Let me respond to @Helcat first. Feel free to skim thru the first paragraph as it’s too long and I’m just over sharing.
1. You are correct that my depression and anxiety fuel a lot of insecurity and overthinking and coupled wit her undiagnosed and untreated ADHD where she is irritable almost all the time from sunrise to sunset, I do have episodes of blowing up. I was honest about her from the beginning that I hav these two ailments and every negative life event (including the death of my first born, the separation with my first wife and best friend, the divorce with my second wife and my only friend on this planet and now my ex-wife moving with my 10 year old boy far away to another state), has only made it harder. I was sexually abused as a child and I couldn’t talk to anybody as I get up in a uncomfortable environment where my father was a chronic alcoholic and beat up his wife and kids. All of this made it hard for me to date or make friends or even be fully present in a relationship. Hence I’ve not been lucky in love. the two times I found love, I married them and they understood and accepted me for who I am. They were my rock, one at a time and I never felt any lack of support, judgement or criticism. They anchored me so well that I became a high performing executive who managed to propel his career and be very successful and make a lot of money, travel the world, live with my family in different countries. However, since I went through heartbreak the second time; I’ve lost interest in chasing success, money, material things completely. For a long time, I was alone and just focussed on spending time with my son but I longed for a partner. I longed for the emotional connection so I started dating and after many dates, decided to take a break a I found it to be draining and people were not looking for something deep. Then I met her and she said she’s looking for honesty, depth and someone who makes at least $200K a year because that demonstrates responsibility and commitment. That was my first sign and irritated me so much that I ended up talking to her on phone. Somehow, I saw outstanding communication, emotional depth and clarity her in her. We soon met and clicked in person even though she kept giving me these little electric shocks by making weird comments every now and then. The second was during our first in person date where she asked me, “is sex important to you”? I was shocked but I said yes. As part of an emotional/physical/spiritual experience with my partner, it is important for me to have all those elements. She went on to say “Ok then we will use it as an expression of our love, never to get off”. I was fine with that. We were inseparable from the first time we met and started spending all our time together and living mostly at her house. In 6 weeks, we drove to spend halloween with her grandma. In 2.5 months, we drove to spend Christmas with her parents. In 5 months, we moved in together. She is absolutely against having kids or dating anybody with kids but she warmed up to it and now I have a guest bedroom for my boy who comes over every weekend. Then she started talking about her past again and this is where it gets confusing. She sat me down and said I should not judge her as her entire life has been a lie and she never wanted to marry or settle down with one person for the fear of ending up like her mom who divorced when she was 12 and went on chasing 10s of boyfriends looking for someone to love her and support her. So, she decided to be independent and make her own money and use men for sex as disposable goods. She is not capable of casual sex so she had these multiple relationships that would be good for 1-3 years at most and then she’s start feeling she can do better so she’d break up and find someone else. This is her entire life pattern till she met me. She also told me since menopause, her drive isn’t the same. I’ve offered to take her to review options for treatment for menopause as I feel this with her ADHD makes her very irritable and while it is ruining what we have, I also worry about how hard it is for her as a person to deal with all of this. So I do care about her, I am able to empathize with her. When we met we both wanted a co-dependant relationship as we dont have any friends and we don’t connect with family. It was great till we moved in together and suddenly living in a very expensive rented house put her in a different headspace. Money is the most important thing to her in the world and she’s very vocal about it. She is deeply emotional but has broken up with several boyfriends as they were not ambitious and she wants a 8 million dollar house and 5 cars and luxury goods. She is willing to work for most of it but also not be in a relationship with a “Loser”, as she calls them. I don’t make as much money as her as she easily makes toward of $500K a year as porn pays well but I make enough to not be a loser. When I first met her, she had given up shooting porn (as a director) and was not working at all. She was focussed on fitness, hiking, cosmetic treatments and implants and just had no direction. I sometimes feel maybe that was my role. My love was able to help her get out of a rut, move into a fancy house, resume work and now she’s very driven to making 5-10 times of what she now makes, with or without me. This leaves a serious disconnect as I am no longer ambitious. Maybe I would be, if she’d accept me for an over emotional/over thinking person who does his best when he feels supported. On top of all that, she is constantly critical of me, snaps at me, has a very foul mouth and calls me a loser, lame, coward etc over minor conflicts.
2. She has recently said she is not afraid to be alone. She doesn’t long to be with anybody else. But due to all the problems we’re having, she doesn’t want to marry me. But this isn’t consistent. Two weeks ago, she wanted me to take her to Tiffany’s and buy her a $40K ring. I’m sure if I am nice to her, the pattern will repeat itself in a few weeks. All this inconsistency where she is madly in love with me and doesn’t want to spend. minute apart from each other and wants to get married immediately to where she says out loud that she doesn’t want to marry me and she isn’t afraid to be alone and she is unhappy and frustrated due to lack of ambition in me etc; is terrible for me as it increases my anxiety and panic attacks many fold. So I withdraw or I blow up or both.
3. I see merit in couples counseling if we both want to salvage the relationship. I know I want to. But as usual, she wants to use an objective third party to clarify the absolutely truth so we both take responsibility and separate. I asked does she want to salvage it and she says she doesn’t know unless we talk to an objective third party, if there is anything to save. And she’s more torn about me leaving as she’ll have to pay the entire rent which she easily can but she’d rather me stay for practical reasons.
4. I see incompatibility between us that bothers me now. She is really. alone but once she is in love, she’s usually very attached. I hate being alone but I attach too much and am very needy when in love. So when we fight and she builds a stonewall, I hav trouble breathing and sorta panicking. She on the other hand, goes back to her other personality of being very comfortable as a loner/strong independendant woman with work and work. She locks herself in her office and just works and keeps buying furniture, durable goods, luxury things and just consumes so much food and alcohol to fill the void. I don’t drink. I don’t overeat. I dont use work to fill in the emotional void. I eep waiting for her to melt and come to me. At times, I can’t take it and I go to her to hug her and I am instead met with sarcasm and cruel statements like “You’re so insincere and dishonest”.
5. This is what I want. It’s like my prayer to god today. I’d like us to go to therapy and be honest. Work on us as individuals and as a couple and accept each other completely including our flaws. Promise to be kind to each other, stop talking about our past to attack each other or hurt each other, understand we have different values as two independent people and different needs in a relationship, that we do love each other deeply and we are very lucky to have such a strong connection, that we promise to be kind and make an effort to make changes that are important to each other. And if after doing therapy and all this, we choose to stay together; we should not take each other for granted. If we choose to separate, at least we tried to save what we both felt was the best thing that ever happened to either of us.
May 18, 2024 at 9:42 pm in reply to: My GF keeps talking about her past sex life and I don’t know why it bothers me? #432815alex
ParticipantThank you. Please send me some strength as despite everything, I love this person very much. A break would completely gut me and I feel I’ll have to get my memory erased to get over her. I wish I read all the warning signs from the beginnings but I ignored and opened up to her like I have never done with anybody else. In seven months I feel like I have experienced a decade worth of experiences with her. I think I finally know why is this killing me so much more than it is killing her. This will be my third time being in love and walking away in my 47 years on this planet while she has been in and out of love 100s of times. Maybe she’s not capable of building permanence with anybody or maybe she thrives on the novelty of a new relationship till it fizzles out. Either way, I wonder how has the heartache of losing someone she loved has not scarred her if she’s been in love as many times as she claims? Perhaps, I’m just trying to find some method to her madness. She’s certainly not self aware and even if was made self aware, I don’t know how much she’s willing to work on herself. I should walk away with gratitude that for a brief moment, I experienced divine love and joy and hope because of her. Maybe there is no such thing as permanence.
May 16, 2024 at 8:42 pm in reply to: My GF keeps talking about her past sex life and I don’t know why it bothers me? #432754May 16, 2024 at 8:40 pm in reply to: My GF keeps talking about her past sex life and I don’t know why it bothers me? #432753alex
Participant@Anita – you are amazing! And so are you @Hellcat.
Both of you have given me such helpful yet competing responses. The proverbial GF spoke to me today and said sh’d like an independent third party to give us a perspective. She does not want me to leave thinking of her as a monster and she’d like me to take some responsibility for my share of the damage to the relationship. So she is asking for couples counseling but when I asked is this an attempt to salvage the relationship, she said she just wants me to hear the objective truth and not leave with the lies and monsters I’ve created in my head. She admitted to not being a great partner and being bad for my mental health but feels I exaggerate and inflate it in my head. She has this constant need to win all arguments and be always right and one of the things that annoys me about her is she keeps saying “I didn’t do anything wrong”. Duh!
Part of me just wants to break up and move out. Like I moved to the guest bedroom and she knows I have a bad back and I shouldn’t be sleeping on that cheap mattress and yet she never cared that she’s sleeping in the master bedroom even though I paid for the super expensive bed and mattress there. She knows I have terrible anxiety and panic attacks and that I have no family or friends, I’ve always reared to her as my friend/lover and my home. And she knows this neglect of not talking to me, no texts, sleeping in separate rooms is so bad for me that I can’t breathe most times and yet she is so nonchalant about it. When I said I don’t think counseling will help and I take responsibility for my occasional bad behavior (which is triggered by her name calling and her drama really), she said good luck finding someone you’d be happy with and I wish you well. Like are you human with any feelings at all?
I’m now convinced that she’s been in and out of at least 80 relationships in this lifetime so it’s like a game for her. Maybe she thrives on the novelty and dopamine from new relationship high and then it fizzles out. I’ve been married twice and divorced both times due to my depression and the heartache nearly killed me because I really loved these two people as my soulmates. I felt lucky for finding love more than once in a lifetime. And here we have someone who is close to hitting 100. So maybe she’s like a rainbow and she can’t be attained.
The other part of me wants to try counseling because I’m pathetic and still hope that maybe that will change her mind and change her behavior and maybe I don’t have to go thru hell for a third time in one lifetime.
Thank you for reading and humoring me and helping me understand. I am very grateful for this site and already buying books and trying to learn everything I can.
May 16, 2024 at 3:57 pm in reply to: My GF keeps talking about her past sex life and I don’t know why it bothers me? #432747alex
Participant[quote quote=432743]Dear Alex: You might not have noticed (double posting), but I submitted a reply for you a few minutes before you submitted your 2nd post. If you didn’t notice it, you are welcome to read it. Having read your 2nd post, indeed no wonder she talks about her sex life with previous partners- that has been her personal and work life in the pornographic industry for 20 years! Not that she should. It is harmful to you. “I would never introduce any information into her headspace that would trouble her or make her anxious“- and neither should she. “Was there a need for me to know all these details about how many guys and how much sex and the quality of sex she’s had when I was very clear about boundaries and that this makes me uncomfortable?… I worry that she won’t stop talking about her past because maybe she is using it to have control over the relationship or has some sadism or narcissistic tendencies“- – living with a woman you suspect to have “some sadism or narcissistic tendencies“, while wanting to stay with her forever, or for a long time (“We want to stay together forever or a long time and maybe even get married“), how does it feel? “This is an outlier as a person at least for someone like me who has been married twice so I’ve had very few partners in life”– maybe the outlier-in-her attracts the .. hidden outlier-in-you? (We all have a hidden outlier within us, don’t we?) anita[/quote]
Thank you, Anita. That’s very helpful and a thoughtful response. I want to agree with you that opposites attract and maybe that’s what’s going on here. I want to simplify it down to male ego. Would any self respecting man be ok with his monogamous romantic partner talking about her best sex in the past and how glorious it was? I mean not if all his body parts work and he longs for a deep emotional and intimate relationship. Maybe my ego is bigger than normal. Maybe I’m the one that needs help. Maybe I am throwing away the love of my life over my ego. I guess we’ll never know. All I know is that I feel resentment due to this and that’s hard to live with.
May 16, 2024 at 3:50 pm in reply to: My GF keeps talking about her past sex life and I don’t know why it bothers me? #432746alex
Participant[quote quote=432742]discomfort with everything. I would think of it in this way. She was sexually assaulted as a child. It is common for sexual a[/quote]
First of all I want to say how thankful I am to have found this site and all of you lovely people. The experience and the tone of all responses is so wonderful and knowledgable.
Now about your response for me to assume that she was sexually assaulted as a child. Unfortunately, she has told me that she used to be hyper sexed from age 8 and looking at porn magazines and at 14 she decided to do it with someone she was in love with. There was no looking back and she has been very active since. Now, if she looks back in regret or discomfort at her past; I can empathize. I do feel terrible that for some reason she had this sexual power over her that consumed her thru her life. But the way she talks about her past is very different. She is grateful and takes pride in all her experiences. I don’t mind that either. Well she prioritized sex over everything in her life for 4 decades and I’m glad she’s happy that it was worth it. I just find it impossible to deal with when she talks about it after being with me for 7 months. If she’s trying to tell me something, she should be direct. Now I just imagine her going thru hundreds of men having wild sex and here I am wanting to build a complete relationship with her but I feel like I don’t stand a chance. It’s the disrespect and deliberate attempt to hurt me that I can’t get past. At times, she’s said she doesn’t want to be consumed by that anymore and I understand it. So why keep talking about it? I’m here. Please try to have some great sex with me because you still very much enjoy it. And stop talking about your past and respect my boundaries.
May 16, 2024 at 11:29 am in reply to: My GF keeps talking about her past sex life and I don’t know why it bothers me? #432741alex
ParticipantSorry I meant to say, Thank you “Hellcat”.
May 16, 2024 at 11:27 am in reply to: My GF keeps talking about her past sex life and I don’t know why it bothers me? #432739alex
ParticipantThank you, Alex. I appreciate your comments and perspective. You are correct about her sex drive not being the same anymore but she still enjoys sex very much. This is an outlier as a person at least for someone like me who has been married twice so I’ve had very few partners in life. She lost her virginity at 14 which I find a little disturbing and then had 1-2 year relationships with several men till now so that math makes my head spin. This is a very sexual person in the sense the type of sex she enjoys and talks about having enjoyed in the past, is very outside the comfort zone of most people like me. She likes to have no control, she likes to be hurt, she has very dark and some even illegal fantasies she likes to act out. My point is, this is a very sexual person. On top of that, her work is in the porn industry (not in front of the camera though). She has been writing and directing porn for 20 years. Again, very sexual person who’s had very diverse and vast amount of sexual exposure. It took me some time to get over all of that because maybe I felt very insecure at the get go because I felt I don’t stack up, I haven’t been around as much.
I have two dilemas. One, was there a need for me to know all these details about how many guys and how much sex and the quality of sex she’s had when I was very clear about boundaries and that this makes me uncomfortable? Two, I am supportive of the menopause and the changes and I go to her doctors with her including her mammogram, Pap smear and everything. We are invested in each other deeply and care about our health and our emotions for each other. We want to stay together forever or a long time and maybe even get married. I wish she would tell me what ‘great sex’ means to her so we could at least try to replicate it. Maybe we will fail because of our age and our current bodies. But the content reference to ‘I’ve had so much and it was so great’ implies to me that she is not willing to even give us a chance. After all, I’m only asking for a normal holistic relationship that includes an emotional, physical and intellectual connection. If you deliberately remove one of the components because you’ve had enough of it and don’t care about it anymore, at least stop talking about your past and / or ask your partner if they’ve had enough of it and do they have an unmet need. The relationship is so great overall that I wish I was never introduced to all this info and even now if she promises to stop talking about it, I don’t care how great or non-great our sex lives are. We love each other and care for each other very deeply and I have no complaints about our sex life. I worry that she won’t stop talking about her past because maybe she is using it to have control over the relationship or has some sadism or narcissistic tendencies. I would never introduce any information into her headspace that would trouble her or make her anxious.
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