A
male
age
36-40,
anonymous
writes:I'm a gay 22-year-old male involved in my first relationship with another man, which has lasted now for a bit over a year. We've been long distance for almost 10 months, as I'm spending a year working on the other side of the planet (in a non-LGBT-friendly society, for what it's worth), but we talk at least once every day and have spent around a month of that time visiting each other either in the US or in my current country of residence. He's amazing and I love him more than anything, but I'm having trouble getting over his sexual history. My coming-out process was one during which I avoided confronting the issue entirely; I had a girlfriend for nearly a year during the early parts of college and hooked up with another girl once prior to my coming out, but nothing with either of them ever progressed below the waist. Between my coming out and my meeting my boyfriend, I only so much as kissed one other guy, so consequently he's the first person with whom I've ever had any actual sexual experience. He came out early in college, and in the grand scheme of things he's really not experienced at all- over the course of the three years between his coming out and his meeting me, he made out with a guy from his dorm for a few weeks (who was the first person he came out to), had two drunken and unsatisfying one-night stands (which, for what it's worth, didn't even involve actual sex- just mutual oral sex in both cases and a finger in the butt in the second), and had a brief (extremely) drunken mutual masturbation session with his former best friend from high school.I knew about the guy from his dorm and the two one-night stands early in our relationship and it didn't really bother me, but in September (some three months after we first went long distance) when I found out about the encounter with his old best friend it was like a switch had been flipped. Over the course of the next several months I stupidly dug for every detail I could find, and he's now said that I know as much about his sexual history as he does, including stuff as minute as the list of people he's kissed (which, again, is far longer than mine). Since then, it has tortured me every day to think about him with other people. I hate knowing that he knows what it feels like to feel another guy's dick and that other guys know how his feels, and I hate knowing that some other random guy has put a finger in my boyfriend's butt. The most minor, insignificant, unrelated things sometimes can dig it up and send me into a spiraling funk. I suspect that in part my frustration stems from my own repression during college, as I was presented with opportunities to engage in similar kinds of activities and rejected them, but some of it might just be old-fashioned jealousy. I don't know.About a month ago, I told my boyfriend about how much this stuff consumes me, and since then we've been working really hard to be honest and open in our communication. We love each other very much, and neither of us wants to be with anyone else. I'm his first boyfriend and the only person he's ever really loved (which isn't even true for me, as I loved my college girlfriend despite the lack of physical intimacy), and I'm even the first person he's been physically intimate with while sober. He's said that he didn't even think he liked sex before he was with me and that what we've shared so far overshadows what he had done before that it's a complete non-issue. I've even talked to a therapist to try to help me sort through my issues. I feel like things are gradually getting better, but I still find myself involuntarily poring over every detail of his hookups before we met. It doesn't faze me that I can count them on one hand with fingers to spare or that none of them were remotely satisfying- I still fixate on it. It's putting a big strain on what is otherwise a pretty perfect relationship. We're both committed to seeing me through this, and I'm planning on moving to his city when I move back to the US in a few months, but I'm just having a hard time reconciling his minor sexual past with my complete lack of one. I'd appreciate any advice from anyone who's been in a similar situation; I'm willing to do anything to work past this. (For what it's worth, advice like "just get over it" or "focus on the present" doesn't help- believe me, I've tried.)
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male
reader, AvgGuy1 +, writes (10 April 2010):
You are worried that he has had intimate contact with... _4_ (from what I could count) people and you have essentially had none - other than him???
Let's reverse the situation. How would you feel if YOU had more experience than him??? My point is, depending on WHO you are with, ONE or you is always going to have more experience(s) than the other. Why are you begrudging him of these past experiences???
You need to get past his previous experiences... cause there's nothing you can do about it... unless you wanna go out and hookup with a bunch of guys before - or even after - you get back home. Just from what I've read about your position that doesn't sound like something that you'd want to do to him.
You need to figure out WHAT specifically is driving you crazy about his previous experiences... and address that. And it sounds more like an internal issue... than anything he has done or can do.
Failure to address this issue, i.e. jealousy, will only make things worse... and I would venture to guess will be the cause of a break-up (It just happened to a friend of mine... he couldn't get past his jealousy issues... and his bf hase broken up with him). A certain amount of jealousy is fine... but being obsessive about what he's doing or whom he's doing it with (especially out of bed)... is not good for the relationship.
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