Janie

Hey all. I am the boyfriend about this entire posting is about. My girlfriend and I have always been able to talk to each other and be honest with each other about our relationship, hence my posting on here now as she has informed me of its existence.

See, the thing here that really sucks is this: I had a problem with her past. I'll admit it, I was a dick, and like so many here have said, I needed to grow up. Well, the truth of the matter is, I did. I'm a rational person and I know I treated her like shit, but everyone here might as well get the other side of the story before giving advice like "cut your losses" and such, as my girlfriend and I have talked a lot on this subject and she came here looking for genuine possibilites as to how to help our relationship. As she stated, we have already set a deadline for "cutting losses", so please, any further posts here need only be about ways to possibly help.

I am 23 years old. I had a very insecure childhood due to the fact that I was very short, unathletic, and academically very intelligent to boot (straight A+'s). As such, all the female attention I got in high school was along the lines of flirting with me in order to get my class notes, or to help with homework, and then metaphorically throwing me in the trash after my resources had been tapped. Then in final year I got a girlfriend, whom I didn't really like at first, but she was the only girl to ever have been seriously interested in me so I went for it. I am not proud to admit that I 'cheated' on her a couple times (just kissing) and I was very upset with myself afterwards, especially after I fell in love with her. We were together for 4 years, as I eventually fell in love with her despite not really liking her to begin with. After 3 years, though, she broke up with me because she had said she fell in love with a friend of mine (she never knew I had cheated on her as described above, and I thought everything was fine in our relationship). I talked her into taking me back, and we were together for the last year, and she was very happy and sorry for what she did. Unfortunately what she did caused me to never trust her anymore, so after a year of pain inside me (she never knew) I broke up with her, which crushed her. I came back home from where we were living at the time for the summer and after a couple weeks met someone else and we clicked completely. It was all-consuming. I was able to rationalize "i am on the rebound here, I shouldn't be doing this" but she assured me her feelings were genuine and I believed her. Things were awesome with her for 3 months. Then she cheated on me at a party that I was at with her, with my best friend. I was in the freaking house. I've never felt so completely devastated in my life: not only did my girlfriend do this to me, who I very much cared for and thought she shared those feelings, but my BEST FRIEND betrayed me. Needless to say we are not friends any more. I went back to school at the end of the summer.

Enter my current girlfriend. We hit it off really well as well, but I wasn't going to make the same mistake again. I courted her romantically (chocolate covered strawberries, small gifts wrapped up, etc.) and everything was great for quite a while. Then the topic of the past came up. i can not fully explain here how that made me feel. She had had a couple one night stands, and for some reason that really bothered me. I had a past too, but I always had sex in the context of it being a serious relationship: I do not believe in sex for physical pleasure. As my gf stated above, sex is very important to me as a manifestation of a romantic relationship. A couple without sex (IMHO) are just friends, and as such sex is just not something done outside of that context. It's not the be-all-end-all, but sex to me is one of the defining characteristics of a romantic relationship, and I will not have it outside of that context.

So, I had a problem. She didn't care about my past (not that I had much of one) but she wasn't even concerned with my infedility in the past, and for that I love her all the more. The problem here lied solely with me being a dick, thinking that I should be her 'only', and such. The problem that manifested later regarding her not orgasming and me curling up and crying was all tied into this same problem: i couldn't handle the thought of her past. And the reason for this was because of MY past. In my head, if she was capable of one night stands, then for some reason I thought it a logical conclusion that she would cheat on me, because no woman has ever wanted me in my life, and because if I was capable fo cheating, she was too. This is SO unfair to her it's not even funny, I know, but there it was.

To compound the problem, my girlfriend has never known and will never be able to understand my high-school experiences. I was lucky enough to be a late-bloomer, and eventually after high school grew up to six feet, strong, muscular, and athletic. Anyway, to cut this post down, let's cut to the chase.

I feel HORRIBLE about how I treated her, but I got over it. I AM OVER IT. i love her, and am so sorry I made such a big deal about her past. It seriously doesn't bother me any more. We had a good talk about a week ago about our relationship, and it was so good and meaningful that from that point up until yesterday everything was as it should be in our relationship: we were happy with each other, we enjoyed each other's company for the whole day for days, we had great sex on numerous occasions. But then we got in a bit of an argument last night and when that happens she admits that all this feeling of ill will towards me comes flooding up because of the way I handled the whole past thing.

So now here it is (And don't think this is behind her back... she's sitting right beside me as I type this). She says she still wants to try, and wants to be with me. i have no problems with her past or anything right now; i'm actually quite upset because everything was going so well until yesterday. But the problem, according to her (we had a good talk this morning just a few minutes prior to me starting this post) is that she is having trouble dealing with the problem I HAD with her past. She doesn;t understand why it happened in the first place, and she seems convinced that we can solve our problems if she can just be brought to understand why I behaved as I did, although i don't have a problem with it any more.

Please help. We need not posts saying "cut your losses and move on": we're not stupid, and we've already decided upon that course if it comes to it. But we are both mature enough and care enough about each other to give ourselves a chance together because when crap like this ISN'T happening, we really are very happy together. So, as I said, please help. Thank you.

Rich

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