5/8/13
Comment of the Week: How to Embrace Your Partner’s Sexual History

Reader Hannah offered up the following very wise (and patient!) advice in response to our post “Your Call: How Do I Get Over All the Sex She’s Had Before Me?”

Sigh… A man wants a virgin who will be his whore.

I am going to try to avoid criticizing though, since I think this is a case where you legitimately don’t realize the misogyny underlying your feelings. Maybe your problem could easily be resolved if you could just get to the root of why you feel that way and see how deeply offensive and hateful it is to women.

The issue is, when you obsess too much about what your woman did in the past- how much, with whom, how often, and how ecstatically- you are treating her as a piece of your property. Her body is not yours though, and what she did with it before has nothing to do with you, plain and simple. And you can’t just pick and choose which parts of her you want to love, so it’s important to see how these experiences have shaped her and how they are a part of things that make her really amazing.

Her being a “slut” comes along with all sorts of positive things. Maybe she is a very empowered, intelligent person who knows what she wants. Maybe she is a very loving, sensuous person who enjoys intimacy and delights in pleasure. Maybe she’s super adventurous and curious, and she wants to see all that life has to offer. These qualities could all result in someone having a lot of sex in their past, but they are essentially GOOD qualities that you probably love about her.

It’s not right to reduce her simply to her number and then to attach a label to that. How do you get over that? Put the “slutty” part of her back together with that whole beautiful person that she is. If you talked to men who had been married 10 or 20 years, most of them would love to have your problem. I mean, a woman who loves sex and is great at it? And who will actually want to keep having it with you several years down the line? If you can’t stand that, then just let her go and find some virgin who is afraid of sex and has no idea how to orgasm. Or find someone who genuinely doesn’t like sex, and never wanted to have it with anyone, including you. Believe me, there are thousands of men (and women) who would love your woman exactly as she is.

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